...okay, so that's what THAT does, she guesses.

Cell reception? ...nope.

The sun shines harshly even from low in the sky. The beach is empty of people, but if she listens carefully she may hear some rustling of leaves thattaway.

Ugh. It looks like an island from here but it could be a peninsula and that has implications for whether to expect that she is about to have to flee a tiger. She works her hand in between the pages of her spell binder.

The rustling gets louder, then a red haired man peeks out from between the trees. He does a double take. "Lord in Heaven, this place is inhabited?!"

Several other men materialize out of the jungle around him. Their clothing is in various states of disrepair, their hair long and unshaven-- in short, they look like they've been here a while.

"Ah - no, I'm not from here."

"I'll be damned, she speaks English!-- Begging your pardon, ma'am," he adds belatedly, turning bright red. He shoots warning looks at the men around him, who were starting to look just a touch menacing. "If you aren't a native, then how on Earth did you get here?"  He gestures around in bafflement.

"That's, uh, a very good question... how did you?"

He grimaces. "French ship. Long gone now." He sizes her up uncertainly, realizing that he doesn't actually know what side she is on in the war, if any. "Your, er, English is very good ..." he observes. 

One of the other men, wearing a dilapidated brown coat, jerks his chin frantically at Granby, clearly trying to communicate something.

"It's my native language."

He looks confused but doesn't inquire further. "Right. Er..." He glances over at the jerking-chin man, and seems to remember something. "Captain John Granby, of Her Majesty's Aerial Corps. And you are...?"

Do they... call the Air Force that... in Britain? In Canada it's the Royal Canadian Air Force but she doesn't know what they call it in Britain. Or Australia. She'd be trying to read the uniforms but they're a bit too beat up to mean anything. "My name is May Swan."

He frowns a bit. "I hate to ask so bluntly, but what country are you from, Miss Swan?"

"Canada. Uh. Why?"

His frown deepens. "Where-- Oh. The colonies...? I'd think it would be obvious why an Englishman recently encountering the French would want to know a stranger's country."

"Doesn't look like a soldier, does she," mutters one of the other men.

The brown-coated man elbows Granby. "Captain," he says in a low voice that is nevertheless fully audible, "perhaps we ought to ask this lady if her means of transportation might still be available, or if perhaps she is aware of any maps we might prevail upon her to make use of?"

"Excuse me if this a weird question," says May, "but what year is it?"

They look at each other in confusion. "1808," says the brown-coated man, and then abandons the pretense that he's letting the captain speak first. "But ma'am, our situation here is dire, and if you know of any means of escape I must beg you to inform us. We would not impose on you, but our numbers are greater than our supplies can support, and we have no desire to remain here until the French ship that brought us here returns. Have you any--"

A shadow falls over the beach and a huge, sinuous red dragon lands. "Granby!!" she screeches. "There you are at last! You were taking ever so long and I thought you must have run into trouble, only you would keep going on through that jungle where I could not catch sight of you--" She sees May. "And I see you have run into trouble, for who is this?" she demands.

"It's 1808 and there are dragons flying around?" Openly? Without turning invisible? Is she going to be that big one day or is she a smaller sort of dragon -

Iskierka fixes a large yellow eye on her. "Where else would we be, on the ground? Have you a way to get off this island?" she demands again. "Are you French? You don't sound French."

"I'm Canadian, but if I were French it wouldn't matter, because two hundred years in the future political alliances have shuffled around a lot!!"

Granby puts a soothing hand on the dragon's flank. "She's from the colonies, dearest."

He notices May still hasn't answered the question about a way off the island, and he is starting to get antsy about their original mission. "I beg your pardon, but we were trying to find a source of fresh water. As we haven't, we'll need to return to our party. Would you..." Oh, hell. Will would have some fancy way to say this, but he doesn't. "Will you come with us? I dare say you don't want to perish in this godforsaken spot any more than we do, and surely you'll do better with our party than as a woman alone. ... There are women in our party, also," he adds belatedly, giving a slightly grim look to the sailors with him, who may be leering just a bit.

(The brown-coated man looks concerned at "two hundred years" but doesn't interrupt.)