Something just appeared out of nowhere and doesn't at all look healthy. This might be the most important thing to happen in the last five hundred years and Lia has absolutely no idea what to do about it.

She crouches down nearby and says, "Hello, did you mean to just show up like that? Not that you're not welcome." Although actually this creature is in fact not welcome to crush the newly sprouted plants in her garden, and probably doesn't speak this language at all. "I mean. Never mind."

The creature blinks hazily up at her, rubbing their head and making assorted uncomfortable-sounding noises. The inky phenomenon nervously orbiting the creature's body settles back into the shape of a crown perched between their horns, with a single red slit-pupiled eye staring lidlessly from its middle bits.

Haltingly and clumsily, with hands unused to speaking and also not quite the same shape as human hands, the creature says, "Never mind what?"

"...Uh. That I don't know what to say? Do you need healing?"

"No."

The creature sits up, effortfully. When they notice they're in a garden, they immediately start being careful of the plants; their clumsy attempt to stand is aborted in favour of resting in place.

"I came a long way and landed hard but I'm all right now, probably. Where am I?" They look around curiously; their crown's eye swims across its surface to remain fixed on Lia in case she says anything.

In a fenced-in garden by a little house, not that far from a tall and very steep mountain range, under a blue sky. There are other buildings in view, but it's not very densely built up right here.

"...In Sathend? Near the northern mountains."

"I guess that's on me for asking stupid questions," says the creature, somewhat inscrutably. "I like your garden."

"Thank you. Why did you appear out of nowhere covered in fur? I mean, you're allowed. To be covered in fur. If you like that."

"I've been covered in fur all my life. It's the appearing out of nowhere that's new."

"...Okay, first I thought you were from another world, but then there wasn't a language barrier so I thought you were from here, but I think I'd know if someone anywhere in Sathend looked like that."

"I am definitely from another world and appeared out of nowhere by otherworldly magic. The knowing your language is probably otherworldly magic too but it surprised me." She gazes into the distance for a moment. "I... think I probably picked up something for languages on the way here. Hard to be sure." Her diction is improving as she gets more comfortable with this mode of communication and also less generally stiff and achey.

"Welcome to Sathend! I don't know how to welcome you, though. Maybe I should introduce you to the government."

Suspiciously, "What's a government?"

"There are thousands of us here, so we have some administrative work to do, like figuring out how much the railway costs to run and whether we need to expand the world, so we pick some people to handle it."

She's so surprised, she says "Thousands???" incredulously out loud, then repeats herself with her hands.

"Yep. That a lot?"

"... I've never heard of that many people trying to live... all together near each other. The most people I've heard of trying to live all together close enough that they have to have their noses in each other's business is... Fifty, maybe a hundred? —you said expand the—how big is the world?"

"About thirty miles across."

"...how big is a mile? How long does—I guess I can't ask how long it takes to walk. You have so much leg. How many of this garden would fit in it? And I guess, how long does it take you to walk across, that still matters to how big it is to you even though I'm smaller and probably can't walk as fast."

"Uh... more than ten thousand and less than a hundred thousand? If I want to get somewhere I mostly take the railway. I've never crossed the whole world on foot and it sounds miserable but I think my husband's done it. I bet he took a few days."

The Lamb thinks hard about this.

"...I think your world is too small," she eventually concludes. "It sounds like it's... not big enough that someone who doesn't want to be near anyone can do that, and I think that's too small. I don't know if I can do anything about that, and I don't know if I should, but I think it's too small."

"It grows but the surface area can only grow as a function of the number of people being regularly tortured. Which I promise is less concerning than it sounds. But it's not, uh, completely fine."

...this is the Lamb's concerned face!

"It's... bad. We've been trying to find other worlds with more space that doesn't need sacrifices to keep existing but our ability to try that also scales with the number of people being regularly tortured."

"...well, as bad as this place is, the place I came from is worse, but... I don't know, I don't want to promise anything yet, but I might be able to help scout. I don't need to torture anybody to move between worlds. I might need some other concerning things, but not that one."

"What concerning things do you need?"