"I think I'm different from your tails and snouts and claws, but I can't talk about it yet. What kind of bad are the storms?"

"They're windy and rainy. Very windy and rainy, it can blow people completely away when the big ones hit. The low parts of the town always flood, we only build for three seasons by the docks. Everything gets put away in summer. Thankfully just wind and wet- We don't get any dragons here, at least usually."

"Blow away is-?" and her face is replaced by a video of a tornado encountering a house. "I don't think a storm can do that to me." Well, unless she's flying, but they didn't get quite that far with the vocabulary.

"Yes, that's what it means. We'd also sort of like to keep using the hill- I guess people will get used to you if you stay here. It's a nice view, right?"

You can see the whole town here, smaller buildings on the right side of the river and taller ones on the left, the sawmill a bit upriver, wooden-masted sailing ships by the docks and the ocean visible in the little valley the river flows through.

"It is! I like the," and a picture of the sunset from her current vantage point. "But I can go to a different place if you want."

"The sunset?" (That is off to the west, over rolling forest with the occasional clearing or hamlet.) She smiles. "Yes, it's nice. We're lucky to have this place- Kelos is crowded. We might want you to move later. In a few days. Are you sure you don't need food or anything? Those snacks were tasty... Some artificing work maybe?"

"I have a tool to make them. I don't eat, I have a different thing. I think I'll have the words tomorrow."

"We're all going to pack in for the night soon, since you don't need anything and there's no danger to the town. I'm sure you'll have a lot of visitors tomorrow when there's more light, though most folk have work to do, of course."

"That's okay. I do -" a picture of someone sleeping - "but little, I can talk most times."

"I think we'll have a lot to learn from each other! We'll be very happy to chat and trade, I think. It might be a good idea to talk about our laws now, or it can wait."

"Now is good. I might not know all the words, but I can ask about the words I don't know tomorrow."

"Hrmm... You hardly need to know the whole civil code if you're staying here. It's about taxes, giving money to the government, that kind of thing. The most important laws: Do not murder or assault - don't destroy or harm a person, except in self defense or in defense of another. Harming them can mean hitting them or making them stay somewhere or making them cold and hungry or being so loud they can't sleep. Theft and fraud- Getting money by taking things that aren't yours or lying about things you're buying and selling- Is also not allowed. If someone owns some land and says to leave, leave. Absolutely do not sacrifice part of your magic to cause another person harm, injury, damage their property, or target them in any way. This is a very bad crime, every country agrees that it's illegal and punished extremely strictly. There are wars over this crime, thousands of people fighting each other is a war."

"I don't know 'magic', 'sacrifice' - do I need to know this now or is tomorrow okay?"

"Magic is things like the language disk and projective empathy? Or lighting fires, or separating materials? Sacrifice is a natural action we can do with our magic that takes it away but does much more magic right now. I don't think you can do this, but if you can, very very don't."

"Okay, thank you." Her best guess is that that word means 'magic' - which doesn't mean they actually have magic, at this tech level it wouldn't be too strange for them to be confused about it, though also it's fair enough to call the telepathy magic. In any case, the other word is clear enough, and 'don't break things to hurt people with them' is easy enough to avoid altogether.

"Welcome once again to Gale Rocks! I think I'm going to pack up now. I'll be back tomorrow, but not first thing. Feel free to land in the clearing by the manor east of town if you'd like to visit."

"Thank you!" The screen goes dark and the robot heads back inside.

Everyone else leaves as the sunset approaches, not wanting to be caught away from home at night. The sawmill has a few artificial lights in the distance, but also seems to be shutting down.

Twilight deepens over the forest. The sun sets.

It's lovely.

She leaves her external sensors running overnight, getting a feel for normal activity in the area, but spends most of her time tweaking her AI's translation efforts and planning the vocabulary she's going to ask for in the morning. She sleeps, too, for the few hours she needs, arranging to wake an hour before sunrise.

Her sensors may be powerful enough to observe a bunch of things that go on outside, which includes activity in the well-lit part of town a few hours past twilight, but everything winding down quite quickly elsewhere. A bit of laundry, a bit of cooking, a bit of hanging out together around fires, and then everyone is inside and off to sleep for the most part. Some stay up, reading or writing. There are also a few nighttime visits of various natures, including one where both parties sneak out into the woods before getting to the whispering sweet nothings phase. A few buildings, or sometimes just specific rooms, rebuff most sensor readings.

In the early twilight before dawn, dozens and dozens of men and women make their way towards their places of industry. The sawmill seems to employ hundreds of people, in a fairly sprawling complex, and dozens more head upriver at a run in the morning. A few wolf-shaped teens slink close to her landing spot and whisper to each other about the mysterious ship in the dawn light.

"I can hear you, you know," she whispers back to the teens, gently teasing.

"You can?"

"What's with the blue paint, does it mean you're a devotee-"

"It's probably just decoration, not every piece of color means-"

"-Heard it was FLYING yesterday, how fast can you cross the ocean in that lovely beast?"

"I don't know some of those words yet - devotee? decoration? ocean? beast? But yes, I fly, very fast."

"Amazing!"

"Devotee is temple types, monks, always lecturing and boring and 'living by the moral code of the five colors'."

"The ocean is the, uh, big water, and beasts are what we look like?"

"You definitely resemble a beast more than the rest of us, Tav. Terrible table manners."

"Oh, shut up!"

"I don't know the devotee words. I can go to the other side of the ocean in - if you make twenty-five parts in the day, between one and two parts. Maybe only one part, if the weather is good."