She finds herself in a grove of evergreen trees, specifically in a small clearing with a campfire that isn't currently lit and a sleeping bag and a rocking chair each sized for someone a little shorter than most humans. The stars are maybe a little brighter than she's used to and definitely in different patterns. There's a path leading away from the clearing but it's probably a little hard to make out in the darkness.

What the heck.

Well, given the option of wandering around in an unfamiliar forest at night, or staying here where there are at least signs of sapient life, she'll do the latter. She considers the situation for another moment and settles herself at the base of a climbable-looking tree.

There are plenty of trees around, fewer of them have low enough branches for convenient climbing but she can find one without much difficulty. It'll be about two hours before she sees the sky brighten with the first signs of the coming dawn.

She's quite bored, by then, and takes the opportunity to climb her tree as soon as she can see well enough to do so safely; it may or may not get her a better view of her surroundings but it's at least something to do while she waits for the sun to rise enough to navigate by.

She's in the middle of a substantial grove so her better view mostly let's her see more trees. It does let her get more of a view on the sun. It seems to be moving noticably faster than she's used to.

All things considered it's not that surprising that she's on a different planet.

She shimmies back down the tree and has a closer look at the sleeping bag, just in case there's any indication of what's going on there.

The sleeping bag and the cloth covered rocking chair seem to be the product of hand sewing, the fabric is quite soft and fluffy. In the light of day there are a few sheets of paper that she didn't notice before written in an unfamiliar script held down by a rock.

Huh. On one hand, probably whoever left the papers here will be back for them before too long rather than risk them getting rained on or what have you; on the other hand, she's hungry, and the idea of waiting around here rather than trying to do something about that isn't very appealing. If she's careful about keeping track of how the paths go she can probably come back if she doesn't find civilization in a reasonable amount of time.

She leaves everything where it is and heads down the path.

The path is well trodden, it winds a bit and occasionally branches but it's certainly possible to determine which branches see the most traffic and following those leads to the edge of the grove and not far beyond it a building.

The building seems to be a fusion of two different styles of construction the center seems to be formed from wood and metallic sheets while other parts of the structure are made from some sort of ceramic material. The ceramics are painted with pictures of planets and the night sky. At the center of the building there's a large tower easily three times the height of the main structure with a number of antennae and communications dishes. There's a clear doorway on the near side of the building and she can hear what the tones might be a woodwind instrument drifting out towards her.

What a neat building. She goes in.

The inside of the building has more murals and several printed photographs along a short entrance hallway before opening up to a larger room that has more of the same in addition to screens with more of the unfamiliar script and most importantly three blue skinned four-eyes humanoid aliens with big ears placed high on their hairless heads. One of them is playing what indeed looks a bit like a woodwind instrument, another seems to be listening to the musician a tall staff with some sort of integrated equipment leaned up against the wall beside their chair and the third is typing on some sort of keyboard. None of the three are oriented in her direction.

She doesn't want to interrupt the performance but does gawk a little - it's not like she doesn't know that aliens exist, she's just never seen one in person before - before looking around for somewhere else to check for more people.

There are side rooms to investigate but as she moves towards one of those she passes into the vision of the listener. Their ears wiggle, they sit up straighter, and they say something in an unfamiliar language. The other two stop what they're doing and look around before spotting her. Their ears also wiggle. If she's paying really close attention she might notice that their upper eyes move independently of their lower eyes.

Oops? She turns to address them, anyway. "Do you know Basic?"

They say something else unfamiliar... there's a different cadence to this utterance it might be a different language. The one near the staff grabs it and does something with it that causes a spiral of blue symbols to draw themselves across the floor from the point where the staff touches it.

"I only speak Basic, sorry." She tries a little harder to enunciate this time, thinking maybe they didn't catch what she was saying; her new Force trick helps with that but maybe not enough yet.

It does not seem to help... it's possible they don't know basic.

The one with the staff does something else and a growing green field is projected out. They take a step towards her and then stop, the field briefly disappears and they say something to the one at the keyboard who comes over. The green field reappears and the keyboard user sticks their head in it. They make vaguely beckoning gestures I  her direction and project the green field at about her head height.

That's weird, she's never seen tech like that before. It's obvious enough what they want, though, and she heads over to do it, though she's going to stick a finger into the field first before she puts her head in.

What happens from sticking a finger in is that there's an odd sense that someone is trying to communicate something. It's very vague from such indirect exposure but it feels like it's probably a question.

Huh!

Sure, she'll stick her head in that.

She gets a series of three mental images and a deliberate blank space with the vague sense of meaning none of the above.

The first image has her arriving in a spaceship, the second has her walking out of some sort of strange glowing plant thing with sharp looking thorns and the final image has a white sphere appearing and then disappearing to leave her where it was. They're all a little fuzzy more solidified concepts than anything. She gets the sense she can pick one of them.

Yeah, none of those. She'll try projecting 'teleporting snake monster' into the empty spot in case that works.

That seems to work. There's an immediate follow-up about whether the monster is still nearby.

She hasn't seen/heard/sensed it, no.

There's an acknowledgement and then another multiple choice question this one with images of her eating, drinking, sleeping, being immersed in water, and again another blank space.

She's hungry and thirsty; she'll be sleepy in another few hours; she could probably use a bath but she'll be fine without one. Also she's a child and shouldn't really be wandering around without someone to go to if she needs help.

There's a general sense of acknowledgement, there's an image of someone going to fetch food and water and another of her walking up to several different people unhappy and then becoming happy. The person with the staff is clearly one of the people but whether the others are specific people is unclear.

The one holding the staff says something probably in the first language and the one with the instrument puts it down and goes into a side room.

She appreciates the food and help!

Are they familiar with Sith, the Force, Jedi?

They haven't seen any people who look like that to the first question. The force is coming through as a sorta extra sense and maybe more than that... they don't know of anyone with a sense like that. The third question just gets a sense of uncertainty and confusion whatever she was trying to convey didn't get communicated well.

That's disappointing. She belongs in the Sith place if they manage to figure out where it is - she can maybe figure it out on a map of the galaxy?

There's a request for her to follow and they lead her into a side room... this has a holo projector and indeed a map of a galaxy... specifically an ellipsoid one.

...that's not her galaxy.

The response to that is understanding and wordless comfort. Then they go to a console and zoom out the map... a lot until individual galaxies are as small as stars were in the previous view. Can she identify which galaxy is hers?

She doesn't know anything about the universe at that scale, no.

In response there's sorrow, a notion that they'll ask of anyone else knows and finally a reiteration of the earlier offer of help.

Shortly after that, the instrument player comes over with a canteen and some containers of food.

She sends appreciation about the food and water, takes a drink, and then has a look inside one of the food containers.

The one with the staff shuts off the field for the moment.

The first container has what looks like small fish of some sort. They seem to be deboned and cooked but still have the skin on. There's a sauce of some sort that they're in.

She pokes the sauce and licks it off her finger to check for spiciness, first, and then gingerly tries one of the fish.

The sauce is a bit sour rather than appreciably spicy. The fish tastes mostly of the sauce. The texture is a bit crunchy on the skin and the outside but soft on the inside.

She'll eat the whole thing, then, before checking out the second container.

The second container has what seems to be a collection of produce, large blue leaves, green and red ovaloids a bit bigger than her thumb, larger blue ovaloids about the size of a handful and purple and yellow varieties of what seems to be the same kind of long thin something.

She munches her way through, sampling each type in turn and eating or not eating the rest of that type depending on whether or not she likes it.

The aliens are patient they chat to each other in whatever their language is.

She's feeling better by the time she gets to the end of the vegetables, and reasonably full; she'll peek into the other containers to see if there's an obvious dessert to be had, though.

There is another each container of the fish and vegetable options and a final container with something vaguely cylindrical and white with brown speckles. It smells sweet and like something which is not exactly cinnamon if she's ever encountered something similar.

Ooh, alien not-cinnamon probably-not-cake. Nom?

It's soft and gooey and a bit sticky. If she were from Earth she might compare it to a marshmallow though with a different flavor more reminiscent of cinnamon.

Nom nom nom.

When she's done she gathers up the empty packaging and waits for the aliens to notice that she's done.

The musician notices first and takes them off her hands and goes to put them somewhere perhaps wherever they came from.

The staff holder gestures with their staff in a possible attempt to determine whether they should start using it again.

Yeah, that should happen.

So, she's probably not going to be able to get home from here, so they should figure out what should happen with her. The important thing there, she thinks, is that she's Force-sensitive; she doesn't know how much she'll be able to figure out how to do with the Force without training, but she's working on that, and she knows she has a knack for healing with it. She definitely wants to learn to use the Force instead of being made to learn a trade or something.

...possibly they have Force sensitives here and these particular aliens just don't know about them; Force sensitives are incredibly rare, a whole urbanized planet isn't even guaranteed to have one in its entire population. Where she's from everybody knows about them because they're in charge, but not every place does it like that and maybe the Force sensitives here are just a little enclave somewhere or something.

They express support for her to focus on developing her uncommon abilities combined with an assurance they'll try to find out if anyone they have contact with can help.

They also suggest that it would be beneficial for her to learn their language. Staffs like this one exist but aren't common.

That's a good idea, yes. She thinks it'll go faster once she's figured out how to get the Force to help - she was already working on something a bit like that, and thinks it's possible - but she can get started the long way, sure. Maybe teach her their alphabet, first, if they have one.

They can certainly do that. Their alphabet is made of nested shapes there's a line, a triangle, a square and a pentagon. And each combination is it's own letter for a total of sixteen. For the line, nesting is shown by putting the other shape under it. The letters sound thusly.

She'll request writing materials to attempt to make herself a reference sheet with; she seems to have some kind of motor skill problem and her handwriting is atrocious, but the result is workable enough.

There's paper and pens around that can be provided. The pen is a little thicker than what she is probably used to which might help with her motor issues or might not.

They don't comment on her handwriting regardless.

The pen does help a little. When she's done with the alphabet she comes up with a list of useful words and starts requesting translations.

They happily provide the requested vocabulary.

She takes down a couple dozen words before starting to yawn. "Sleep?" she asks, in their language.

They offer three options, they could take her back to the main settlement she could sleep on a cot in a sideroom here or she could sleep outside in a clearing that might be the one she arrived in.

A cot here is good, thanks; she doesn't like sleeping outside (isn't that dangerous?) and doesn't want to deal with a bunch of new people when she's already tired.

They lead her to a windowless sideroom with lights on a dimmer switch and a few cots and show her how to use the switch. Then they leave her to her sleep.

She'll sleep for eight or nine hours, left to her own devices.

That is a long time but she is a different species it's probably fine and maybe she's just relaxing alone for some of it. They won't bother her.

She does seem fine when she seeks them out, not long after she wakes. "Hello! Hungry. Clean this?" she tugs indicatively on her shirt.

They lead her to a room with a refrigerator filled with containers like the ones she saw last night. They're color coded. There are a bunch of all the types she saw last night and also a couple of additional colors.

As for cleaning her clothes they ask whether she can do it herself with soap and water or if she needs or strongly desires someone else to do it for her.

She doesn't know how to wash clothes by hand and might be bad at it, but if they want to show her how she'll give it a try, otherwise she'll need it done for her; it doesn't have to be right now, though, her clothes aren't too dirty.

She'll take a container of veggies and look at the new colors to see if any look like they're more vegetables or maybe fruit.

The new types of containers have some sort of soup, something like a cracker, and another collection of produce. The produce in the new container tends a little bit sweeter than the previous container's collection.

Sounds like a tasty breakfast.

After she's done eating, the person with the staff walks over. To help with her learning the language they speak now using the staff to communicate meanings when she doesn't know the words. "Washing occurs settlement. Preference between journey and delegation? Preference between additional clothes and not?"

"More clothes, yes please. Prefer delegation, thank you."

They walk into the room with the cots and pull out a set of clothes and holds them out for her to take, "Clothes wrong size. Preference clothes this with correct size or other?" The clothes in the set are a shirt and trousers, no undergarments seem to be present. They're made of a somewhat rough fabric a bit like denim.

"This okay, this other?" She might prefer softer pants, too, if those are on offer, but this fabric is fine for pants if it's easiest; she'll definitely be unhappy with a shirt like this one and would like something lighter and softer.

After a short back and forth those details can be conveyed. They pull out a blanket and a knife and cut into the corner of the blanket. It has several layers all of which appear to be machined rather than handspun, the outermost layers are something a bit like cotton with a layer or something like nylon under that and something kinda metallic like an emergency blanket in the center. "Preference these materials or other?"

"This yes, thank you," she says of the outer cotton layer.

"Shared happiness. Completion two to three days."

"Okay, thank you." Back to work on the language? She's got most of the really important words, maybe the alien has a lesson plan in mind now?

She's probably noticed that the language is less verbose and more reliant on context clues than Basic. There's certainly more vocabulary to learn but she already has most of the grammar by this point. The next few lessons will be focused on getting her comfortable reading and reinforcing her knowledge of the grammar. After that they'll give her a dictionary and be available to ask questions when she needs to.

Sounds like a plan. She's a pretty quick study and appreciates the simplicity of the language.

"Shared happiness" is the response to her agreement and compliment of the language. Later that day someone new comes by they're shorter than the others she's met so far and introduce themselves as Halite. Then they express a request. "Preference learn Basic. Urgency none."

"Shared happiness." She has notes, many of which are a straightforward translation dictionary that they can read once she's showed them the (rather more complicated) aurebesh alphabet.

Halite's ears wiggle a lot. Which she's probably figured out by now is a sign of strong emotion with her force abilities she can tell those emotions are happiness and excitement. They devour everything she has to share and starts working on a basic translation program. They'll occasionally comment on how much easier this is than translating Nomaian. A language for which they had many samples of writing but no living speakers.

The ear thing is pretty cute. She shares their happiness about Basic being nice to learn - if they manage to find the galaxy with the Sith in it it'll be important, too, it's the main language there.

They've sent out a message to the Nomai clans they're in contact with asking if anyone knows where her galaxy is but nobody has replied just yet it's a big universe and even people who move around as much as the Nomai haven't visited even a fraction of it.

Yeah. Well, she thinks she'll be okay here.

That's good. It's also possible her home could be found through the hazard plant but exploration there is almost entirely random and is at least as much of a long shot.

- maybe she could try using the Force on it? The Force seems pretty good at fiddly random stuff.

"Preference to know if so." Halite says in reply. Then thinks for a moment. "Hazard plant is hazard. Recommendation delay."

"Agreement."

A little later, it occurs to her to ask: Are the Nomai who are looking for her galaxy the same Nomai who they haven't been able to learn that other language directly from? If so, how?

"Nomai here long ago. Almost all Nomai here die. Nomai writing remains. We learn. We find damaged Nomai Vessel. We repair. We talk to other Nomai."

Huh. That seems like an odd way for things to work, but sure.

Halite would be happy to clarify if she asks follow up questions.

It seems weird that they have enough contact to ask them for other information but not for details about their language. It also seems weird to her that they have contact but never meet in person but that's less strange, she knows some aliens don't like to be around other aliens or need things that are dangerous for them or whatever.

"Learned language prior to talk. Learned more after talk. Have met after talk."

Ohhh, that makes more sense.

Are there any other aliens or interplanetary history events she should know about?

"Owlks also here. Owlks partially alive. Nomai meet many others. Preference we meet others. Expect preference fulfilled."

...all those galaxies and they're only aware of three species? - well, four now, but. That's super weird. Humans like her are only in the one galaxy and there are hundreds if not thousands of other sapient species there.

Their maps are from the Nomai, they have not yet left their home system she actually arrived as they were preparing their first such expedition. They only have one ship able to travel between the stars with any speed and it took a long time to repair.

Oh. Oh wow, geez. She thought they were interplanetary! That explains the lack of droids and stuff!

They are interplanetary just not interstellar. They actually have teleporters that go to the other planets in their star system.

That's still much lower tech than she's used to, though, uh - she was also under the impression that teleportation was impossible. ...apart from snake monsters, apparently.

That's strange their fast way for traveling between star systems uses teleportation. They do have another way but it's much slower. How did they travel such long distance where she comes from?

They have hyperdrive ships! She's read about how they work, it's very cool. There's another dimension of reality called hyperspace where the laws of physics don't work quite the same way, and you can shift a ship into it and then it can go faster than light! Not arbitrarily fast, though, just very very fast, and gravity also works differently there and it's much more dangerous, so hyperdrive ships travel on certain paths where they know they won't get too close to any gravity wells, which means they're much faster in parts of the galaxy with fewer stars!

That's very interesting the more science focused people would probably understand better what that means. Maybe the Nomai know about hyperspace... It isn't a question they knew to ask.

Asking sounds like a good idea! She might remember enough of what she read to help them figure it out, too.

Halite expect that will be helpful. They send a message to someone on the topic. She might have another visitor tomorrow all the people who specialize in this stuff are pretty busy right now.

That's fine, she's not in a rush. She could try to write it down, it'd be good practice with the new language and that way if they're too busy to get to her for a while she won't forget.

That sounds useful. Halite also reminds her that she wanted to spend time trying to get better at using the Force they don't want to crowd that out of her schedule since she's said it's important to her.

That's sweet of them but this is fun and the Force will be there when she gets back to it. She's used to having a schedule where she's around people and doing classwork things during the day and has more time to herself for things like Force work at night, and that works pretty well for her, she'll probably keep doing it like that.

They're happy to keep up the discussion then. Through one of the skylights she might notice it's getting dark again.

Uh? How long was she asleep?

She was asleep for three quarters of a day night cycle. Also known as 75 intervals. Molybdenite the person with the staff was surprised but they expected that some of it was her taking time alone.

...okay, she's pretty sure she didn't sleep for three quarters of the length of day she's used to, that really only happens if she's very sick, so their days must be different? If she slept a normal amount of time that's eight hours and the days she's used to are a little less than twenty-four hours. If eight hours is three quarters of their day, that's... uh... ...eight over three... two and two thirds... times four is eight and eight thirds... ...ten and two thirds? hours? So their days are less than half the length of hers at home.

That sounds very possible and if she's used to longer days it would explains why she slept for so much longer than they were expecting. An interval is a somewhat more convenient unit. It's made of 100 moments, each moment is about this long (around 4 seconds). That might help.

Humans use seconds, which are like this, and minutes, which are sixty of those, that'd make an interval (math math math) around seven minutes, or a little less? Which seems like a reasonable duration to track, yep. And that means (math math math math) about nine intervals to a human hour or two hundred sixteen to a human day. (It's pretty obvious that she likes math.)

Halite isn't quite as big as fan of math but it's a useful thing to know especially when working with computers and building things. It's a cool point that both of their time keeping systems are built on the length of a day on a particular planet. And the Owlks are the same they even made the spaceship they built simulate the light and dark cycle from their home. Their day is about three times the length of the Hearthian day, so one and a half times Deskyl's. The Nomai used to keep time that way too but they don't anymore.

Huh. It seems sensible to her to base a time system on your planet's day; if everything fits neatly it's easier to figure things out. Her planet's day was a little less than 24 hours and that made it kind of awkward - all the clocks would go up to 23:48 and then have to skip forward, and things like that. (Of course most people never had a problem with it since they were always asleep then.) Human spaceships just use a 24 hour day and that makes it much easier for them.

Circling back around, what are droids? They sounded like something she considered an important technology.

Yeah, droids are - like if a computer was a person, almost? They aren't people, they'll say that if you ask, but they can do all the same kinds of work a person can do and they're never too tired or not in the mood. Where she's from they had all the kids live together and droids take care of them, for example, and droids did most of the work on the town's farms.

That sounds... very strange for several reasons. The idea of something that can do anything a person can but isn't actually a person isn't the kind of thing Halite would have thought could exist before. Also, the idea that people wouldn't be around to help raise hatchlings seems a little sad. How do hatchlings learn who does what in the community if they mostly don't meet people?

They do meet people! Most kids' parents come by at least sometimes and a lot of kids spend time at their parents' houses, and a fair number of grownups come to hang out with the kids and teach classes or do crafts or play games or whatever. And of course the kids get to spend a lot of time with each other and learn how to get along and work together, so they'll be better at it when they're grown; that's the main advantage of the system.

Anyway, yeah, droids are a little weird if you're not used to them? She used to worry that they were people and nobody was being nice enough to them, but she talked to them and they said they weren't and that it was good for people to have them do all the work so the people didn't have to.

Interesting so she knows who her parents are. Their species mostly uses communal spawning so Halite doesn't actually know who their parents are. Hatchlings are raised by the whole settlement. It's cool that her people do things in a similar way.

As for droids Halite says they look forward to meeting them one day but that they don't expect Hearthians to make anything like that. People are already a little uncomfortable with how hands off some of the Nomai based technology they use is and that's still controlled by a person.

That is pretty neat! And she's more comfortable having some choice in her caretakers, so that'll work well for her if they want to do it that way - she's going to be a kid for another six or seven human years, it occurs to her that that might be different like the days are, and she's eleven now; human years are 360 human days.

Droids are - well, she liked them, but if they don't have them here she'll just have to get used to that. She does like being able to have machines do things for her, though, and not just because she's so clumsy with her hands.

That sounds at least in the same ballpark as how long a Hearthian is considered a hatchling. Maybe a couple of her years longer. They'll keep helping her as long as she needs help regardless of how long that takes. That's what being in a community means.

As for having machines do things for her, maybe she'll learn to use one of these staffs they're building now. Most people who use them only scratch the surface of what they're capable of They're a combination of Owlk and Nomai technology.

That sounds like it might be fun! What kinds of things do they do, what's it like to use one?

She's already been on the receiving end of the communication feature. Using it is a little like that but there's a lot more options available. The other main part derived from Owlks technology is a scanning feature it lets you pull information about something near you into your mind. Most people find that overwhelming but the people able to use it can do amazing things like figuring out what's broken in a complicated piece of technology or actually understanding more of how the hazard plant works.

The Nomai part of things combines really well with that because it can repair things or transform them. Most of this building was made using that function. The ceramic building material is one of the easiest things to make. The fabrics they're making her new clothes out of are also produced using these staffs. You need really good focus or a very precise plan to make anything complicated though.

Most people write up a plan on a computer and transfer it to the staff rather than using the mental interface.

That sounds like her kind of thing, yeah. And it sounds at least a little bit like using the Force, which she thinks she's pretty good at, most people with the Force don't figure out how to do anything with it on their own but she has, a little.

Oh really? What has she figured out already?

She's clumsy with talking like she's clumsy with her hands, but she's figured out how to get the Force to help her not be. Also the healing and stuff but she's not sure that counts, she can definitely do it but she didn't really have to figure anything out at all for that, it just makes sense.

Incredible what a creative way to compensate for her difficulties. Does she think she could do something similar to help with her fine motor control? Also regardless of the difficulty, healing is an amazing ability.

She's pretty happy about the healing! She does think she'll be able to get it to help with the rest of her clumsiness, it's just that she only noticed the Force a few months ago and hasn't had time yet. She'll probably do more senses, too, the other thing it's good for is noticing where people are and how they're feeling even when she can't see them and she's pretty sure it can do more like that.

Halite is eager to see what else she's able to figure out. It doesn't sound like there's much anyone can do to help but if that changes she should let them know.

She might want to try experiments with another person sometimes; back home it took her a while to be really sure that she could use the Force, because she didn't want to tell anyone and couldn't just ask them to, say, wait a random amount of time and then walk down the hall and see if she could tell when they were outside her door. She doesn't have any plans that need that right now, though.

That's definitely the sort of thing people would be willing to do to help her.

Yup, she figured, and she'll let them know when she has something like that. Also if they need any healing, that seems like something where she'll learn more about it with practice.

They will absolutely make sure people know. Generally injuries are less common than they used to be but they do still happen. And people get sick sometimes as well.

It's good that there's not much call for it.

Anyway, she kind of wants lunch now, and then she was going to try writing up what she remembers about hyperspace - was there anything else to do today?

No that sounds like a plan. At some point she might want to visit the settlement or take a trip to one of the other planets for sightseeing. But neither of those is urgent.

She should probably visit the settlement before too long, yeah - how long of a trip is it?

It's about an hour at a walk less than that if you run or use a vehicle.

Oh, that's not so far. Maybe not today, though. She'll keep it in mind for tomorrow - by which she means after her next sleep - if someone is available to go with her.

Someone should be available.

Good, she appreciates it.

Fish for lunch - she'll also ask if they eat any other kinds of meat - and then she'll do some writing, and then she'd like to see the view from the tower if that's okay.

There are some other varieties of fish they just don't store as well and they're less common. As for terrestrial animals they don't hunt them, they're too similar to the Hearthians for anyone to feel comfortable eating them. It's actually really interesting they have a lot of evidence of a mass extinction event only a few hundred thousand years ago. It mostly killed off terrestrial plants and animals which is why there are so few around.

And sure they can go up the tower.

She has to stop for a minute partway up - she's never been this high up before and it's making her a little dizzy - but she pulls herself together and makes it the rest of the way.

There's quite a view once they reach the top. She can see the grove of trees she arrived in and a small road accompanied by cables headed off towards a settlement in what seems to be a giant crater. There's an enormous telescope visible as the tallest structure in the settlement and what looks to be a landing pad of sorts on the edge of the crater the settlement is built into. A few small spaceships are landed there. There's a few other craters visible as well but none are as big or have anything much going on.

Oooooh. She looks forward to seeing a sunset from here. (And, gosh, maybe two sunsets a day, if she manages to arrange her sleep schedule right.)

That's certainly possible. Halite is happy to spend as long as she likes up here. They say they never get tired of the view.

It's going to take her a while, too. In fact, she might just settle in here to work on her Force stuff until it feels like bedtime.

Halite will fiddle with a small tablet they're carrying content to spend the time here poking away at something. Occasionally, they'll ask a question about Basic if she doesn't seem busy.

After the second or third question she'll explain that she's working on Force stuff, that just doesn't look like much. Halite can go down if they want, she'll be fine up here by herself as far as she knows.

They'll stop asking questions and just sit quietly here's as good a place to work as any.

That's fine too.

She giggles, after a bit, and then explains that it turns out that it's not hard at all to use the Force to stop herself from getting too cold.

That's really cool. Is it okay to ask questions about that or should they wait?

She can take a little break, sure.

How is she keeping herself warm, is it by keeping the heat in her body or making more or some third thing?

Partly the second thing and partly something else, she's having the Force make enough heat that she's, you know, okay, and then getting the rest of the way to being comfortable by fiddling with - not exactly her perception of the situation but more how her body reacts, but in a way that's similar to perceiving it? The temperature she is is a fine temperature to be and her body wouldn't always agree with that but right now it does.

How cool, is the force generally better at doing stuff inside her body like that than stuff outside her body like a blanket to keep the heat in?

Doing stuff with her body is definitely easier, at least so far.

How interesting. Hal looks forward to hearing what else she's able to figure out. Rhodochrosite, the person playing music when she first arrived would probably be pretty interested when they're not making music they're pretty interested in biology.

She can definitely talk about biology. Unfortunately she's not sure she'll be able to explain the rest of what she's been working on at all, to someone who isn't themselves able to see Force stuff; she says 'see' but it's not even that much like anything else really.

That makes sense... even trying to describe how their vision differs from the Nomai is hard and those are both forms of sight.

Yeah, that sounds like the same kind of problem. Anyway, she's made some progress on the clumsiness; nothing that'll be visible yet - maybe by the end of the, uh, time before she goes to bed again, but not so far - but she's figured out some things about what the problem even is, at least.

That's great. They're happy for her.

Good.

Back to it, then.

Hal... is actually getting pretty tired and is going to go get some sleep. Someone will be around if she needs anything. They hope she enjoys the sunrise if she stays up here long enough to see it.

She probably will, yeah. Good night!

Halite goes to do just that. The moon rises not too long after. It's well lit and sparkles where some of the domes reflect the light better than the surrounding surface.

Gosh, pretty. She wants better eyesight, to see more of it, but she should probably not get too distracted with shiny nice-to-haves. She'll work on that when she's done with this. Which turns out to mean 'tomorrow, at the earliest'; she's made a bit of visible progress by the time the sun comes up, but she's starting to find it hard to focus, by then, and heads back down to see what's going on for breakfast/dinner.

What's going on is mostly more of the same. There's a slightly different selection of produce a different sauce for the fish, and a slightly different batch of the crackers. The marshmallow type food is the only thing that's completely the same.

She'll probably get bored of fish and vegetables eventually, but she hasn't yet.

Anything interesting going on after breakfast?

There's a new person talking to Molybdenite about the plans for a test of the warp systems on the Vessel happening tomorrow.

She isn't following the whole conversation but the bits she's catching are neat, she'll hang out in that general direction and see if they feel like including her.

They both offer a greeting. The new person asks what her planet was like and if she spent her life on just the one or visited others?

Hi!

She did spend her life just on the one - she expects she would have ended up living elsewhere as an adult, but that hadn't happened yet. The planet she was on was mostly a farming planet, with humans and ozot as the main species of people - she's never met an ozot in person, either, but she's seen them in media transmitted from the more urban parts of the planet.

How interesting, what does it mean to have a whole planet dedicated to farming and what do the ozot look like?

Ozot are near-humans, so they're the same general shape and everything as humans, but they're a little taller and thinner and they're sky blue or green with freckles, and they have white or pale yellow hair and ridges around their faces and on the backs of their hands, and usually the boy ones have longer hair than the girl ones which is backwards from humans. The planet being a farming planet just means that most of it is farms? And they sell the food to other planets and get other things they need in return instead of making them themselves.

It seems strange for a whole planet to specialize like that. Hair is neat, it's a little like fur but not exactly the same if they understand correctly. They're not sure why that would be correlated with sex but it seems like a lot of things are in species that do that.

Hair is a lot like fur, yeah, mostly it's just longer, and it's not the hair that's different between boys and girls, just what's normal to do with it - one of the older boys in the creche likes to wear his hair long and that works fine, it's just a little weird of him.

Her textbook back home said that specialization is good because it means everyone can just learn to do one thing really well, instead of having to learn a bunch of different things and not having much time for any particular one.

Oh, that makes sense with the hair. As for specialization, Sylvite isn't sure they agree. Like it's true that most people choose something to focus on and get more skilled at but it seems boring if you only do one thing and also some specializations require skills with applications to others. Also, everyone pitching in with some of the basics helps with feeling like one community instead of a bunch of separate people doing their own thing.

That makes sense. She's probably going to specialize some anyway since she's the only one with the Force and the only human around, but she'll try to pick up other stuff too.

Of course, Syl is excited to hear what she's able to figure out. Syl is an explorer so they have no room to criticize being a specialist. They spend more of their time away from the settlements than almost anyone.

Exploring sounds neat! What kinds of things have they found in their explorations?

Since Syl was a hatchling they've been fascinated by the wandering moon and that's been the focus of their explorations. There's a couple moon shards on the planet, one in the museum in the nearby settlement and another in the blink crater. Syl has sought out and found moon shards on most of the other planets and following the clues the Nomai left behind they were able to be the first Hearthian to land on the moon and discover its secrets. Syl is also the one who found the Owlks' spaceship, it's cloaked but the cloaking device has a flaw.