She jumps down to the dock, in a smooth motion that really shouldn't be possible for an unaided human. "Captain Sarati, at your service," she says once she's standing before them, extending a hand.

That seems safe enough. She shakes. "I'm Dayo, it's a pleasure."

Tetsuma takes Sarati's hand next. "Senju Tetsuma - or just Tetsuma - at your service." (Not her people's custom, but she can adapt.)

"Where are you looking to go?"

She describes their destination.

"Yeah, I know where that is. Not quite on my route, though it's close, so it'll cost you a bit. What've you got to trade?"

Tetsuma pulls a ten-ryou coin from her pouch. "Coins like this, some in smaller sizes, some in silver, some in bronze. We can also trade labor, or act as guards, or trade stories - we're both recently come to this realm, and those we've had contact with hadn't heard of either of our realms."

Sarati takes the coin and seems to weigh it in her hand, staring at it intently for a few moments. "This'll do. Good quality gold. How about, one of these for the both of you? Plus some tales on the route, though I'm also willing to trade a story for a story. And if we're attacked, help defending the ship, though that's unlikely."

- Gold must be worth a lot more here than back home. "Sounds fair to me. Dayo?"

"Yeah, sounds reasonable." She does not look surprised that Sarati thinks that single coin covered the entire trip, so perhaps it's worth a lot more where she's from, too.

Sarati hands the coin back to Tetsuma. "I'll collect when we set out. For now, I'm resting - it's a bad idea to sail a ley-ship nonstop. My loose plan is to leave in the morning, though I can delay until slightly later if needed. It'll be about twenty days past that, give or take a few; the ley lines aren't super direct, I'm the only navigator, and I have other stops to make first."

"Sounds fine by me. How do you navigate the ley lines?"

"Intuition, for me. There's - the lines have a flow, which can be somewhat seen but mostly felt with the magic sense. It feels like music across my skin, to me. And locations have their own resonance, and some points within the ley-realm are fixed, as are some directions. The ley lines aren't actually in this dimension, so magic also behaves a bit oddly, and you can sometimes tell where you are by how oddly."

"That's fascinating. Can anyone learn that?"

"Theoretically? As long as you can use local magic, I mean. Not everyone has any talent, mind you, and it takes years to learn even for a genius, especially if you're soloing and not part of a crew. I was practically born on a ship."

She nods. "And how does one learn to use local magic?"

She shrugs. "Find a teacher?"

"So it's not, like, something you're born with or anything like that, it is in fact learnable."

"As far as I know. There's entire colleges of magic, after all, and people from just about everywhere attend."

"...I'm really worried and sad about the friend I disappeared on but I love this realm."

"...It's theoretically possible that ley-lines could be navigated back to other realms. You'd want to talk to the researchers up at the university in Elgadhzi for that; they're the closest out of anyone."

"And space-time ninjutsu might be able to do something, though I don't think it'd be all that safe to try and reverse-engineer." 

"—yeah I am extremely interested in that."

"If you have any magic that can handle space-time, I'd definitely suggest visiting the university at some point, though you might want to build up some local resources first, so they take you seriously, especially if you don't already know the - jutsu?"

"Okay by 'unsafe' I mean you're always hearing cautionary tales about people who tried and wound up dead, and it typically involves seals which I know next to nothing about and are also dangerous to mess up, but with those caveats I can try teaching the university people the building blocks? I'd want to know I can trust them, though, that level of magic is - highly exploitable."