"Why does it have to be you with the livestock? Why not just your trading partner?"

He's guessing she's asking why he wants livestock but there isn't really more of an answer to that than he just gave. If the second bit was 'why not this other thing' he didn't catch what the other thing was.

She... really doesn't know how to proceed. She tries showing him the Farmer Doing Everything Himself, a comic with a farmer who has a farm that sells eggs. He starts rounding up the chickens, but he needs a shed. So he he walks over to a machine putting together the wood he'll use as pens for his chickens... then the factory where the wood he's using gets cut into shape... then he walks a few more steps over to the rolling machine, where he spends just a few seconds setting up the machine that cuts the corrugated rolled steel to lengths (he works INCREDIBLY fast...) then he assembles everything into an utterly gigantic chicken shed...

and then we see that there's an entire factory producing fertilizer, and grounding the inedible parts of soybean into chicken feed, and the machine that automatically grades and sorts and packages the eggs, and he also runs over to his factory that puts together the lithium and the anode and the electrolyte and the foil and the battery pack and the battery cell and its packaging and frame and the permanent magnets and the rotor core and the windings and the copper cable and the power electronics and the frame and the suspension and the polymer wheels and the doors and the dashboard and airbags and sensors and electronics...

and we find out that, this farmer, manages to run a chicken coop with more than 1000 chickens in it, just by himself! That even includes the time he takes to build the factory with the machine that makes the machine that makes the copper wire that he uses in the factory that makes the electric motor for his car, as well as all necessary machines before that. That's how much 1 modern thomassian farmer, doing everything by himself, manages to get done in a day of work! Of course, in real life, this farmer has neither the time to run around nor to learn to use all the machines that his farm relies on. But indirectly, using the power of specialization, one thomassian farmer can run a chicken coop that has 1000 hens in it, all by himself.

He uses crafting for that part... that part too... he's not sure what's even going on in that part, he doesn't do it... crafting handles that part... why would you even bother with that part... it's all fascinating, of course, what they've managed to do without crafting, he'll want to come back and learn all about it once he's in a somewhat less desperate state, but it's not exactly relevant to him and his household.

The reveal that this guy is trying to take care of a thousand chickens startles a laugh out of him. He's not doing that! Two or three dozen chickens is plenty for him and as many dogs as he'd care to keep track of! It takes maybe ten minutes a day to take care of a few dozen chickens, once they're set up in a good automated pen, which he doesn't have a mini of but it won't take him more than a day or two to put something together.

"Of course, if you have magic that makes everything near free that makes everything much easier! People poorer than you exist, you have no idea how much time and effort and boredom it takes just to feed yourself if you don't have magic making everything trivial!" She gets... outraged at the idea of someone not wanting to increase everyone's prosperity by collaborating and contributing. She feels like... there's something disrespectful about being so casual about things?

Oh dear, he's pissed her off somehow. His vehicle takes a few steps back toward the elevator before he thinks to ask if she wants him to leave.

She tries using body language to somehow let him know that she isn't kicking him out, she just got heated and emotional. "Do you... not want to save lots of people's lives? With shaping?" Then she points at the "no" placard, realizing that he was asking a question.

He stays put, then.

He's pretty lost about what's happening right now, he communicates, and that seems bad. He's not sure what he did wrong and doesn't think trying to guess is going to get anywhere rather than just upsetting them both.

Right now his priority is his immediate needs - he doesn't think he's in actual danger of malnourishing to death but it's a nearer thing than he'd like, right now, and he's not at all happy about only having the one dog to watch out for predators. So he wants food plants, and food livestock, and dogs. He doesn't know what she wants in trade but he's interested in finding out; he doesn't think she's tried to communicate that yet, so if she has he missed it and she should try again. Figuring out better communication and learning more about each other are also good, and in the long run he's going to want to do more of that, but they're not immediate priorities as far as he's concerned, except that they'll make trading easier.

Does that help, with whatever her issue is? He's also sorry if he managed to offend her somehow but if he did he has absolutely no idea what he did wrong.

Well, she doesn't want anything in trade; and nobody has ever had magical matter transmutation powers, so she has no idea who else would want to trade with him. So... she is at an impasse, at the least. She'd need to find someone in an RRF who knows what'd be useful.

It's at this point that a crow flies by outside, cawing loudly and projecting that it wants the newcomer's attention as she passes the window. She circles around to yell again; she wants him to come topside and explain what is wrong with this place.

...oh dear. He should probably take care of that. He has a guess of how he'd operate the elevator - this button and then this one, right? Or she can come up with him, crows from his world aren't dangerous.

...crows in general aren't dangerous? She happily comes with him and takes the elevator all the way up to the ceiling.

He doesn't know anything about crows here yet, he hasn't met any. Dogs can definitely be dangerous if they aren't socialized, that's the main thing he has to go by.

The crow is waiting when they get to the rooftop and hops onto the top of the newcomer's vehicle as soon as it steps out of the elevator.

Where did he bring them! Nobody communicates here! The Crafters don't craft, and get weird about it when they try to communicate with them! The crows get mad when they try to communicate with them and madder when they see them hanging around with the weird non-crafting Crafters! The weird buildings make the air currents all weird! There's no lakes! The weird non-crafting Crafters are very nice about feeding them but everything else is weird and bad!

Yeah, he's having similar problems. He didn't bring them here on purpose, it was a surprise for him too. His base is off thataway, he can put something up so it'll be visible from the sky, if they want to hang out with him, but he's not doing great for food so they might do better here, if they're being fed.

They're getting fed but not, like, well, nobody has any good bugs and only rarely meat.

Maybe the local can pass word around about that?

"...yes, that is one thing I can do. I'll inform people that the crows communicating through images, want to eat bugs and meat. And I suspect that they want to be let indoors when it gets colder, very possibly."

He relays to the crow that she said yes, and to the local that crows like a mixed diet - they're probably already getting fruit and vegetables and nuts and people should continue giving them those, just add meat and bugs. And if they can figure out how to communicate with them - which might be easier than communicating with him, crows already use sounds to communicate at more of a distance than crafting can do - they can be asked to scout and carry messages and do similar things.

"... actually, I thing that having crows scouting for something like forest fires, or aerial photography, would be very helpful. It'd be quite a bit easier than the drone systems we're using now, that's for sure. I think that we'll be very happy to have these crows, going forwards."

He's guessing that that was 'yes, we'll have things for them to do'; he expects the crows will be happy to hear that.

If everything stops being so weird and bad at least!

Well, if they're feeding them better and not so confused about being communicated with that'll be less weird and bad, right? He's not sure what they can do about the air currents or the weird crows but maybe something, once they're communicating with each other.

Yeah, that'll be better. And nesting places, they need nesting places that don't already have weird crows in them.

Yeah, that doesn't sound hard. Probably. He's not sure how hard things are without crafting but they do have these impressively tall buildings.