He appears in a small room with one window, one door, and one person who shouts angrily at him in a language that isn't related to Sesati.

He snarls right back before he's even untangled himself from the ungraceful heap he landed in. Coiled up in a tense crouch, he keeps himself low and small, poised to jump in any direction. He is not going down without a fight. 

His feet stick to the quilt on the floor, which sticks to the floor. The stranger says something threatening.

Growling low in his throat, he tears frantically at the quilt and tries to rip it to shreds. 

The quilt is indestructible and now his hands are stuck to it. If his teeth at any point come together they can stick together too and then his host will be infinitesimally more relaxed.

He makes demands in that same language that isn't related to Sesati.

This situation has not gotten any less alarming, but on the other hand, it doesn't seem like there's anything to fight, so he subsides. 

He attempts to look confused in a way that conveys 'I don't speak your language.' You moron. 

New language. This one's not tonal and uses longer words. Still not related to Sesati.

Well, that's promising. 

No, really, it is. He's pretty sure he's not in Sesat anymore, which is what he was trying to achieve anyway, and the angry stranger has figured out he doesn't speak the local language. He'd quite like to not be stuck to the floor, but really things could be worse. 

The light from the window is at a different angle and the stranger is suddenly placing a talking metal rectangle with moving pictures on it on the floor.

...he's lost time. That's not great. Hopefully, he didn't miss anything important, but there's nothing he can do about it now. 

Talking rectangle? 

It speaks the first language his host tried. The pictures show a talking cat gesturing at things with its tail and saying things.

He thought the scary person had figured out he doesn't speak this language. Maybe it's trying to teach him this language? He's probably too stupid to learn it but he tries to pay attention anyway. 

This is awful and nerve-wracking and still better than where he was yesterday. 

Then he can maybe learn some vocabulary none of which will be very immediately helpful here. Rock! Tree! Similarly concrete nouns!

Sure. Learning words for rocks and trees and things. From a talking cat in a picture on a metal thing. 

...this would be easier if he could repeat the words out loud. Maybe. He thinks. But it doesn't matter if he's right, because he can't do that. The strange terrifying person hasn't unstuck his teeth yet, or anything else. 

His host sits next to a pile of color-changing coin necklaces and watches him silently.

The show teaches forest-related vocabulary, then abruptly the scene changes to an orchard. The light from the window doesn't seem to jump when the scene changes, it seems to just be the pictures. The orchard features another talking cat who farms and talks about how farming works. After that it changes again, to a different farm with livestock. It doesn't seem to stop. It wasn't designed to be engaging to humans. It might not have been designed to be engaging at all.

Being bored isn't new, and this situation definitely has enough new and alarming elements to keep him alert. After a while, though, he starts sneaking glances at his host, increasing in frequency until he's watching the other person almost as much as he's watching the talking cat show. 

Glaaaaaaaaare.

Gosh yes these moving pictures sure are fascinating. Look at all this attention he's paying. 

If he doesn't do anything else to get his host's attention his host will sit there for a long while and then go away and leave him.

That's...good? Probably? Although it would be better if he wasn't still stuck to the floor with his teeth stuck together.

He watches the talking cats and tries to make the words stay in his mind by sheer force of will. 

Shortly after his host leaves, a new episode starts.

"Welcome to a new episode of Hari is the Language of the Empire. I'm Mahan and I will be teaching you Hari. Today we'll talk about magic."

The show's host has an assistant create an illusion of twelve symbols on a bare patch of ground between them. He points to each one in turn and names it, and sometimes has some creature come on screen and demonstrate it. A snake levitates. Something furry that isn't a cat transmutes elements. There are twelve kinds of magic and not all of them are shown but all of them are named.

Okay, now he's interested. 

Do any of the types of magic look like they could be responsible for the thing sticking him to the floor? Which is, now he's thinking about it, obviously magic. 

One is shown levitating things and one is shown making things unbreakable. Some aren't demonstrated.

Maybe it's one of those. And how they expect him to learn what those ones mean without examples he's not sure.

He keeps watching. 

Next episode he can learn about local history. There were wars and the Hari Empire won them and now there are no wars because there is no one else left to fight. And by the way did he know how lucky he is to live in the one and only independent polity still in existence? The Empire is great! And maybe he can pick up words like "law enforcement" and "cooperation" and other useful vocabulary.

So what he's getting from this is that running away is even more pointless here because there's nowhere to run to. Delightful. 

Yep! Absolutely nowhere! Isn't it great!

Next episode describes lots of common materials, like coal and wood. Several of these are described as elements, and frequently the elements are assigned numbers. And did he know that he shouldn't eat or drink from something made of lead or that he shouldn't make elements that have very high numbers because they might be radioactive? Because he shouldn't do those things. There seem to be lots of different kinds of metal, some of which he won't have seen before.

It's not quite fully dark outside by the time his host gets back.

This is a very uncomfortable position. Zaira keeps dozing off and then being jolted awake when he loses his balance. 

He carefully doesn't look over at his host and keeps blinking in the general direction of the talking cats. He stopped being able to take in any new vocabulary a while ago. 

His host looks at him tiredly, sighs, then the sky is bright again and it's only a couple hours before noon and he is wearing bracelets and his host is telling him not to try to convince anyone to help him take them off.

He blinks tiredly and tries to piece together the sentence, gets some of it but not all. 

Also, it seems like he missed something pretty important this time. That doesn't normally happen; at the very least he should have woken up when the bracelets came out. Maybe this is more magic stuff and not just his mind trying badly to protect itself. 

More orders. It doesn't matter if he understands them all. The magic will work either way.

Then his host unsticks his hands and feet and tries to talk to him. "If I show you to the bathroom are you going to make me regret it?"

He shifts to a more comfortable position, moving slowly—both on purpose and because he's stiff—and tries to look as nonthreatening as possible. 

His host attempts to pull him to his feet. He's more gentle about it than he could be if he were specifically trying to hurt him.

That's a good sign. He goes where he's pulled. 

There's a bathroom down the hall. It wasn't designed for humans. His host is not going to watch but will lurk nearby ready to murder him if necessary.

Surprisingly considerate given how he's been treated so far. Although he has no idea what happened in the missing time, so maybe it's all a clever ploy to get him to trust this person while they do terrible things when he's not there to notice. Or erase his memory, or...he doesn't have enough information to figure out what's going on here. 

He figures out how to use the bathroom facilities. Doesn't try to run away. 

Then he can go back to the room he was in before and be told not to leave or try to communicate with anyone outside or damage any property left in here. Not counting himself, he can damage himself if he wants as long as he doesn't bleed on anything that might be at all inconvenient to clean.

He understands very little of this but what he does understand is enough to alarm him. He doesn't say anything in response, because he's not sure he can remember the word for 'yes' and saying anything at all might get his teeth stuck together again.

His host locks the door and sits and watches him. The metal rectangle keeps doing its thing.

Time to learn some more words. 

Now he's not stuck in such an uncomfortable position, though, it's only a matter of time before he dozes off. He's had a long day. 

That's allowed.

His host sits and watches him sleep and writes things. Nothing happens for a few hours.

He'll sleep for about five hours before the instincts screaming that he's in danger outweigh the exhaustion. 

When he eventually wakes, he doesn't move immediately, lying still and feigning sleep while his fuzzy brain tries to piece together the events of yesterday.

Ah, right. That's where he is. 

When he shows any signs of having woken up he'll be offered a bag of nuts.

It's not night. It's not even evening. It's morning, earlier than he went to sleep.

He's not even bothering to keep track of how much time he's lost, at this point. That way lies paranoia. 

Food! Food is good. He eats the nuts and smiles tentatively at his host. 

He offers him the rectangle again. Not that it was hard to find but he figures the gesture matters.

...he finishes the nuts first. Then he goes back to watching the talking cats on the magic rectangle. 

Then he can learn lots of things. If he's learned enough vocabulary to understand, he can learn that the bracelets mark slaves here.

Yeah, he kinda figured. Only he would have the bad luck to get magically dropped in a different country where they've never heard of Sesat and still wind up a slave. 

He doesn't have the energy to be angry about it right now. The anger is still there, buried under his skin, but it's not clawing to get out because there's nowhere to go once it does. 

Eventually his owner tries to talk to him again.

"Do you think you understand enough Hari to talk now?"

Um. "I think so?" 

"How and why are you here in my apartment?"

"I was eaten by a giant snake," using the word for the kind of snake he's seen on the magic rectangle, "and then I was here." 

"Eaten?"

"I don't know if it ate me but I was in its mouth."

"Why did you try to assault me?"

"What?" 

"When you got here, you were like..." He makes a snarly face.

"You shouted at me and stuck me to the floor; I was scared!" He can't actually remember that incident very clearly, probably because of all the panic. 

"You were trespassing!"

"Not on purpose? I told you, a snake ate me and then I was here." 

"A snake was trespassing using you."

"...I guess? That's a confusing way to say it." 

"This apartment is mine. Coming in is trespassing."

"Alright?" He shrugs. "But I didn't know that when I first got here." 

"Who was the snake that sent you here?"

"I didn't get its name before it ate me." 

"You didn't see it before then? It wasn't a neighbor or a neighbor's friend or something?"

"...no. It was a giant snake in the woods. Maybe I'm using the wrong word for 'snake'?" 

"Maybe. A person that doesn't have legs?"

"I don't know if it was a person, but I didn't see any legs."

"Uh-huh. Where were you before?"

"A forest." 

...he should probably be more than minimally helpful, as tempting as it is to make his new owner work for it. "In Sesat." 

"Sesat?"

"It's a country. Borders Azan, Iral...stop me if these start sounding familiar." 

"...No... are you sure you know what our word 'country' means?"

"The Hari Empire is a country?" 

"Yeah. It's a country."

"Do you know about any other countries?" 

"No."

"Well. They exist. I came from one." 

"...Okay. So you don't know about Har."

"I do now. But Sesat doesn't, no." 

"Can people teleport in Sesat? Like the way you came here. Is that normal there?"

"No. No-one in Sesat can teleport." And he's pretty sure no-one in Azan or Iral can do it either, or Sesat wouldn't exist. 

"...I'm really confused. Uh. What magic do you have?"

"Me? Or Sesat?" 

"Yes. Both."

"None. Well, none that anyone told me about, anyway." 

"...Oh."

Do I look like I'd be in this situation if I had magic that could have gotten me out of it, he doesn't say. 

"...You're very smart for an animal. If you don't want me to sell you to someone who will eat you alive, now's the time to give me a reason not to."

...what.

"What?!" 

Sigh. "Do you understand?"

"I understood what you said! I just don't know why you said any of it or what kind of reasons might persuade you not to let me get eaten alive." 

"If I sell you, I get rings. I want rings. If you can give me rings, I don't need to sell you. But you have to give me more rings than I can get from selling you and you have to make it more by a big enough number that I don't mind having to share space with you."