Well, this is not Alyssa's very first time coming back from freefall and she got a little practice back home. (Val is also fine.) Alyssa looks around at everything.

There's an absolutely massive broken stone bridge visible in the distance. It's not clear why anyone would have wanted this large a bridge, certainly none of the streets around are anywhere near this wide.

Closer by, there are more buildings, mostly shorter than the circular building Zoriana brought them in front of, and a grouping of colorful tents and parked wagons. Some of the buildings have pictorial signs, and a subset of those also have horizontal sequences of glyphs. The circular building flies a flag with a symbol about the same shape as Zoriana's necklace, as well as having it carved into the doors.

Not everyone around looks totally human. There's some short people who don't really look or conduct themselves like children, one of whom has pointed ears and bright blue hair. There's also a tall person with pointed ears and eyes that are entirely a glossy black.

The vast majority of people are communicating by making noises with their mouths. Some of them are doing this pretty loudly. A few people in the tent grouping are signing with what looks like the same language Zoriana was using with them, though faster and with many more words and more complex grammar.

Alyssa and Val can both smell salt and food and alcohol and refuse.

Alyssa describes a lot of these things.

"Later maybe we should see if the most efficient thing we could trade them is transforming garbage into other things," Val muses.

Wobbly 'no'. There's a lot of garbage and it can decay usefully, it's just that consolidating it is work.

And she'll start leading them into the building. Someone at the door says something to her with his mouth, and she responds in kind.

Follow follow. The voice noises are cool.

They go through a pretty courtyard to a room with chairs. Zoriana offers cups of water, conjured on the spot.

Once they seem situated she gestures to the door. "Zoriana [doorwards] small time?"

Val refrains from drinking the water. (Alyssa drinks.) Neither of them objects to Zoriana stepping out for a moment.

If he's cautious or not thirsty that's fine.

She'll look around for someone available, ideally Bevaluu.

She's currently writing on some tracing paper over a map, but she looks up once Zoriana gets near.

"Zoriana! It's good to see you. What's the occasion, can we schedule some extra channels today?"

"It's good to see you too. Yes, I have spare channels, it's not an emergency. I found some people above the air, they're scouting for somewhere to relocate to. They don't speak any language I've tried and I've basically promised them a proper conversation, do you have any recommendations for Tongues vendors?"

"And if you could spare an Augury and contact our silent friends I'd appreciate it."

"Please contact Black Butterfly's church and do an Augury for me", without any context provided, somewhat suggests that the Dark Tapestry might be involved. She'll ask if she thinks she needs to know. "Sure, what's your plan?"

"Engage with the people I found like they're as safe and friendly as they seem, including telling you everything I know and introducing them to people and getting them better translation magic."

She lights some incense and rolls the bones and studies them. "Weal. That is only for the short term, you realize."

"I know."

"I put them in a meeting room. Walk with me?"

Bevaluu follows.

"They're [Alyssa] and [Val]. No spoken names, they don't know a single spoken language. [Alyssa] seems like a civilian, [Val] is a magic user who says he has a patron. They're from what I'm thinking is a demiplane but I could be wrong. They're looking for other descendants of some kind of massive disaster, seemed to expect anyone they ran into to be another enclave from it, but it's not obvious to me what disaster it was. They say the patron runs the demiplane and drives anyone who can hear or see it mad. Not just a blindfold issue, the magic user doesn't have eyes and is apparently deaf. The patron apparently draws power from pain and gives the only local magic-users power for it which they allegedly need to maintain the demiplane. Sounds like a classic scam, yes, but if I were running that scam I wouldn't let people leave."

Bevaluu whistles. "Sounds like a situation. Do we need Tongues specifically or will Share Language cut it?"

"That's a good question for the one with working ears. They're not going to recognize the spells, even the magic user, I did the gestures for Comprehend Languages on him and he didn't get it."

And Zoriana's back with someone. She does introductions, and then looks to Alyssa. "Small magic, Alyssa attend speak Zoriana. Big magic, Zoriana attend speak Alyssa. Magic Alyssa yes? Small magic, Alyssa attend speak" and Zoriana tugs her earlobe and says 'like so' with her mouth.

"Whoa, I want to understand sound language! Uh, but then I have to repeat everything for Val, don't I." Alyssa can sigh simultaneously with this utterance.

She is going to have to communicate spell durations instead of spell availability waiting times.

"Small magic Alyssa attend speak, Alyssa want food, Alyssa" she mimes sleeping, "Alyssa attend speak. Alyssa want two" sleep demonstration again, "Alyssa no attend speak."

"Big magic Zoriana attend speak, Alyssa want food, Zoriana no attend speak."

"Well, that makes the first thing sound really useful, especially if I'm not just going back home and getting replaced by somebody from the government..."

Yeah, that’s good enough that Zoriana expects Alyssa to cooperate. She’ll summarize to Bevaluu.

Who encourages a lower-circle cleric to prep the spell in an empty slot so she can return to travel plans.

Some time passes. A young man, also with a butterfly symbol, eventually shows up to poke Alyssa with a disappearing sheet of paper, after which point Alyssa can understand that the remains of his question is "–me to stay for this?".