She has landed in a copse of trees, winter-bare and snowy. In one direction there's a tall iron fence; in the other, a taller building, with stained glass in all the windows and a set of bells in a tower on one side and an open gallery with columns facing the yard she's sitting in. A human child is walking along the gallery, nose in a book; she's wearing a long, large-buttoned coat with upturned cuffs and a deep upturned hem which has been secured in place so it can serve as a kind of pocket, containing additional books and various other human implements. There's a snood-hood on her head and shiny shoes on her feet. The whole shebang is a dark phthalo green with gold detailing.

Cold cold cold cold cold cold COLD COLD she had no idea human bodies were so weak about COLD

(But eeeee, she has a human body and everything is so pretty and intricate - )

She calls out to the human child - she does not call out to the human child, right; she wheezes slightly at the human child - she - smacks one of her hands against her other arm??  - She grabs a stick and hits it against a tree, trying to get it to be as loud as she can.  She sure hopes it works; Plan B is crawling on her belly naked through the snow.

The human child glances up from her book! And looks in the direction of the noise! And yelps and breaks into a run, not remotely toward Cyllene!

Nooooooooooooooo.

. . . Maybe she just magically knows how to walk.  She should try that; it's hardly going to hurt anything since she's going to end up on the ground anyways.

She lunges for the nearest tree, hauls herself up with great effort, and picks up one foot.  She's seen humans do this, both just now and before, sticking her head out of the water to catch snatches of their lives until she fell back under the waves, gasping - she puts that foot down, closer to the building.

That wasn't so bad.

She picks up the other foot, and can't really put it closer to the building than the first foot is without letting go of the tree, so she does that.  She immediately falls, and not even in the direction of the building or the right way up, and it does hurt because she hits the tree on the way down and the bark scratches her back all up.

The small human is back a minute later, trailing an adult still in the process of putting on his coat, whose uniform is similarly constructed but red instead of green. "I told you it was a for-real-nonmagic emergency!" says the child.

"You sure did!" acknowledges the adult, doing up one button on his coat so it'll stop flapping open and leaving it at that as he takes long strides toward Cyllene. "Ma'am, what's your deal*?"

*More polite than it sounds but still kind of abrupt.

She wraps a hand around her throat, teeth chattering.

"- okay, well, obviously part of your deal is that you're freezing, come inside -" He holds out a hand.

Cyllene smiles, big as she can manage, and extends her arm.

He pulls her up but appears to expect her to be able to walk from there.

Maybe if she clings to him very very tightly she can prevent herself from falling over again despite this misunderstanding?

...sure, he will support her on the way into the building.

It's toasty warm inside, and there is a bench right next to a heat vent he deposits her on. "Sinzy, go get her a spare coat or one of the naproom blankets or something."

"Yes Preceptor," says Sinzy, and she runs off again.

Whether or not these people have a gesture to indicate gratefulness is not something her uncle's spell was designed to teach her.  She does her best to convey it with her face instead; hopefully humans don't use their faces in wildly different ways than she does.  The ones she used to watch didn't seem to but who knows.

What a good human-cave, what good warmth, what a good invention this bench is.  Not only does it have warm, but she can sit without having to fold up her legs or stretch them out too much.  Ingenious.

"Do you need some hot cider or something?"

. . . blink blink.

"Are you allergic to hot cider? You must be so cold and it's what we have in the hot drink department."

. . . Actually her skin - especially her feet and fingers, and especially her toes - is stinging like she touched a jelly, and it's definitely Very Temperature but she's not quite certain it's cold anymore.  She pulls a foot up to investigate it, running her fingers over the toes (toes!!!  they're so stumpy and funny-looking).  But they don't dissolve even when poked at, and the stinging hurts worse than dissolving did but lacks the element of terror and fundamental wrongness.  And her toes are more of a sea-creature color right now than a human one but maybe that just takes a while.

She looks up and mouths, Cider?  There's absolutely no noise when she does so, not even a whisper, despite the fact that the rest of the time her breathing is a normal amount of audible.

"...do you speak Kusan?"

The gestures she's seen and the words she's heard so far don't leave much room for nuance - Yes, Preceptor.

"Do you know what cider is."

Drink?  Hot drink?

"Yep. I'll be right back." He goes and gets her a paper cup full of hot cider.

Apparently a drink is a very very very small really weird sea!!  It is indeed hot, and it makes the stinging in her fingers way worse.  Cyllene manages to hold onto it for a few seconds before half-dropping half-setting it down on the bench next to her.  Some splashes onto her fingers and she shakes out her hands trying to fling it off.

"...if it's too hot for you now give it a minute, I guess. - Sinzy!"

"Sorry that took me so long, Preceptor and freezing lady!" says Sinzy, dumping two folded blankets on Cyllene's lap.

Oh they're so soft!!  Wow!!!  She has never in her life felt anything like this!!!!

Cyllene curls up around them but still doesn't have any words for thanking people.

"They'll work better if you put them around you," says Sinzy. "Preceptor, I have Sigils and Symbols now.."

"Yes, go ahead, Sinzy," says the Preceptor, and she runs off.