"Okay so is this the normal world--I mean the world I started in--but magic's a secret or did I go to a parallel universe? Uh, does this universe have Karna Farlee-Bakh* and zebras and Antarctica and the great ziggurat at Pern Khalorn‡?"

*A person with a similar slate of accomplishments to Isaac Newton.

‡A city in what Earth would call the Nile River delta.

"Zebras is the only thing this," headscarf touch "turns into something I've heard of."

"Probably a different world, then, and not the distant future after magic gets invented. . . . If I don't pop back to Firstplanet next time I sleep everyone[A] is gonna think I'm braindead, aren't A."

She shrugs, or maybe doesn't react at all and is just shifting her position.

"How long were you alone in the desert?"

"Not very long, I think. Less than an hour after I woke up, and I wasn't hungry or thirsty like I'd be if I slept for more than an hour or two."

"Hm.  Well, I'll get you to the city, and if it's possible to get in touch with wherever you're from someone there probably will."

"Thank you." It doesn't feel likely, that Anda will be able to get home easily from here, but that's clearly a prior acquired from fiction and maybe in real life once someone has been magically transported to another universe they can get back and forth easily, what would Anda know.

"Do people show up from other worlds a lot, around here? I don't think it's ever happened where I'm from."

"Not that I've heard of.  But I don't live out in the middle of a desert because I like to keep up with all the latest goings-on."

"Valid." Anda[A] shuts up for a bit, contemplating what jobs A might be able to get if A's stuck here and whether random aliens can learn to make magic rugs or you have to be born with it and trying not to be sad about all the plans A had and the people A's going to miss. 

The initial speck in the distance has by this point in their flight separated into a little cluster of light-dots.  By the time they're most of the way to it, the lights reveal themselves to be lanterns of the same sort which beams out into the carpet's path.  There are also a number of small tents, some in a huddle and a few more scattered, set up on a stadium-sized patch of confusingly-lush grass.  Several dozen sheep are currently making their home there as well.

Well crud, if the people[A] here live in tents Anda[B] feels bad about imposing on A by being randomly homeless. Hopefully B'll be able to find a job quickly. "Person from an alternate universe" is a good sign for comparative advantage and a bad sign for transaction costs, but probably humans everywhere need someone to supervise the kids and keep the account books and clean things and suchlike even if Anda isn't well-positioned for any fun technological synergies.

"What's your name?" If there's about to be more people around it's going to become useful.

"Neidura.  . . . I forgot yours."

"Anda." Forgetting a name after hearing it once is so not surprising. "Hello, Neidurah," Anda repeats back to fix the memory and check the pronunciation.

"Oh, it wasn't vv-something?  - Hello."

"The full name is Anda Vrin-Vanse, but the Vrin-Vanse bit is only important if you know another Anda and need to specify which one. It's my parents' given names, so like my dad is Vrin Sandel-David and so on." Hopefully Anda isn't the local language's word for "butts" or something.

"You'll have to switch the order if you want to use mail and be on the census and stuff."

"You do it in the other order? Neat. Some Firstplanet cultures still do that but you can generally tell which is which because of the hyphen."

"It used to be the other way but then there was some seamster thing and everyone swapped when I was a kid.  We don't really do hyphens."  The carpet comes to a stop.  Neidura slides off it and the lantern bobs along to stay a convenient distance in front of her.

Anda follows. "You don't do hyphens in your names or like in your whole language? If I try to focus on what actual phonemes you're emitting I totally lose the semantic content so I have no idea if you've said a hyphen yet, sorry."

"I meant in names but my scarf already tripped up on your not-a-pocket, so who knows."

"Do you call them pockets because they fit in a pocket and do arbitrary things?"

"No, it's because they're pockets."  Neidura pauses and pats a flat fabric pouch attached at her hip; the lantern moves over to light it.  It's intricately embroidered and has a hand-sized slit running vertically down it.

"I'm very curious how that does a set of things that would make it analogous to a handcomp but I recognize that you didn't sign up for the explain technology to aliens job so if you aren't having fun we can skip it. Also everything you have is gorgeous, is that important to the magic or are you just very cool?"

She snorts.  "I'm not very cool.  You can put stuff in pockets - writing or drawings - and then anyone else who has one can take out the pattern of it."

"Oh, wow, that's cool--does it do audio or video? Is the text searchable, like, if I wanted a document with the word 'hypothetically' in it but didn't care which document could I get some arbitrary ones or do I have to know exactly which document I want?" Are there fabric software engineers. That would be the coolest thing of all time.