"I don't see why we should take her with us when no one has even told me who she is," complains Iskierka. "And we haven't enough food and water, anyway."

The sailors mutter and cast dark looks amongst themselves.

"We have enough if every man takes his ration and does his part to find what we can," Ferriss says sharply.

"Uh. Hm. I. - so I do know how I got here, and I can do it again, but I am hesitant to replicate the procedure. Because it teleported me to a distant island in an alternate timeline two hundred years in the past. Which might not be the sort of thing you'd all casually care to risk."

He's not sure he understood all those words. "Er. No. I think not."

"'Alternate timeline'?" asks Ferriss. 

"But the offer to join us stands," adds Granby. "Poor state though we are in."

"You mean you came here by magic?" asks Iskierka with interest. "Are you mad?" Her tone is pure curiosity.

Granby gives her a mortified look. "Iskierka," he hisses.

"Well, no, but that's also what a mad person would say, isn't it. I don't want to show off unnecessarily, though, because I have limited magical supplies." Paper. Usually she has nigh-unlimited magical supplies. She can probably do a rune in the sand and tank it if she has to but if anyone copies her they'll be in trouble - maybe the dragon wouldn't? - and it tips her hand a bit.

"Sir," Ferriss says urgently.

"Well, I've no need of a demonstration right this moment, but we ought to get back before the others think we've fallen off a cliff or been eaten by something. Will you come?" He gestures at Iskierka. "She has plenty of room to hang on to. ... Or if you'd rather not join us, shall we set a meeting place to talk more later?" He's not enthusiastic about the latter option, but it seems polite to offer.

"Of course I can carry you as well," Iskierka says magnanimously, earlier objections forgotten.

".......sure." How... does she... board a giant dragon.

She has a leather harness threaded over and around her coils, which the men grab on to pell-mell.

"We don't have a proper carrying harness or carabiners at the moment, I'm afraid," Granby says apologetically.

"That's okay." It would not be if she couldn't fly should she fall, but she can!

As they fly, she can see the curve of the island below them. They go almost all the way around-- maybe a mile or two. Iskierka flies low above the jungle, not as high as the mountain in the center of the island. There is no other land in sight on the horizon, even from the air. Only ocean stretches off to the sky.

They land at a camp on the beach, made up of around thirty men in various states of bedragglement and of various ages-- though if she looks closely, she may notice that one of them is actually a teenage girl dressed the same as all the military men, practicing fencing with one of the teenage boys. There's also a small tent near their fire pit. 

A few of the men are wearing green coats like Granby's.

There are also two other dragons lying on the beach. One is a bit larger than Iskierka but not as long (so about the size of a house), black and glossy with horns and a webbed ruff. The other is much larger than Iskierka, with a crocodilian snout and brownish golden scales.

Iskierka lands near the other two dragons. The green-coated men and a few others drop what they're doing to come greet them.

"So Iskierka found you after all. Did you find any water?"

"No, but--" he gestures towards May, and offers her a hand getting down from the dragon's back.

"We found her! She's mad," Iskierka puts in helpfully.

"Well, if you'd like to come up with your own explanation for why I'm not particularly bedraggled and my clothes and backpack look weird and I look Japanese but speak English natively, which competes with my explanation, I can hardly stop you." She will take the hand and get down.

Laurence and Granby both wince.

After a moment's hesitation, Laurence offers her a hand to shake. (Ordinarily he would kiss her hand, but as she is wearing trousers and behaving so oddly, something tells him that treating her as an aviator would be received better.) "William Laurence. And I must confess I find myself curious as to any explanation that admits of a woman of your years finding herself without company in so desolate a part of the world as this."

(Her comment on looking Japanese but speaking perfect English reminds him with a pang of an old friend whom he hopes to see again one day. He doesn't comment.)

Shake shake! "I seem to be from an alternate timeline where it is 200 years in the future and so far as any of my history books might tell me there weren’t dragons around even back in the nineteenth century."

Oh. That would be why Iskierka said she was mad.

"I see," he says, trying to conceal his skepticism. 

"Well, we should be able to accommodate one more in our party, if you wish. You may join Roland and Mrs. Pemberton in--"