Zarian wasn't formerly that into conlangs but she picked up more of them after she started dating Colley; she's familiar with ones that're built rather lopsidedly compared against natural languages.  The ones people write exactly one musical in or host songwriting contests in aren't generally known for their breadth of vocabulary, and the level of knowledge the two hikers have isn't that unusual although the pedagogical method would be if she were paying closer attention to it.

At the moment she has other concerns.  She spends most of their approach making sure she has the grammar down on, "Hello!  I'm lost, may I walk with you awhile?"  If the conlang has the vocab to support that she'll stick with that since that's what she's picked up more of, but if it doesn't she'll rush a phrasing in the main language.

Yeah, the language has the vocab to support it, though the time units for "awhile" were extremely unhelpful.

"I'd enjoy if you shared the road with us!" The one in blue switches their stream of conversation from their compatriot to Zarian as soon as the opportunity presents itself. "If you have lost your way then you may want to know we're going further out and up. What's the etymology of your path here?" Okay that phrasing was also awkward. "You can call me Patik, what do you want me to call you?" Their name has a quite different pronunciation scheme than the rest of the language, a rapid clash of consonants. "I'm excited to talk with someone who knows nomic-lingua-quarta!" Ah, the language Patik is using has a name. A name that maybe implies something about it's design. Yeah, this feels like a conlang.

"Handle's Deptka."

Deptka doesn't try anything complicated, but sticks to nomic-lingua-quarta. Instead of interjecting into the conversation, they speed up briefly, making space for Zarian to take their place closest to Patik as they hike.

"Zarian." 'Someone who knows nomic-lingua-quarta' makes no sense, but it doesn't make any more no sense than several other aspects of the situation and anyways that sort of confusion's to be expected when she's this new at being someone who knows any nomic-lingua-quarta.  "I got location-[semantic change (mischievous alterations as an attempt at sowing confusion)]'d."  Do these people know any Cretari, or for that matter any other language Zarian can speak?  "What distance exists between greater numbers of people and the location you want to achieve?"

They do not appear to know any Cretari, or for that matter any other languages Zarian has heard of. Deptka has stray bits of vocabulary from a lot of languages but only seems good at two, plus some kind of dialect variation on one of them. Patik has four solidly and conversational access to three more, though half of those have the feel of conlangs where Patik is tracking changes or forks. Case in point: the one they're speaking now calls itself the fourth version of itself.

""location-[semantic change (mischievous alterations as an attempt at sowing confusion)]'d"- that's a dedicated [family group or loanword source], they should be proud! Do you have a guess how you were brought so far from your root?" Right, this is a language about languages its word for family is primarily about linguistic origins. Patik seems to think Zarian's talking about a prank? And one Patik apparently thinks is funny at that.

"We're attempting a. . ." Patik has to do a bit of math, evidently some kind of unit conversion, before because they eventually go with "hundred thousand thousand point today. I think." Oh, the only unit of distance this language wants to use is based on the point sizes of typefaces. Zarian can probably tell Patik is committing to the bit, because there was obviously a better unit of measurement they could have used. "We did that a day in the past too but that's to get up onto the peak, we'll go that and half again a day in the future and then likely feel like we have room to breath. That's from the- nope," Here Patik gives up and uses a word from one of the main languages they and Deptka share to say "fast travel station."

That's so long.  Zarian does not particularly want to stay out in the wilderness that long, currently.

...But these people are friendly enough and seem to know what they're doing, and she's so deeply confused about so much that's going on here.  And the idea of stepping away from other people feels - hm, yes, in expectation foolish because even though it seems like there are more people in the direction opposite to the one these two are travelling in, she has no real sense of what she might run into in the interim or how she would go about handling it.

"There was a run-on sentence animal with a rhyming face; I don't know that my [family group or loanword source] could have caused it.  I may share the path with you for a sentence more likely than a paragraph."

"Rhyming face...?" Patik seems to be enjoying the puzzle, pondering that as they step over several flat stones put across the path in a water bar. "I feel like that's very clever* but I don't know what you mean. Did it carry you up here? If you have a [subject which supports an object] we can swing by to pick it up, especially if it has your pack." 

*Nomic-lingua-quarta's word for "clever" means "good with languages." The only other prominent word it has for intellectual prowess means something like "demonstrating that you could be good with languages if you applied yourself." It's a very opinionated language. 

"They lack a smallpack."

"Obviously the [encapsulating bracket] has small footnotes!"

"I only have this," she gestures to herself.  "It didn't carry me; I went through the face, which was large, flat, and - "  She puts one hand up as if resting on a vertical surface in front of her, then brings the other up to meet it - "rhyming.  Subjectively I instantly travelled to a location up there."  Point.

"I still don't know what you mean."

"Oh, maybe-"

"Request we do this in Overlap. Pidgin if needed."

Patik makes a sound that translates just fine, a longsuffering groan and throwing their hands up. "Fiiiiiine. Later though." They make a couple of clicks, clearing their throat, and then starts in the main language the two of them know best. This one has a vastly less specialized and opinionated vocabulary, though it's maybe a little terse. It does in fact have a word for "sandwich."

"You ran into a long animal with some kind of symmetric or aesthetic face. It knocked you out and you woke up here? Are you hurt?"

"Repetition?" she requests, in Overlap.

Patik makes a fast, sweeping gesture with one hand that looks vaguely like a conductor signaling the end of a symphony, then speeds up to get several paces ahead. Deptka steps forward into their place.

"Question: Are you injured?"

"Question: What is your handle*?"

"Question: What day is it?"

"Question: Where are you?

*A word that clearly isn't synonymous with name, but is basically what you want people to call you.

"No; Zarian; the fifth of - "

"You keep time differently."

"You keep time much differently.  Than I.  ...Do."

"There's lots of ways to keep time!"

"Statement: You speak Overlap. Overlap time is kept the same."

Overlap as a language is very different from nomic-lingua-quarta. It's full of rapid starts and stops and hard consonants. The verbal language is accompanied by hand gestures, paired in a way where you could actually mostly understand a sentence from either the verbal or the signed. Deptka is also using it tersely, saying as few words as they can while Patik is doing something with syllable count that's more expressive, somewhat like a haiku. 

"Statement: If an animal brought you here, you would be injured."

"Statement:  You years seem to muchly more long than I know!"  This is exciting enough that she doesn't feel like slowing down to get the grammar; the hand gestures she'll throw in insofar as they come conveniently attached with the concepts in Deptka's brain and don't require extra attention from her.  ...But maybe that was overboard.  "Your years seem to muchly more long than those I know."  She switches from walking to skipping.  "Question:  How do you mean, 'You speak Overlap'?  I did not already!"

"Statement: everyone* who speaks Overlap is expected to use the same calendar in Overlap."

Question: where did you learn Overlap?" 

*A word where the literal meaning is what "everyone" colloquially means in English. It isn't wrong to say that everyone has two eyes in Overlap, there's a different word for when you do actually include the tails of the distribution. 

Patik makes some kind of excited, fluttering hand gestures that actually have the Overlap meaning "wait wait I want to solve this puzzle" while making vocalizations that are the barest gesture at those words, consisting of some staticy squeaking.