The forests near Carmen's home are beautiful in fall. The ground is a mosaic of reds and yellows and oranges. While it's still warm enough, she likes to sit under a tree and read.

Today she is reading a novel by one of her favourite authors. This is an excellent passtime, because the forest is pretty and fresh and quiet and safe.

Well, mostly safe.

Unfortunately, Carmen is too busy reading to notice the snake slither up to her. Too engrossed to see it on her leg before it sinks its fangs into her.

She screams and jumps to her feet, but imediately feels dizzy. She reaches for the tree to support herself, but finds nothing there.

She has never heard of snake venom that was hallucinogenic. However, this is the only explanation for why she seems to be standing in the middle of an active port.

The stranger is pretty, dressed inappropriately, and obviously foreign - she also appeared completely out of nowhere, but Gimlith will attribute that to being distracted and overwhelmed by this sensory nightmare of a modern mercantile economy. They are both about to be crushed so she pulls the stranger out of the way. The stranger does not seem to realize they are about to be crushed, even though the crates are swinging directly overhead. "New here?" 

Carmen is brought out of her presumably-drug-induced daze when a surprisingly-solid halucination grabs her arm. She flinches, then screams, then starts frantically looking around and swearing in multiple languages. After she has regained some level of composure, she asks the most pertinent questions: "Who are you where am I what happened?"

I didn't say she asked them very well.

The stranger also doesn't speak Sindarin, or Adunaic, or what she recognizes - though admittedly, that's not much - of the Umbarian tongue. Had she stowed away on a boat? Hit her head? "Let's get out of here," she says, mostly for the stranger's benefit, and tugs her in the relevant direction so the meaning is entirely clear.

Carmen is confused but follows her. She hasn't understood anything this strange person has said so far, or even recognised which language it might be, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. Learning languages passibly is easy and they should have a workable pidgin by the end of the day.

The streets here are too narrow. At a guess whoever is in charge of building permits has been handing them out for bribes and now everything encroaches everywhere. She pulls the stranger well out of harm's way and then keeps walking for her own peace of mind, walking and walking, until the port is a distant din and they're at a coffehouse she likes. "I can buy you a drink," she tells the stranger, even though she presumably won't understand her, and ducks in.

Carmen nods mutely, thinking about phonology and whether this language might be related to any other she's heard.

"Coffeehouse," she says, though she's heard it said that you shouldn't teach people a language by giving them tons of nouns to memorize. 

"We'll have two cups of coffee," she tells the proprietor, an acquaintance who pretends not to recognize her. Oh. Right. That. 

He is careful, too, not to touch her fingers as he takes her money. "Apostasy isn't contagious," she wants to tell him, but settles for muttering it to her foreign stranger.

Carmen stares at the dark drink curiously. She sniffs it and decides that it's one of the most disgusting blood-substitutes she has ever encountered. This place must be really poor. The synthetic blood that aid agencies sent to developing countries was higher quality than this. She would honestly rather drink water.

She tries to explain that she wants water to her new companion. She pantomimes rushing rivers. She feels like an idiot.

Stranger dislikes the coffee. She realizes she should stop calling her 'stranger'. "Gimlith," she says, pointing at herself, she can do the Finrod-and-Beor routine. "You?"

"Carmen", Carmen says. She considers giving something formal, like "yaz-Bensabat", but figures it'd be hell to explain while they don't have much of a method of communication.

"Great. Carmen, you don't like coffee? It's an acquired taste, but worth acquiring, you can't live in this city without it. Milk? I have no idea how to pantomime milk. Tea? I can get you tea."

So far, she's been able to associate "coffee" with the icky blood substitute and can guess that other variants on this are being offered. She's not sure which would be more impolite - refusing to try any of these poor-people beverages, or trying and rejecting them each in turn. After all, if the stranger had anything good, she wouldn't have offered a guest this "coffee" thing first.

Carmen opts to pantomime a river again. The embarassment only increases with time.

"Hungry? Biscuit? I can do a biscuit." She stands up and buys one.

"You and your friend are heading out in a bit," the proprietor says. 

"Not long," she promises.

Ouch.

Whatever.

She is curious about what this strange, solid object is. Presumably, Gimlith has decided to stop trying to feed her, since no more beverages seem to be forthcoming.

However, what is more curious is the fact that Gimlith and the buisness owner seem to know each other. And dislike each other.

When Gimlith turns back to her, Carmen pointedly looks between her and the buisness owner with raised eyebrows.

Well, the question was clear.

And she can answer more freely, honestly, than she'll be able to once Carmen speaks her language. "I'm on a list of people accused of insurrectionary and inappropriate behavior. It's a bad idea to know me, basically. I can get off the list by going to the capitol and pleading on bended knee for redemption in the eyes of the gods, and then publishing a long essay disclaiming the views I was wrongly accused of having, but sometimes if you go they'll just arrest you and anyway I'm old-fashioned, in the Elven sense, and don't really want to lie."

The stranger had caught none of that, obviously. "Uh. Biscuit?"

The most she gets from that is that there are multiple people who dislike Gimlith, but she's not sure who they are. She'd better hurry up and learn this language so she can ask other people about her new companion, in case she's bad news.

In the mean time, Carmen takes the strange rectangle and turns it over in her hand. She has no idea how to pantomime this, so she simply asks, despite knowing it won't do much good: "What is this thing for?"

Has she not seen a biscuit before? Gimlith doesn't really want to grab it back from her, that's hella rude, but she's also not going to interact with the proprietor again, so...

She holds out her hand for the biscuit.

Carmen sheepishly returns the buscuit. "I'm sorry," She murmurs. "I didn't mean to break your thingy... Or disrespect it, or something."

Allergies? Gluten intolerance? She can go to a different coffeeshop and get them something else. But just in case it's unfamiliarity, she bites into the biscuit, chews and swallows it, smiles to indicate it's tasty.

Carmen almost falls out of her chair.

"You- you- you bit it. You... Moved your teeth around and then swallowed a solid! How did you... Do you need medical attention? Oh shit oh shit I knew I was high oh shit..."

That scared her? Do people eat in private, where she's from? She waves her hands to communicate "everything's okay, I'm sorry I committed some cultural faux paus, the gods don't even exist aren't going to smite us both."

She points to Gimlith's stomach and pantomimes vomiting, in order to convey "Are you ill?" Language barriers are so inconvenient when people start doing the impossible.

"It wasn't poisoned," Gimlith says irritably, "I'm not that unpopular." Unless the stranger can recognize some poison that she can't? Might it be? She gives the proprietor a hard look. He's glaring back at her irritably, but murderous levels of irritably? "Just in case," she says to Carmen, "let's take the rest of the biscuit to my revolutionary friends so if I keel over they have proof the government murdered a dissident."

She nods and follows. She'd been picking up more and more of the language, and has pieced together that they're going to see other people that Gimlith knows, and that her companion is now appropriately worried about the fact that she ate a solid.

But why wasn't she worried before? Was she briefly possessed by a demon? Does she not remember having eaten a solid? Is everyone as high as she is now? She watches her step, in case there are more LSD snakes about.