Well, in that case she's going to spend the time making sure her language software is set up to handle the new language correctly and trying to think ahead about what pictures she might need to communicate with the formatting team.

It only takes a few minutes for someone to show up, anyway; this new person is ambiguously gendered and has teal hair and a long furry tail that's dexterous enough that it might be prehensile, and they're wearing a pale yellow outfit with accessories that match their hair.

The first librarian explains that, implausible as it might sound, they appear to have an alien visitor, in the form of this shiny crystal; the alien doesn't communicate normally - she's not sure why; she's vaguely guessing that the crystal is not actually the alien and is a machine that they're piloting remotely that can pick up on communication somehow, but she hasn't asked - and also doesn't know their language yet, so she was going to ask the newcomer's team leader's son to illustrate some kids' books for her to learn with.

The newcomer peers dubiously between the first librarian and the forb.

Weeping Cherry will show her lab, explosion, landing in the lake sequence again, even though it hasn't exactly helped so far. It's the closest thing she has to an explanation.

She also wants to contest the idea that she's piloting the forb remotely, but neither 'first' nor 'second' seems like a reasonable word to do that with.

...okay, fair enough, there's a communication issue, thinks the newcomer.

The engineer and the alien can come down and wait in the lounge while they look for him, if they want to.

    The first librarian - or, the library's engineer, apparently - thinks that sounds reasonable, if Weeping Cherry wants to; there'll probably be some other people there, though, so it might be a little overwhelming for her. Does she want to go, or stay here?

"First," she displays. She definitely wants to meet more aliens!

These people have all been very courteous about the possibility of overwhelming her, which is nice of them. Probably this also means that she has to be careful about overwhelming them, though, since she seems to have more tolerance for people than they do.

That's definitely an impression she might get about the locals, yeah.

The engineer relays this to the newcomer, who offers her their hand to lead her past the threshold, then turns to check if Weeping Cherry is following.

Weeping Cherry makes a note about the hand-offering in her cultural notes and follows after them. The hard surfaces of the library floor make it easy for her to keep up.

Their guide seems satisfied with this, and leads them in; the setup is similar, with a door separating the rough-hewn outer tunnel from the much more finished hallway inside, but this time the hallway's walls are colored in a much more complex way; the shiny green from the sign outside is used to divide them up into large sections, each of which is colored either plain medium grey, or in one of seven different patterns; one of the patterns is the teal and yellow of their guide, arranged in an argyle design with pale blue accents.

The group goes down the hall a ways, and then turns off into a spiral ramp that brings them down a story; the lounge is a large room with a mixture of shiny-green furniture and pieces matching the designs from the walls, with the side walls devoted to countertops with cabinets above and below and a row of plants growing against the back wall. There are two Crafters here, one in forest green and coral and the other in shades of lilac. Their guide goes and hematites one of the green couches for them while the engineer explains Weeping Cherry's deal to the other two Crafters.

Weeping Cherry will obligingly hop up on the hematite couch and turn her largest facet to indicate where she is looking as she peers around the room.

The brightly-colored territory markings are certainly cheery. She debates with herself whether she should cover herself in her coat-of-arms pattern again. On the one hand, simple colors like her default pale gold surface seem as though they might be more used as 'team colors', with more elaborate patterns used for individuals.

On the other hand, she's not sure if giving herself a pattern has other implications, or if it will be confusing for her to go from being one color to being another color.

Ultimately, she decides that as an alien being slightly confusing is probably her prerogative, and she's not going to find a less awkward time to claim a pattern. She decides to change her coat of arms a little bit, though, to avoid the colors she's seen in use so far.

She makes a show of examining the different designs on the walls, displaying a little animated thought bubble, and then covering herself in pale gold fractal fern patterns against a black background with subtle dark purple swirls.

By the time Weeping Cherry is done with that, the Crafter who guided them in has left; the green-and-coral one is still talking to the engineer, with the two of them seated on a couch in the former's colors, and the lilac one is on his way over to talk to her.

So, Weeping Cherry is an alien, huh? The engineer said she isn't communicating normally, which is pretty unexpected; should they be prioritizing figuring out why that's happening? He'll understand it if she shows light for yes and dark for no.

Weeping Cherry has to think about that one for a moment. On the one hand, it's normal for her not to have telepathy, and she doesn't want them to waste time figuring that out when getting language seems more important.

On the other hand, if the widespread telepathy is a function of the planet or environment, spending a little bit of time narrowing down what she would need to do to tap into it is probably worthwhile.

Ultimately, she decides that being able to ask questions about the telepathy is probably more worthwhile than playing twenty questions about it. She shows a dark charcoal grey, but with wavering, uncertain patches of lighter grey drifting across it like fog.

He thinks that means 'probably not, but there might be reasons to'; she can show... he thinks about it for a second... yellow, to get him to go back and correct an assumption like that.

Is she here on purpose, as opposed to by accident or something?

She did technically come to the library on purpose, but it's probably more true to say that she's here by accident. And it was an exceedingly accidental accident -- she didn't even know that other worlds existed until she was in one.

She momentarily absorbs all the photons that hit her, leaving her a pitch-black void in space.

Okay! That looks like it was an accident and not one she's very happy about!

They're working on figuring out how to teach her the language; is there anything else she's going to need in the next few days? She can stay here if she wants to, they can put in a wall nook so she can get some privacy, but he has no idea whether crystal aliens eat or anything.

So on the one hand, she doesn't need anything. She would be perfectly comfortable in the void of space. On the other hand, what an excellent opportunity to try and get someone to make more forb crystal.

She shows a plain charcoal grey with a little spot of light grey, followed by a picture of him turning a small blob of crafting material into a duplicate of her crystal and setting it on the couch next to her.

Sure, he can do that, if it won't bother her to be touched. He's wearing some crafting material in the form of embellishments to his outfit, and spends a few moments taking off bits from various sections to leave it still looking nice, and then offers his hand for her to hop into and/or lean against.

Sure, she'll hop into his hand! She's a bit heavier than she looks.

It's interesting that he has such a different response to being asked than the fisherman she met. She's not sure what's different about this interaction. Maybe it's that he (implicitly) offered to help and the fisherman didn't? Or maybe its that if he lives and works with other librarians on the formatting team that he's less touch-averse in general?

...huh; he was assuming her crystal was made of crafting material but it's not. Which means he can't copy it directly; he could make something that looked like it and had the right heft and things but he'd have to do it the long way. Does she still want him to?

She'll switch to a uniform charcoal grey and hop off of his hand back to the couch.

She wants to demonstrate that she can make things for herself, just slowly. She briefly checks how much air she can grab because she doesn't want to chew up the couch, and is excited to note she is already up to about 2.4 grams.

She gently pulls in a gram of air, creating a brief draft towards her, and slowly rearranges the component neutrons, protons, and electrons into a tiny flake of yellow sapphire, which she holds up so that he can see. Making more forb crystal isn't actually that easy -- it involves creating high energy temporal nuclear crystals, and then weaving them into the existing structure in a very specific way -- but the forb is doing that in the background anyway.

Hopefully that will get the right impression across.

Huh! That's weird! Crafters can't do that - they can make any solid-enough material into crafting material but they do have to have something to work with.

That...might be related to her not being able to communicate? Since the communication and the crafting are fundamentally the same sort of thing, just done differently. Does that seem plausible to her?

The crafting and the communication are the same thing!? She supposes that makes more sense in an Occam's razor sense, but she has no idea how such a thing would work.

She'll turn a bright cream color, because that seems very plausible.

Okay. What else - there was a question about whether she was the crystal, or was in it, or was piloting it remotely somehow; he's guessing if this was an accident and she's still running around doing things it's that she is or is in the crystal. Is that right? (He doesn't think it matters very much but the others are going to wonder.)

Gosh but she can't wait to have a vocabulary.

She'll show a pale ash grey -- light, but darker than the brightest light she's used. Then she shows a picture of her normal body standing in her lab with a forb floating next to her, with dense lines moving between her head and the forb. Then, a sudden explosion, her human body crumpling to the floor, the lines stopping, the forb shattering into fragments, a swirl of color, and the fragment falling into the lake.

Then she shows her crystal self sitting outside the library while the sun and stars wheel overhead 40 times, her forb slowly growing back into a perfect sphere. Once it does, the forb moves next to a fallen tree and turns it into a copy of her body, and the lines between her head and the forb appear again.

Oh wow!! Okay! So they should be assuming she'll need to know how to function in Crafter society as someone people will assume is a Crafter - there have been mixed humanoid species societies, they have a couple books from way back then, but something happened and the other species died out, and most people don't know about them and will react to anyone who looks basically like a Crafter as if they are one. Should he explain more about how Crafters live? Probably the best way to do that will be to print out a kids' book about it and he can read it to her.

She'll show her chosen bright off-white again!

These people are so helpful.