"I strongly suspect Anitam is not on this continent. What do you call your language?" Sip. Small experimental sip.

"Imperial, rather arrogantly. It's also the native language of every other polity on this continent - including the isolationist orcs who live in a greatly fortified mountain fastness and whose only diplomatic request of the Empire is that we never attempt to speak to them again - which makes me rather suspicious that there is a magical cause, not that we've found any definitive proof."

It's apple juice. Really quite sweet apple juice, but just apple juice.

Yum. "Are we in fact hearing the same phonemes - like, does 'apple' rhyme with 'window' for you -"

"...that isn't how I would normally say window, that's a somewhat fancy and archaic word for it, but yes?"

"What would you normally say instead of window?"

"Window. Are you hearing those as the same sounds?

...I'm curious now, may I check you for magical effects?"

"Check away, and yeah, they both sound the same to me."

Allegra moves a little closer, not right up in Pelape's personal space but close enough she could easily touch her if she wanted to.

"I'm afraid I'm going to do this the long way because I don't know what else I'll need my mana for today," she apologises, and then begins to wave the hand that isn't holding the staff (in a vaguely 'drawing a spider web in the air' kind of gesture) and saying things in a slightly more sing-song cadence:

"I am the Spider. Things watch from afar. I am the Web. Things are connected. I see what is hidden. I see the flows of magic. I am the Spider..."

It goes on approximately like this for almost precisely thirty seconds.

Is there anything obviously... magical... happening about it.

Not from the perspective of someone without any magical awareness, no! It is just a load of chanting and dramatic gesturing.

After thirty seconds, Allegra looks slightly disappointed. "Nothing whatsoever. I kind of assumed you might be under the enchantment that foreign diplomats sometimes get, where they can speak Imperial at the cost of not being able to speak their own language. Possibly you are under an extremely subtle curse to the same effect, sometimes they don't show up to basic detect magic."

...

"I'm gonna... check..." She pulls out her pocket everything.

That looks like it's powered by electricity! It does not turn on. It's just like it's completely out of charge.

Label on her tunic?

That is an ordinary physical bit of writing which reads exactly like it previously did.

"I can still read this. Can you?"

Allegra squints at the label. "There are definitely words there, I think they might be material type and washing instructions? The word choice is a bit odd..."

"Rayon and spandex, machine wash on standard settings, and on the back it has the brand name Tafui Basics, Lounge Tunic 3427, size 4-2, ocean blue."

"I'm not sure what a rayon, a spandex or a Tafui is, and - you have standardised laundry machines?" Allegra suddenly seems much more highly engaged rather than just being polite and helpful. "If you have any idea how to make them, the League has been trying but hasn't given us anything more useful than the fulling mill, which wouldn't be useful for something as delicate as that looks..."

Pelape runs her fingers though her hair. "I don't, I'm sorry... I mean, I've used them, I know what they look like and some of what they do, but I couldn't build one."

"Might be helpful anyway.

...I was so concerned about orienting you I haven't - I'm just going to pop outside and get someone to check where you arrived for anything that might tell us about the portal you came in on. If we could send someone back..."

Allegra heads over to open the door, calls the name of one of the scattering teenagers who were definitely not hanging around in the hope they could catch the interesting person coming back out, and tells them, "Get the coven to go look at the place she came in, see if they can find anything, walk back and forwards through it a few times, that sort of thing?"

Then she closes the door again. "I'm sorry, it just might be time critical."

"I'll defer to you on that, I'm still very confused."

"Normally - and I'm aware this isn't, in fact, normally - when someone appears out of nowhere, they came through the Sentinel Gate or out of a regio pocket. In the former case, there's a return portal for a certain length of time - although actually it might be keyed to you... right, how much do you want to get back, much as I'd like to keep you, the most likely case is that there is a return portal, only you can use it, you can use it exactly once and then you will never find this place again - or we'd have had more visitors..."

"...it would be sad if I could never go home, but I'm not time-sensitive about it."

"The portal might be, though. They generally last fifteen minutes to a few hours, and the fewer people they take, the more likely they are on the shorter side."

"Damn. Can I have a magical souvenir?"