Well, there is still a forest, on one side at least. The trees are completely different, though. Not just not burnt, but a totally different kind of tree, and unfamiliar kind at that, with a wide river that wasn't there before as well.

And looking in the other direction, there's something else entirely. A cluster of boxy buildings, all close together and colored in various earthy browns, oranges, and reds and whose colors are distributed seemingly almost at random, stretching for a few miles up and down a coast that was possibly not there before either, centered on the mouth of the river as it spills out into the sea, where there are some docks and where some ships settled on the water are tied off.

There's definitely quite a few people milling around down below, between the buildings. Honestly, it's a lot of people.

What. What. Where is he, he was nowhere near the coast.

The color scheme would be strange (but very cool) for an individual, but with a crowd like that he'd bet it's not, not that he has an alternative hypothesis. He sends the ship in that direction, anyway; maybe peoples' reaction to him will give him some clues as to what's going on.

His colors stand out against the still-overcast sky quite well, so people notice him coming in pretty early. A few people, ones who are sitting down eating or doing various other stationary activities might gawk and wave, but the ones who are up and about don't seem to pay him much mind, at least initially.

Once he's been headed down for a bit (though still a few times too far for his communication to reach), a small group of people up on the roof of one of the taller buildings underneath him wheel out some kind of contraption, hold a part of it up to their mouth, and project a fast-paced sequence of amplified mouth-sounds at him. It's not anywhere near as loud as an emergency alarm, but it's definitely still pretty loud, given how clear he can hear it despite still being a way's up.

This isn't illuminating.

It doesn't seem unfriendly, though, so he heads in that direction, and once he's got the ship's propellers set he makes a set of sound reducing headphones to rest just forward of his ears where he can put them on quickly if they decide to be painfully loud, and adds a glyph to the front of his ship indicating that he's not hostile.

They seem a bit perturbed by something, which is a bit confusing. Then when he forms the glyph on the front of his ship, they outright panic, scrambling away from his ship and back inside the rooftop door they initially emerged from. One of them bumps into the contraption as they flee, knocking it over and causing it to produce a brief but even louder and painfully sharp sound before going quiet again.

A moment later, there's more mouth-sounds coming out of the building, though it's duller, maybe echoing up off the ground and the buildings rather than being projected directly at him. And now everybody on the street is panicking too, rushing into buildings when they can or else just running away from his ship.

Oops. (Also, ow.)

He adjusts his ballast to head back up into the sky and makes himself a telescope, both to keep an eye on the people below and to see if he can spot any other settlements in the area.

There are smaller settlements, or at least clusters of buildings, all with a similar box style though much smaller in scale, at regular intervals up the river. There's also a path of cleared trees with rail-tracks that runs parallel to the river that goes past the horizon which probably goes somewhere.

A few minutes later, when he's checking on the people below, he may notice that a group of five people dressed the same, in a different kind of clothing from the people earlier, green- and black-barred suits and paints with shiny pins on their breasts, are...flying towards him. Not in any kind of vehicle, just levitating at him, swaying through the air like they're being carried by an enormous, invisible bird. They're approaching at significant speed.

Um.

His house should have a clear protective bubble around it now, close enough in that they can get into communication range but not much closer than that.

He'll even add a landing pad, as an afterthought, if he has time.

They reach his elevation only a few moments later, but don't collide with the bubble, instead circling around him, not landing regardless of whether he's provided a surface to do so on or not. The five of them make more mouth-sounds at him, all in unison. They sound more forceful than before, but there's also an undercurrent of fear and uncertainty in their harmony.

Well he can't communicate with them if they won't get close enough, unless they know the same writing system he does, which he seriously doubts. And also, it has occurred to him that the most likely explanation here is that they have whatever tier of crafting comes after the type he can do, which suggests they are to him as he is to crows and elephants, which is not a position he feels optimistic about being in in the slightest. He watches them as they circle; he doesn't have much hope of keeping the fear and submission out of his body language, and he's not particularly trying, but he's not taking any actions about that, either.

They circle another couple times, without making anymore mouth-sounds. Then, they finally alight on the landing pad they've been offered.

If he's still keeping an eye out, he may be distressed to notice that other groups of flying people are emerging from the settlement below. They aren't rising up yet, but the way they're all starting to circle, at all the various distances, is plausibly unsettling, and perhaps give the impression of carrion birds in waiting.

For better or worse he's not looking at the land below the ship right now.

When the flying people land, he steps forward to the leading edge of the ship, into communication range. He's not looking at them at all, or addressing them with his body language, it'll almost seem incidental that he's gone there, but they get a vague impression as he comes into range that he's uncertain of the situation, and then he flinches slightly and glances more directly at them and the impression strengthens into an understanding that he doesn't know how he came to be here and he doesn't mean to trespass or cause any harm.

The flying people don't seem to react all that much either, but there's a period of time where they're quiet, perhaps deliberating. Then they make some more mouth-sounds, still quite firm but again with a more information than demanding tone. Then they fly off, heading back down and joining the ?flock? of flying people. Others break off from the flock and head further down, back to the ground, quickly disappearing into one the largest buildings.

He looks down when they fly away, and yeah, that's not great.

He heads inside for a minute to get a mass of crafting material, and brings his dog up with him when he comes back, to wait in the front of the ship and craft himself and his dog a backup vehicle just in case something happens to his house.

Nobody approaches again for a while, then the flying people went into the building come back out with another person, dressed in white and looking both afraid and maybe kind of excited. Then, the lot of them all fly back up, though the white-clad one looks distinctly less coordinated, flopping around in the wind a bit whereas the flying people are unruffled.

Then they're alighted back on the landing pad. The white-clad makes some mouth-sounds immediately, directed to the flying people and not him. Their tone portrays the same mix of fear and excitement as their posture. The flying people make some mouth-sounds back with an inquisitive tone, the white-clad one replies, and then the flying people turn back to him and make further mouth-sounds, with a tone somewhere between pleading and demanding.

He's calmed down some by this point, though not enough that he's inclined to look at them before they address him. When they do, he looks up from petting the dog, and they'll get the impression that he can't understand their sounds - he believes that they're trying to communicate but his species doesn't communicate that way, only the way he's doing it and by writing. He's guessing that they're not communicating by this method for some reason related to the norms of their species or culture; they do have his permission to communicate with him this way if they need it. Or if they indicate that he should stop he'll do that; he can understand their tone of voice, he thinks.

The flying people don't react much, visually, but make some inquisitive mouth-sounds at the white-clad one, who replies with an excited babble. They discuss for a while, then the flying people face him again and make an inquisitive mouth-sound, before the glyph on the front of his ship is audibly thumped three times in fairly quick succession.

He tenses up considerably when they thump on his ship: He wants them to know that his species has instincts that will react very badly to them interacting with his things or especially his body, with an exception for objects that he's colored grey or clear to indicate that they're available for public use. (The landing pad is clear with a grey border and grey marbled swirl throughout the floor.) The glyph on the front of the ship where they thumped (his ship, still, probably; he's anxious about that now) is an example of the writing system he knows; it's used to denote things that are benign. He has a book printer and ansible to the library on the world he's from aboard and can print them a set of dictionaries if they want, though it'll take a couple hours.

The white-clad one recoils a bit, and berates the flying people briefly, before being quieted with some retaliatory mouth-sounds. Then the flying-people make one at him as well, which sounds probably affirmative? Also possibly apologetic.

Okay: He'll go get the printer started when they indicate that they're done with him. Or, uh - he takes a chunk of material from the ship's railing to reshape into a sign, which he puts a glyph on before setting it up facing them and communicating that the glyph there means 'now', so they can indicate it.

There's a brief but visible reaction, a keying up of tension as he sculpts the chunk of material, among the flying people, before the white-clad one talks to them more and seems to calm them down. They discuss for a short while after that, then the white-clad one gestures pretty distinctly to the sign that he's provided. Then flying people take the white-clad one back down to the ground and are replaced on the landing pad by another group of five.

A couple minutes later, the flock of flying people is shrinking, most of them heading back down to the ground and entering various buildings, then exiting again a minute or two later, and repeating the process. After maybe half an hour, the flock of flying people has reduced to maybe a tenth the size (which is still a pretty scary number of people, all things considered), and people down on the ground are back to milling about, though now it a palpable anxiety to their collective movements. People are glancing up at the ship frequently.

He doesn't notice the initial burst of tension, distracted as he is with is crafting; he does look up when they start talking but goes back to it when it's clear they aren't addressing him. He heads back downstairs when they tell him to, with the dog following close beside him, and when the new group shows up they'll find him feeding the beginning of a roll of paper into a slot on top of a box bulky enough that they may be a little surprised he was able to bring it up to the deck so easily. He glances up when they land, but he presses some buttons on the printer before he steps back to the front of the ship, and after a minute it begins printing.

Back with the others, he lets them know after another false start that he's currently getting a list of book codes and he'll be able to start with the dictionaries when it's done, and then takes another chunk of railing to make more signs.

They do not seem surprised by the bulk of the machine he's presumably going to print the books with.

The flying people on the landing pad give him another affirmative-sounding vocalization, and wait, watching him, the dog, and printer all with some interest and considerable wariness.

He makes signs and translates them as he puts them up: yes, no, something else, and more complicated. He checks the printer when he's done, waits a few moments to get its printout, enters another code to start it printing, and comes back.

He's very confused about what's going on here and doesn't want to bother them - if they want him to leave he will - but if they'd like to humor him in attempting to figure it out and don't want to communicate with him via crafting - or if they can't for whatever reason, he's noticed that they're hard to communicate with and doesn't know what that implies about anything but they shouldn't find the same trait in him, if they're just assuming it's not possible that's probably false - then he'd like to try explaining what he knows and what his guesses are and they can indicate when he seems to be on the wrong track, and he'll probably find that useful.

The nearest of the five will gesture at the 'more complicated' sign when he conveys the possibility of them wanting him to leave, then the 'yes' sign when he mentions figuring out what's going on, then 'something else' at them not wanting to communicate, 'yes' and 'more complicated' with different hands at them being unable to communicate, 'yes' and 'more complicated' simultaneously again at him not having the same quality that makes communication difficult, and just 'yes' when he proposes him sharing his guesses.

...that's an awful lot of 'more complicated' and in particular it looks like his guess at why they aren't communicating with him might be wrong, which is - not reassuring but probably better than his guess, at least.

He should start at the beginning, though.

He's pretty sure he's from a different world; he's been enough places on his and talked to enough other travelers that he's very confident that he'd know if there were any people on his world who could fly like they can, and there aren't. On the world he's from, sufficiently clever creatures can craft, with two known tiers of crafting; using it to communicate, like he's currently doing, is the easier tier, and a bunch of different animals can do it, the clever ones, crows and parrots and elephants and things. Changing objects in various ways is the more difficult tier, and his species - they call themselves Crafters - are the only ones who can do it. He would expect this to be true everywhere and for other abilities to represent a higher tier of crafting ability in addition to those two. Is that the case here?

The apparent representative of the five gestures to 'no', then a moment later 'something else' and 'more complicated' together.

Okay, that's reassuring, if there's a species out there that's as far beyond Crafters as Crafters are beyond crows he doesn't want to find himself mysteriously transported into the middle of them. Presumably the more complicated other thing is however they're able to fly, which is pretty scary in its own right but not so fundamental a shift in how the world works for him.

Crafters are - they have the crafting, obviously, which he'll explain next, but in terms of things about them as a species, the obviously relevant part here is the territoriality instinct - each Crafter picks a color scheme that denotes things that are theirs, and they have an instinctual inability to touch each others' things or each other without explicit ongoing permission; if this happens anyway they can end up with a fundamental confusion about who the thing belongs to, and become unable to touch or interact with the thing that was theirs a moment before. This does also apply to him as a person which is why he intends to keep a solid surface between himself and them for the foreseeable future, getting confused about oneself in that way isn't very survivable especially at his age and with nobody he trusts around to take care of him. Crafters are also more solitary and less aggressive than most of the talking animals, which are the closest thing he has to compare to, and being able to craft means he can be entirely self-sufficient given the right starting resources; he doesn't have any chickens with him and only the one dog, and he'll want a wider variety of food plants than he keeps in his emergency storage, but if the best option for everyone is for him to go live alone somewhere uninhabited he's relatively well prepared to do that if he can for example trade some crafting for those things first.

The five flying people don't exactly discuss amongst themselves, in the way the previous group did with the white-clad one, but they share meaningful glances in the quiet for a while, before their representative gestures to the 'more complicated' sign with some evident consternation, perhaps at the language barrier.

He'll be able to read the dictionary to them soon.

So, crafting. There's not much more to the communicative version than they've seen; he has them at about the edge of the range he can communicate at, which he can in theory improve with practice but not very quickly. He can communicate this way with animals, even if they can't communicate back, and he can communicate sensory things, though that's a little more difficult and he's already having to put in some extra effort to communicate with them so he probably won't do much of it, not that he normally would either. Object crafting involves converting normal matter into crafting material, which he can then change the properties of -  things like shape, size, firmness, tensile and compressive strength, reactions to stimulii, all kinds of stuff. He can also copy the properties of one piece of crafting material to another, so for example once he has the dictionary printed he can copy the shape and markings of it to another piece of crafting material to make a second instance to give to them. Crafting can be used to make dangerous things but he's not in the habit of doing that and doesn't intend to start here, if he ends up having some sort of complaint about them he'll just leave. If they want tools or other useful things from him he's willing to make some for them, but not necessarily a lot. Crafting can also be used to change physical bodies - he makes most of his food by crafting food plants to grow the parts of themselves he wants to eat; other uses are more complicated and he's not well trained in it - and genes - he doesn't know how to do that.

A tension builds in the posture of the flying people's postures as his explanation of crafting continues, and their representative quickly gestures to the 'no' sign when he mentions the possibility of them wanting tools or other useful things from him, and there's an air of haste or hurry in the group of five on the landing pad as they do so. They somehow manage to look even more tense when the possibility of flesh- and genecrafting are brought up. The representative gestures to the 'something else' sign, then the 'more complicated' sign, then back to the 'something else' sign in quick succession. Then they speak in unison again with a somewhat pleading tone, before quickly flying off, down to the ground.

Another group of five peels off of the remaining flock and takes their place for now.

He doesn't know what to make of them switching out like that, he communicates to the new group when they arrive. He's also more or less out of things to explain.

The new group of five all point at the 'more complicated' sign. Perhaps further explanation will have to wait.

Fortunately, the previous group returns fairly soon, with what appears to be something like a straw hat in one of their hands, except it's woven out of verdant, possibly even still-living vines (and consequently rather floppy). The newer group departs and the previous group takes their place on the landing pad again, with the representative holding up the vine hat in one hand and pointing to the 'something else' sign with the other, before levitating the vine hat out of their hand and up against the outer surface of the bubble.

He's relaxed considerably but still flinches when they tap the hat against the bubble.

He's guessing that they want to give that to him? Presumably for magic-related reasons?

A spot on the outer shell just under where the hat is extends inward, forming an enclosed chute that ends in a smaller bubble a little ways from him.

The hat retracts a little from bubble when they observe his flinch, and carefully floats down the chute with touching any of the sides before seemingly being 'dropped' by whatever force is lifting it in the smaller bubble.

The chute extends a little farther to drop the hat-bubble into his hand.

He looks at it, then looks up: He's not entirely sure how he'll react if they move something while he's touching or wearing it but that could be very bad. He's kind of expecting that if they want him dead they're not going to have much trouble doing it but he wants to be clear that that's the risk they'd be taking. Also other kinds of magic might be similarly bad if they have more than the movement kind.

Should he put the hat on?

The representative points to the 'something else' sign, then sort of gestures at the ship in general, then tries to point at the hat specifically.

Do they want him to convert the hat into crafting material?

The representative gestures to the 'yes' sign, and seems to consider pointing to additional signs but decides against it.

All right.

The conversion process doesn't look like much of anything, at least to mundane senses - he doesn't even take the hat out of  the bubble - but after a minute of staring at it he looks up and wonders whether they'd like him to make any other changes before he gives it back.

The group of five are all watching the process with intense scrutiny, but don't actually seem to be able to tell when the process has started or stopped except by his communicating that he's done it.

The representative points to the 'no' sign, before they make an inquisitive sound and seem to consider gesturing to another sign for a moment before again deciding not to.

He'll reattach the bubble to the chute, then, and adjust it to slide the hat back out to them, mostly by way of making the inside of the chute slippery rather than by giving it much of an incline.

The flying people will catch the hat once it's fallen free of the chute (or pluck it carefully out if it stops short of exiting entirely), bring it into the midst of the group for detailed inspection, which will last for at least a few minutes. The representative remains attentive to him in case of further communication, though.

He is curious about what they're doing, but doesn't communicate that except by mundane body language.

Eventually, after having inspected the converted hat with various simplistic physical tests and perhaps additional more obscure means, the representative points to the 'more complicated' sign again, and the group take off back to the ground, replaced by the same secondary group of five a moment later.

...well if they're going to be a while he's going to make himself a mug of tea. This involves going downstairs for a minute to get a mug of water and a drizzle of sweetener, which he warns them before he does, and then growing and harvesting some leaves from the tea plant growing in a pot by the top of the stairs. He doesn't do anything obvious to heat the water, but it spends a couple minutes steaming anyway before he takes a sip.

It will indeed take a while, maybe half an hour, before the previous of group of five return and relieve the secondary group and return to the landing pad. They seem a bit calmer at ease than before, and no longer have the hat with them.

The first section of the dictionary is ready by then, if they want to get started on it. He has a stack of grey copies ready to send down the chute for them and one in his sparkly indigo.

The flying people seem excited to receive the dictionary section, and will retrieve the stack in the same manner as the hat. They'll quickly flip through the pages to get a basic idea what the general form of the crafter writing system is, how the symbols vary from one another (likely determining that this appears to be a logography, which in retrospect seems natural given the evident absence of spoken language), before flipping back to the beginning holding themselves ready to either receive the meanings from him, or the next section, whichever it is that comes next.

And he'll go through the dictionary. This is less boring than it would be for some dictionaries; a lot of the glyphs have variants with their own internal logic about how they're constructed, so he'll have something to talk about a fair portion of the time rather than just reading off definitions.

The dictionary comes in multiple books, with the first one containing a very basic stripped-down subset of the vocabulary; when he comes to the end of it he takes a break to stretch and make them a big temperature-sensitive signboard and some big temperature-based markers for them to write on it with, if they'd like to try to communicate anything while he picks up the next installment of the dictionary from the printer and makes copies for them.

Oh, good, they were just starting to regret not bringing a blackboard and chalk. They get started writing a message immediately, with perhaps surprising facility (though needing to recheck the dictionary multiple times, and occasionally prompting him for a reiteration of a particular definition or combinatorial rule).

"We need to bring this to the people who we follow the decisions of, and our knowledgeable people, so they can think about what to say. We also need to get material to write definitions and rules in our language, for the others to read. We will be back soon."

They'll wait to leave until he confirms he's got their message.

He can in theory make more copies of the dictionary for them, or writing material or whatever else, but he doesn't have much spare matter with him and can't make it from nothing; if they expect to want him to do that going forward it'd be useful for them to bring some things up for him to convert into crafting material. Anything will work so long as it's solid rather than liquid or gas and not dangerous to be near.

The representative quickly gestures to the 'no' sign as the group quickly erases the previous message (seemingly using whatever invisible force they're wielding to chill the whole board at once rather than swiping over it with the erase-side of the hot/cold-marker they've been given).

"The conversion process causes things to lose--" and then there's a new symbol that they've seemingly coined just now, for lack of a better word to be found in the direction they have. It seems like it's attempting to combine the symbols for 'all', 'part', and 'power', but with some additional changes to make it clear that they're not using 'all' and 'part' like normal modifiers for 'power', "which may have other effects we can't predict. We will get our own materials when we go."

Then they quickly add a few more messages below that, "The presence of [all-part-power] may be why communication is difficult. It is the medium our abilities operate through. The doctor who was brought here before has the ability to see it. You and your things do not have any. Living things, especially people, normally have a significant quantity."

Huh. If they'd like his opinion on it they can bring him some samples with more or less of whatever that is and he'll see if it makes a difference in how hard it is to convert them to crafting material. Also he is going to need more matter for his own use eventually, if they want to start thinking now about how he can best get it without disrupting anything - usually he'd just take a tree or two that nobody particularly cared about but rocks or things are fine too.

They chill the board again and write another few messages. "The hat was our test for this. They don't have a great quantity of [all-part-power], but they have more than most plants of similar size and weight. Trees would likely have more. We will bring rocks for you to convert along with the writing materials."

Ah, that makes sense. The hat was more difficult than he expected, but he hadn't noticed that it was alive, and communicative crafting is different enough to make a direct comparison between it and object crafting hard. He appreciates the rocks-to-come.

The flying people all make a hand gesture that doesn't seem related to the signs he's put up, perhaps just a way of letting him know that they're departing now, before taking off once more. As with the previous times, they're quickly replaced by the same alternative group.

It will once again be a while before they're back, though if he checks, he'll be able to see that maybe half of that time is them finding a place in the large settlement where rocks, bricks, and other heavy, solid objects are neatly stacked and surrounded by a fence.

He waits a little while and then heads inside to get some of his emergency supplies. When they come back they'll find him taking stock of a box of tiny objects on a table he didn't have when they left; he crafts a couple pieces of fabric out of the edges of the table to hold down the various piles of objects when he sees them coming, and returns to the front of the ship.

Eventually, after much discussion with the person seemingly taking care of the rocks-and-bricks place, the previous group of five flies back out, now levitating a pallet stacked with a few hundred hand-length cut stone bricks in a neat and sturdy pyramid. It will hover near the chute while they replace the alternate team on the landing pad, and once he seems ready to accept it they'll give it over.

After a moment's consideration he opens up a hole in the bubble large enough for the pallet; he'd appreciate it if they got it as close to the center of the ship as possible before letting go of it so it doesn't unbalance things too badly.

And indeed they will do so, the pallet float through the provided opening, over to the nearest open area of sufficient size towards the center of the ship, then down slowly and carefully until it's at a height where they're not worried about the fall causing the bricks to make a mess, before letting it drop the remaining distance. The pallet definitely still cracks underneath the stack, going from the sound, but that seems to be the limit of the damage.

The deck underneath it is plenty strong enough to take the force; the ship does start sinking in the air but he takes a moment to enlarge the balloon overhead and get it stable before he closes up the hole in the bubble.

Do they want to get started on the next part of the dictionary or do they have things to discuss first?

They clear the signboard again and write, "The other people are still thinking about what to discuss. Translating more of the dictionary seems like the correct thing to do."

In addition to the stack of bricks, they also brought a pot of black liquid and a stack of white sheets, which they're levitating now, tendrils of black pulled from the pot by their invisible force and waiting over one of the topmost sheet.

Back to the dictionary it is, then; he'll pause whenever they need to for notes.

They're pretty fast with laying down their odd markings (only 36 distinct symbols in total, or 19 if the ones that look the same but are flipped horizontally are equivalent, written in compact lines), but not as fast as communication, so they will definitely need to take at least a small break for each new symbol.

After a bit he starts trying to draft a letter in between glyphs, and after another bit he gives up on it and grabs a couple of bricks to start converting in the pauses, but he'll keep at it until he runs out of dictionary or they call for a break.

They have a surprising dedication to the task, and will continue for as much as six hours before breaking, if the process takes that long.

Periodically, groups of five will leave the circling flock, and are replaced a moment later by another team, in a similar manner to how the replacements happened on the landing pad.

He might notice a serpentine chain of carts make it's way over the horizon, headed towards the main settlement following the path carved through the trees and alongside the river, passing by each of the smaller settlements along the way and picking up a small crowd of people at each.

Later, it might be notable that a larger group of flying people, maybe a couple dozen, fly in, carrying several big, thoroughly vine-covered boxes, dropping off the boxes at another one of the larger buildings in the main settlement where they're brought inside at ground-level. A handful of the new flying people follow the boxes inside, while the rest join the circling flock.

They'll be midway through the last book of the dictionary at the six hour mark, but he's flagging by then too; if they want a break he's not going to complain about it.

He would like to bring his ship down for the night if that's all right with them, and refill his water tank (saltwater is fine, he can distill the salt out) and let his dog out to run around for a little while. He's fine with doing it away from the settlement and would in fact prefer that if they don't mind it.

They'll finish up the notes for the last symbol they were working on before their posture relaxes significantly. They clear the board of its most recent messages and write, "Landing away from the city is preferred. Landing on the water would be ideal to maintain minimal contact. We understand if you would prefer to be able to leave your ship on foot, however. We will guide you to an appropriate landing spot in accordance with your preference for ground or water."

He's fine anchoring in the shallows if they're confident there won't be a storm overnight or anything like that.

There is indeed no storm forecasted for the next twelve days, and none as intense as last night's for the whole rest of the season.

They will go ahead and guide him down to the shallows to the north (assuming nothing weird is going on with which direction the sun sets in) of the settlement, which has a pleasantly sandy beach that leads up to a sort of wall of earth held together by the trees' roots. The settlement is detectable as a glow behind the trees to the south, but is not directly visible, nor is it audible over the waves or natural sounds of the forest.

It might be strange, once he's touched down on the water, to note that there's almost no life in the sea, and what life there is seems to be solely crustaceans or other arthropods, with nary a mollusc, fish, or marine mammal to be seen.

There is still a flock of flying people circling him, now overhead rather than below. There are fewer people in it now, though. It's cut down to maybe half the size it was before he landed.

He doesn't notice the lack of sea life right away, but once he's had some time to tend to things in the house he makes a floating platform to let the dog out on, and he spots it while he's out there with her. It's pretty surprising, especially since they didn't comment on it when the word 'fish' came up in the dictionary, and he considers trying to get someone's attention to ask, but ultimately decides against it: these people haven't really been that sociable, they probably won't appreciate it.

He stays out with her for half an hour or so and brings the platform back in with him when he goes inside; they'll also see him on the roof printing up a couple more books and just generally taking in his surroundings for a while before he turns in for the night when the sun starts to set.

He'll be up shortly after sunrise in the morning, though he only comes out onto the top deck for long enough to harvest some more tea leaves before returning inside to have breakfast. Once he's ready to deal with people, though, he comes up again and starts moving things around so he can designate half of the deck as available for them to land on, with enough furniture for them to be comfortable and a large shared table extending across the dividing line, and when he's done he adjusts the protective bubble so that they can land in that portion of the space.

Once it's obvious from the air that he's setting up part of his ship's upper deck to be landed on, a group of five peels off from the flock (which, at its current size, shrinks it noticeably) and flies back towards the city. Maybe half an hour later, they're returning along with the main team from yesterday and two of the vine-covered boxes. One of the boxes, as well as the original group of five, land on the apportioned area of his ship, while the other five and the second box...land on the water's surface, as if standing on an invisible raft.

In the public area, the familiar five flying people make gestures seemingly as greetings, before the vine-box opens, the vines parting like a curtain to reveal three people. One wears pure white, though in a different form than the doctor from before, while the other two wear green suits with metal pins, similar to the ones worn by the flying people, but the clothes don't have the black bars and instead have pure white collars, and they each have three pins rather than just one, and the shape of the pins are different from the ones the flying people wear, and from each other's. Additionally, all three are wearing hats with what seem to be living plants either held on top or woven into the hat itself. One of the green-dressed ones has the same kind of vine hat as he was given before, which when worn almost gives the impression of green hair (which two of the flying people he's interacted with so far have actually had). It's possible that most of the people he saw in the streets the previous day were wearing these vine hats, which would might make it seem odd in retrospect that the flying people and and the doctor weren't.

The three people who emerged from the box will sit in the provided furniture. The flying people all remain standing.

He greets them, from a more socially comfortable distance this time, and explains that the books he's left out for them are a traveler's primer about his world, covering the geography and giving an overview of how Crafters in different places live, and a childrens' primer on crafting vocations, covering the various things that can be done with it - he can do a few tricks beyond the basics but nothing that needs specialist training or years of practice. (He's also provided a writing board and markers again.) His primary goal for today is determining how he can get the supplies he's going to want in the longer term - chickens or other food animals and seeds for food plants - and in general figuring out how he's going to live here, but he assumes they have plenty of other questions for him and it's fine with him if they want to go first.

The three new people confer with each other, and the familiar five, for a long moment, before the they (presumably the familiar five, it's unclear since they're still using their invisible force to wield the marker) writes, "These will be translated and read soon. We will give you a similar packet about our own history and culture, as well as information about [all-part-power], once it has been translated. Food animals and seedstock can be provided, but the decision-making people may have--" another new symbol, this one seemingly stitched together from 'obstacle' and 'request', "which they will want satisfied before they allow more to be given to you than has already been given."

Well, he's willing to trade with them if they want anything he can do, so hopefully that will be fine. It is somewhat urgent for him; he should be able to feed himself indefinitely, if not comfortably so, but he only has a couple days' worth of food for his dog unless the fishing situation here is somehow much better than it looks.

There's some mixture of relief and amusement in the familiar five's posture, while the new three (and the five hanging back on the water) are all stony-faced. After a moment of additional writing, he's presented with a new message, "Fishing will not be good, no. Some people in the west have pools with fish made by--" another compound, constructed from 'eat', 'human', 'power', and a smaller iteration of the same 'decision-making people' phrase they used a moment ago, "before they were slain. Those are the only fish here. They are different from the fish of the secret land, which your home seems like. They are artificial and recreated only from memory."

The white-suited one speaks up, and another message is written. "Related to the eat-human-power-decision-making-people, the correct-thoughts decision-making-person wants to know where crafting comes from, and whether it needs to be fueled by anything unpleasant." There was a significant amount of thought and eventual compromise evidence in the familiar five's posture as they figured out how phrase it.

He hopes to get explanations of some of these new terms soon.

Crafting doesn't come from anywhere; people learn the basics as young children, similarly to how they learn to walk and use objects. They've seen how making crafting material works; depending on what he's converting the conversion process can be mentally tiring in the same way any other kind of mental work is tiring but it doesn't require any resources aside from that mental effort, and working with crafting material doesn't even particularly require that.

There's another bit of discussion, then another message. "The information packet that is being translated will contain an explanation. Do you know what causes crafters to have crafting while other animals can at most only communicate?"

He's pretty sure it's related to intelligence; occasionally a Crafter will be born who doesn't pick it up and they always have other cognitive problems, and there are stories about particularly clever apes or elephantiforms being able to do basic object crafting.

More discussion, then another reply. "Is it known how intelligence results in crafting, or what physical process mediates the connection between intelligence and crafting?"

Not particularly, no. He's heard that there's a minor genetic component to crafting skill but he doesn't know much about that, he might be able to get a book about it for them, and he'd be pretty surprised if crafting itself was genetic, communicative crafting occurs in clever animals from apes to fish.

There's more discussion, and some space is cleared on the signboard, then another message is written. "Is there a way to make it so that something cannot be converted?"

No, but he's not going to go around converting things they don't want him to.

More discussion, and more space being cleared, then another, longer message. "More will be explained in the information packet. This settlement is part of a group of settlements, whose people are bound by strong written agreements to follow the decisions of the decision-making-people. There is another group of settlements, in the west, who follow different agreements, and who are a threat to us. It's good that you are not going to convert things we don't want you to convert, but if we don't know how crafting works, then don't know for certain that the other group won't find some way of accessing it for themselves, and if they do, they might use it to cause the people in our group great suffering and death. The decision-making-people want your help to make sure this doesn't happen. They believe that studying how crafting works is important for achieving that goal, and think it is probably what your help is most needed for."

...a threat how? ...no, that makes sense, his species doesn't threaten each other but other species do. He wouldn't expect them to be able to pick up crafting from him from here, if it's possible to pick up at all, but he has no idea how he got here so he has no idea whether someone else might have ended up there.

If he helps them figure out crafting, what are they going to do to the western group with it?

More discussion precedes their reply. "The three decision-making-people here now are not enough to make a promise, but they expect the plan will be to see the western group agree to strong written agreements that are more like ours, and put together groups like the one the five of us who have been translating are part of, to watch people and stop them from breaking the agreement, so that they will not have the opportunity to do things like use crafting to create very dangerous objects, or other things that the decision-making-people think the western group is doing but which are secret."

It sounds to him like they'll want to learn what crafting can do so they can get the other group to agree not to do the scary things it can do; that seems fine to him, and he's generally willing to work with them on the project of keeping things from getting worse between them and the other group (or better yet making them better), to the best of his ability - the best of his ability might be less good than they'd like, though; most obviously he can't live in one place for too long or he starts having emotional problems.

The familiar five nod at that, and there's only a brief further discussion before the next message is written. "We all understand that people have limitations, even if crafting itself isn't something we're familiar with. The legends say that before the eat-human-power-decision-making-people rose up and made everything theirs, all people traveled, and settlements were all temporary. Consequently, our group tries to be accommodating of people who want to move around."

That's good. Plenty of Crafters live settled lives, he's just personally not suited to it. He's usually fine in one place for a season or so, though, if he gets enough time traveling in between.

The reply is more or less immediate, perhaps having already been decided as some kind of conditional, or just going from the familiar fives' own judgement. "That will probably be okay. Do you think you would be alright if we followed you around, at about the same distance the ones circling right now? Alternatively, if you're able to know what your most likely route and destination will be beforehand, would you be able to let us know when you're moving and where you're going to?"

Well, he'd rather they not follow him, but he can't stop them, and he is going to want to wander. He could also check in via ansible (a paired object where any change to one part also changes the other, so for example you can use it to send messages) if that works for them.

There's a brief flare of somewhat more energetic discussion before the next reply. "Is there more information on ansibles in the primer you've given us?"

There might be; he hasn't read it recently. They're not exactly complicated, though, there aren't caveats to 'any change to one also changes the other' except that you can move them around independently.

More discussion, though not as much and not quite as hurried. "Is there a known way to find out what paired ansibles are shaped like, if you don't have access to either member of the pair? Is it possible to add a third, after the first two are made?"

No and no; they're only ever paired, trying to split them again breaks the effect. There are some possibilities he'd worry about in their position if someone dangerous got ahold of the other half of an ansible they had but as long as both ends were safe he wouldn't worry.

The representative of the familiar five nods their head, and then get into a longer conversation with the newer three. After a while, the signboard is cleared and the next message is written. "Checking in via ansible should be okay. The decision-making-people think that, along with helping us learn more about crafting, that making ansibles that can interact with our machines would be another way you could help us. Our group and the western group are not fighting with weapons yet, but members of both groups go and watch the other group from inside, stealthily. This is how our decision-making-people know that the western group have plans. Many of these watchers from the western group watch us in part by finding the messages people in our group send each other that are supposed to be private and make copies of the messages that they send back to the west. If we have ansibles to send private messages, it becomes much harder for people who the message was not written for to find it."

That seems reasonable enough to him. And machines are another common way ansibles are used; that's how he's getting the books from his world, his book printer has an ansible in it with its other half in the world library's book-sharing machine.

There's another pretty intense flurry of discussion at that, though it slows down quickly and there's a long lull in their talking. Minutes of quiet pass, before another group of five flying people descends from the darkening sky, landing on the water with the other five and the second vine-box. They're carrying a pretty thick stack of papers with crafter-writing carefully inked on each page, which they float over to the familiar five after land, and who in turn place it down on the shared table for him to retrieve at his leisure. Laying on the table, it's clear to see that this is indeed a considerable tome.

On the signboard, a new message is written. "This is the translated information packet. It contains an overview of history and pre-history as we know it, as well as a somewhat more detailed description of the current political situation and how it emerged from the destruction of the eat-human-power-decision-making-people's way of doing things. There are appendices for our current understanding of nature and of the natural laws govern things, including further appendices on all-part-power as it appears in most living things, the different way it manifests in the known magical beasts, the three ways it is known to manifest in power-using humans, and what we have managed to learn from analysis of the smoke-things left behind by the eat-human-power-decision-making-people."

A moment later, another short message is added. "Smoke-things behave in a few important ways similar to crafting material. These similarities made people worried that you might have been an eat-human-power-decision-making-person that had escaped from their death and was now returning, and thus extremely dangerous. We know now that you are not."

Well, that book is going to take him a while to get through. Before he does that - there's a chance fleshcrafting interacts with person-eating magic in a useful/dangerous-to-opponents way; he doesn't want to enable them to hurt the other group without knowing quite a bit more about the situation but he doesn't want to leave them vulnerable if the other group also has a Crafter, either. Do they want to give him a quick overview of things with regards to that?

Quickly written in response, "Yes, we want you to give a quick overview of what you believe to be relevant."

He makes a face about their response as he thinks about it for a few seconds, and then sighs.

How about they give him another of those living hats and he can just show them, there's also a question of whether it'll work at all. With the understanding that he's not going to do anything that might hurt the other group without a lot more evidence that it's necessary.

There's a bit more discussion before one of the two green-clad new ones gets up, walks back through the pseudo-curtain of the opened vine-box, and holds out their vine-hat, which is levitated up and over onto the table.

He makes a shallow tub of goopy crafting material and rests the hat on top, then grows it to double its volume and passes it back over to them.

It'll still be alive, he conveys; if it still has the property they care about alive things having, well, he can do other living things that way too, with some caveats.

The familiar five take the hat back and seem to consider it carefully, before levitating it over to the ten other flying people now waiting around the unopened vine-box, who do the same, before sending it back over, with it eventually returning to the green-clad decision-making-person who offered it, now wearing it more like a hooded cloak than a hat.

There's some more discussion before the next message is written. "None of us are eye-power-people, whose abilities are generally much more precise, but we do not power-hear more all-part-power within the expanded hat. The quantity already present has been rarefied across its increased volume. It is good to know that this aspect of crafting does not seem able to supplement living things' accumulation of all-part-power."

That still sounds to him like they might want to worry about the other group suddenly being more able to get people to donate body parts for eating - the caveat is that the donor does have to have the mass to spare, but he can get it into a form that can be removed safely and relatively painlessly - but they'd know more about the details of their thing than he does. He'll get started on the book now if that's all.

There's an odd mixture of fear and relaxation, as well as something like regret or shame, apparent in the faces and postures of the familiar face, and one of the three decision-making-people gives him a sad smile.

After just a few words of discussion, the next message is brief. "That is all. The decision-making-people can remain here to help answer questions you have, or can depart if you want to be alone."

He doesn't strongly care whether they stay or go; he can take notes on his questions if they have other things they'd rather be doing.

He already has a comfy chair; he makes himself a sunshade and a mug of tea before settling in to read.

It appears they don't have other things they'd rather be doing, given they all remain in their own seats.

The information packet's content are organized such it starts with the earliest information and proceeds through time from there.

Thus, it begins with archeology. The oldest evidence of human existence in the world lie in the shallow cave system of Zestsaksanrewp Island, a relatively small island  at the vertex of Peddzjen Bay, which accords with the legends that this region was where humanity first arrived after their banishment from the secret land. Notably, the soil is deepest here as well, and it's an increasingly popular theory among archeologists that life itself may have arrived with humanity, perhaps around 600,000 years ago, with Narmjesa not only uninhabited by humans but completely desolate previously. Little is known about the earliest human inhabitants except for the legends and what can be determined from their stone tools, pottery, and skeletons. They are believed to have lived as nomads, traversing cyclically through territories largely defined by the continent's watersheds, a status quo which is believed to have held until approximately 12,000 years ago, when sedentary agriculture began to supplant it.

It is not known exactly when magic, abilities born from special structures within one's spiritual energy (or all-part-power, as it was previously referred to), but it is generally believed to have arisen roughly during, or shortly before or after, the transition to agrarian lifestyles. Eye-magic, the ability to perceive spiritual energy in a manner analogous to sight and strongly tied to its user's physical eyes, and through this perception and study of the patterns of spiritual energy to read the thoughts of other living things, observe the health or sickness of their bodies, and to divine the weather in the spiritual flows of the atmosphere, likely arose first. Flow-magic, the ability to extrude spiritual pseudopods which can interact with both other forms of spiritual energy and the physical world, as well as to sense sense vibrations or oscillations in spiritual energy, a sense often referred as mage-hearing (or power-hearing previously), which with practice can allow for the observation of the emotions or mood of living things in a similar way to which eye-mages read thoughts.

The black magic, also called smoke-magic when being more clinical, almost certainly arose last, as none of the Cannibal Kings (previously referred to as eat-human-power-decision-making-people) have claimed to predate either, not even the High King, and their autobiographies all either explicitly state or imply the existence of well-established eye-magic and flow-magic traditions It is now believed that there was likely some extant but marginal smoke magic traditions at the time as well, the antecedents of the Federation's own White Matron's school, though hard evidence of them is rare due to active efforts to co-opt or destroy them by the Cannibal Kings. The High King did not keep perfect track of the years since her birth, or at least not in a way which modern historians can access, but analysis of the remaining physical artifacts of the time and the records of the younger Kings indicate that her initial conquest and assumption of Kingship took place approximately 10,000 years ago.

The following hundred centuries of history are defined by her and her ilk's inhumanity. The power of smoke-magic is the augmentation of the natural ability of all living things to digest and convert the spiritual energy in the food they eat into more of their own. A black mage's spirit is not limited by their physical body, and can grow seemingly without limit, and even more, can be 'burned', forming a kind of substance or substance-like aura, billowing and oily and black, the 'smoke' from which their other name derives. Smoke's shape, movement, and character are all under the control of the black mage who creates it, so long as that black mage is in contact with the smoke or connected to it through certain spiritually conductive means (including other smoke-constructs). The only limits on how a smoke-construct can behave are its creators supply of spiritual energy, their imagination, and their access to the underlying 'material patterns' which they imbue into the smoke, which they in turn gain from eating as well, though they are absorbs these patterns even from things which nearly lack spiritual energy, such as stone or metal. Even without burning it, however, a black mage suffused with superhuman spiritual energy experiences a holistic physical augmentation as the pattern of their body's existence is amplified and reinforced by their spiritual energy, and possess regenerative abilities even further beyond this baseline enhancement as their spiritual energy expends itself to undo whatever harm befalls them.

The spiritual energy that can be garnered from what is consumed depends not only on how much is present in what is consumed, but also how 'similar' the resonance or structure of the spiritual energy being consumed is to that of the consumer. In nature, this is why mammals often have the greatest density of spiritual energy, with children being fed on their mother's milk and benefiting from a near-perfect transfer of spiritual energy therefrom. In the Cannibal Kings' case, this also meant that in order to grow in power as quickly as possible and maintain their ability to defend against the depredations of their peers, they had to grow and consume living human flesh, at a scale which quickly grew to eclipse the husbandry of any other animal. For a hundred twenty five lifetimes, humanity existed to feed the Cannibal Kings' hunger.

177 years ago, this regime fell. A flow-mage known as Sjesjerkwapar, meaning 'Despiser' in a southern dialect and generally believed to be a name taken up after the fact though no records of him from prior to the fall have been found, discovered a technique which allowed their magic to touch the spirits of others, and to strike at them. When levied against a black mage, this could shred their spirits, temporarily disabling their magic and regeneration, rendering them just as mortal as any other human. When levied against a smoke-construct, this could dispel them entirely, severing the spiritual threads which tether smoke to reality and causing it nigh-instantly evanesce. Before the end of the year, an army of flow-mages had formed and swept across Narmjesa, killing every King they came across, before ending their campaign in the city-palace of the High King, built around the coast of the same Peddzjen Bay where humanity first appeared.

Sjesjerkwapar and the army that followed him founded a new nation there, one which would serve no Kings, which after a few tumultuous years would become the Federation, the eastern group. In the west, in the lands which the flow-mages who fought with Sjesjerkwapar left behind, other, smaller groups came together to organize the people in the absence of the Kings, pursuing their own methods and goals in the aftermath. These groups steadily grew, incorporating one another and occasionally coming into conflict, before eventually a single Coalition of the most powerful and influential of these fragmentary states, the western group, came to dominate. Now, the two stand on opposite ends of Narmjesa and neither is willing to submit to the other, but both find overt war unappealing. They seek to secretly develop methods to overcome the other in a single fell swoop, and spy on one another to discover these methods and develop counters in turn. He presents a major opportunity on that front, and while the Federation will do its best to protect him, if he journeys into the territory of the Coalition, there is every chance that they'll kidnap him and try to turn him into a weapon, or at least a tool. Perhaps even if they already have a crafter under their control.

The Interior, the wilderness of the continent away from it's coasts, is not controlled by either of the great powers, or indeed much inhabited by humans at all. It's a hot and dry desert, speckled with densely packed jungle oases, and populated by dangerous magical beasts of numerous kinds. There are also scattered husks of the Cannibal King's attempts to colonize the Interior, later used as testing sites as they developed newer and stranger smoke-constructs, which are equally dangerous as the wildlife though in a different way. He might be able to get away with moving through there, though there's a risk that one of the magical beasts or royal experiments might interact explosively with crafting material or crafting.

He reads.

Mindreading, huh. Is that why they have the living hats? Assuming yes: Is it only specific plants that work to block eye magic?

These questions don't seem to require any discussion before the answer is written. "Yes, living hats are commonplace as a means of preventing your thoughts from being read. A sufficient quantity of any living matter will do, but the spiritual energy density of these vines means they are the lightest option in terms of weight for the level of privacy offered. Sometimes people less concerned with total coverage will wear lighter moss caps, also sometimes woven with flowers for the sake of prettiness."

Huh. He might want a cutting or some seeds or whatever from one, then.

He continues reading.

Their species is pretty fucked up, they know that, right?

"It is understandable for someone from a place seemingly as pure as the secret land would find us to be fucked up in comparison," is written in reply, again without verbal commentary. There's definitely some building tension visible in the flying people, and to a lesser degree in the Federation executives.

He's not going to do anything about that, to be clear, just, yikes. If he decides he doesn't want anything more to do with them he'll go check out the interior - which he might want to do anyway - or go see if their ocean is as uninhabitable as it looks like it is or something.

There is a bit of discussion on that before another message is written. "The sea is vast. Much of it is unexplored. We have circumnavigated the hemisphere, but the islands we've found in the vastness are small, and many could easily have been missed. It would likely be safer, at least from unknown interactions between spiritual energy and crafting, than the Interior, so long as you remain far enough from the Stormwall*."

(*A symbol introduced in the information packet's section on non-living magical phenomena. It refers to a ring of perpetual storm that encircles this planet's equator. Its clouds and rain are intensely saturated with spiritual energy, nearly equal to the density of a human's despite being dispersed through a gaseous medium rather a fleshy body, and spread across hundreds of millions of cubic kilometers rather than just a five or six dozen liters. There have been a handful of expeditions attempting to either analyze the storm itself or find what's on the other side, including one lead by a Cannibal King approximately three hundred years ago. None have ever returned. It is also the source of the southern coast's yearly monsoon season, and the reason why that season's storms are so unpredictable compared to other weather.)

He'll decide that if and when it comes up; they have actually been basically fine to him so far.

They all relax a bit at that, though there's no written response, just some acquiescent head-bowing from the flow-mages.

So, they wanted him to do some stuff for them?

There's a bit more discussion, though there's a lowness or enervation to it, before the reply is written. "Yes, we would. Further requests are being considered, but for the moment we are asking for however many ansibles you are willing to make for us before you move on, including one to maintain contact with you and more for our own analysis and incorporation into our intelligence network."

One to maintain contact with him is no problem; what do they want to do with the others?

Another, lengthier explanation from the executives precedes the next response. "Our first priority is to determine what method of incorporating them into our long-distance communication machines are most effective, followed by implementing this method and distributing the ansible-equipped machines to various locations where they will help send and receive messages without alerting Coalition agents listening for radio* transmissions or the vulnerability of human or animal messengers. If you are able and decide to produce more than is needed for this, the remainder may distributed to individuals of high value as a means of secret emergency communication, or else studied to try and determine the underlying mechanism by which the halves of an ansible are connected, and more generally to gauge the risks presented by exposing crafting material to spiritual energy, and spiritual energy to crafting material."

If they're going to do experiments it makes more sense to him to do them on generic crafting material rather than ansibles, and he has no problem giving them some for that purpose; he'd like to know anything they find out. (He takes some of the material making up his end of the table, fashions it into half a dozen lightweight grey bricks, and slides the bricks over to their side of the table.) He's probably fine with giving them some ansible versions of the communication boards he's been making, for them to give to people, but he's more hesitant to make them ones to use in machines because machines can do all kinds of things, he'll want to think about that.

It only takes another few words of discussion before the next message is written. "As the only known person capable of making or using crafting material, you will naturally be among the first to learn what our experimenters discover. Generic crafting material will suffice for investigation into its interactions with spiritual energy, though the executives are uncertain as to whether this will be enough to ascertain the specifics of what mechanism ansibles function by. Signboards will suffice, though in that case we may request some additional hot-cold markers, preferably at least one for each half-ansible."

He can do a bunch of hot-cold markers, yeah. (He begins crafting up the first ansible-pair-to-be.) He's not sure what they're expecting to figure out about how ansibles work; they aren't machines with internal parts, they're fundamentally their own thing.

That prompts another short discussion before an explanation is written. "We will not be studying the ansibles as machines, but similar to as if they were smoke-constructs. We will be seeking to understand what causes ansibles behave like ansibles, rather than like things that are not ansibles."

Well, if they think they can get somewhere with that he won't stop them.

He's got the first writing board ready and shows it to them for their approval; it's fairly small, and thin enough to look flimsy even though it's not, and it's a pale grey with black markings when he demonstrates with the attached marking pen. (He can just add a slot for the pen to clip into if they prefer not to have it attached, but without crafting that's much less secure.)

The executives and flow-mages both inspect the signboard-ansible, and everyone seems satisfied. "These will work for our purposes," is written a moment later.

He'll copy the board-and-pen half a dozen times, then, and then split each of those into a pair of ansibles and add pens and connecting lines to the second ansible of each pair; if the connector was included in the ansible, he explains, then both pens would move whenever someone on one side used one, and there'd be a high chance of the other one getting tangled in something and making the whole setup unusable until it was untangled.

There's a look of understanding on the flow-mages, and the three executives nod. Assuming he sends them over the table, the flow-mages will be ready to accept eleven of the twelve ansible-halves.

Well, he does want to know what the plan is for him getting what he needs, somewhere in here.

There is some discussion at that, longer than the last couple but still not exceedingly long, before the reply is written. "If you have specifications as to what the desired qualities of the food animals or seedstock, we can receive those now or you can share them via the ansible or by getting in contact with a civil servant in person and will do our best to find and deliver them to you or your last known location. In absence of specifications, we will bring you a small representative set of the varieties of food animals which seem amenable to your lifestyle, as well as larger selection of our food crops. In the former case, a precise time estimate can't be given as some specifications may take more time to fulfill than others, but in the latter case, it is expected that the animals and seeds, along with further mass for conversion, will be delivered within six days*. A vine hat can be procured tonight and delivered the following morning."

There's a pause without further discussion for a moment before a small addition is made. "Given you do not have spiritual energy, your thoughts already cannot be read. This will likely remain the case as long as you continue to eat food that also does not have spiritual energy."

Yeah, he doesn't want to assume he can keep his spiritual energy intake down to zero, though.

In terms of food animals he's most familiar with chickens, and a flock of fourteen or sixteen hens and a rooster should keep him and his dog going indefinitely; if he's going to be traveling by land he's going to need a couple more dogs and he'll want about a dozen hens per dog if he can't hunt for their meat but he'd rather hunt if possible. He can do other small meat or egglaying animals if they don't have chickens or can't spare that many but he doesn't know how many he'd need off the top of his head; the dogs might be harder to substitute but he's willing to try other animals that are good with taking instruction and he can do without if he really needs to. In terms of food plants he'd like a variety of local staples, he can presumably manage on whatever sorts of things they usually eat.

Another very brief discussion precedes the next response. "Hunting may be somewhat troublesome, as it will need communication with the wildlife and nature preservation administration in whatever province you're in at the time. Ecological repairs from the damage done by the Kings remain in progress even after all this time, and while it seems unlikely that a single human and small pack of dogs hunting for supplemental protein will be unduly disruptive to the repair efforts, it is not the specialty of any of us here to know the dangers involved. Accepting that, three dozen and six hens, a rooster, two good working dogs, and a selection of local staple-crops can all certainly be acquired within the same previously stated six day time-span."

One of the flow-mages has a thought at this point and discusses briefly with the executives, before an addition is made. "Our working dogs will be trained to respond to verbal commands, however. They might require additional training to respond well to your communication. Also, do you have any known food allergies? Particularly, if you know any specific constituent substances that make up food that you have an allergy to, we can avoid crops that contain that substance."

That sounds fine; he doesn't have any food allergies and he's prepared to train the dogs for what he'll want them to do. He's also going to need meat or eggs to keep his dog fed while he's waiting for the chickens.

There's just another few words of discussion before a response is mad. "Dog-appropriate food can be brought with the hat. It might not contain eggs and very likely will not include meat. Meat or eggs can be acquired in specific, if you believe them to be necessary."

...well if they've figured out how to keep dogs healthy without meat or eggs that's fine, he guesses.

The representative of the five flow-mages nods, before a further explanation is written. "The Kings fashioned many strange things as they sought to supply themselves with plentiful and spiritually rich human flesh. We have mostly transitioned back to more traditional foodstuffs for human food, but some of them remain in common use for non-herbivorous animal food, as a way of minimizing the need for animal slaughter."

That's reasonable; it's the same reason eggs are so popular back home.

More nods from all the flow-mages, though there's no further messages written at the moment.

He slides the stack of ansibles over to their side of the table and spends another moment considering the situation.

It seems like they're still nervous of him, is there anything about that that might be productive to try to discuss?

There is more discussion, a pretty long one, as the three executives seem to take some time to seriously consider the question. Eventually, much of the main signboard is cleared and a new message is written.

"Our anxiety is mostly a matter of uncertainty regarding the future. It is difficult to predict how the rest of the executive chiefs, the federal legislature, the public at large, the White Matron, or the Coalition's various people of great importance will react to this situation. Many things could happen, and many of them are bad. We have already shared what information we can at this time, and hopefully inspired a wise caution with regards to potential capture by Coalition agents. There is not much more that can be done with words, we expect."

Yeah, he can't do very much about what other people are going to do.

If that's the situation, he's going to focus on rebuilding his personal holdings for now - he went into the storm on his end to escape a forest fire and had to leave a lot of things behind, so he's got a lot of that to do. If they have more things for him to convert he'd appreciate that but he can manage with frozen water if that's inconvenient for them.

The response is quick, and made without further conversation, perhaps at the flow-mages' own recognizance. "It would be something of a hassle to bring large masses from the city to this location, and the strangeness of the activity, on top of what was brought to you already earlier today, might draw the attention of Coalition spies. It's not strictly infeasible but it is strongly dispreferred for now."

Frozen water it is, then. He'll set up a doorbell up here before he goes inside to get started with that, in case they need to get his attention for anything.

They'll a quick "Thank you" to the signboard, then he doesn't think of anything more he'd like to communicate at the moment, they'll gather up the ansibles, float them into the opened vine-box as the three executives walk back in as well, close it up, and then lift off with both boxes in tow.

Now it's just him, his dog, his ship, and the couple dozen flow-mages circling over head.

He mounts the promised doorbell into the transparent divider and takes the book printer and tea plant downstairs with him. The ship rocks oddly a couple times a bit later, and there are periods of regular disturbances of the water as he takes it in to convert, but other than that the process isn't visible from the outside at all.

No one comes to investigate the mysterious rocking. Presumably they either trust him enough to not worry, or fear him enough to not bother. Possibly both. It'd be hard to believe they're not taking note, though.

If he happens to be looking skyward at the right time, he'll catch one team of five flow-mages leaving the circle as another joins. Perhaps changing shifts.

He doesn't; he doesn't come outside again until the afternoon, when he deploys his floating patio again and comes out to supervise while his dog runs around. He checks briefly when he comes out to see if they're still there but seems willing to ignore them aside from that.

It's only a little while after he's set out the patio again when a team of five, the same familiar group that appear to have ended up as his liaisons, fly in. They don't have a big vine-box this time, but once they're closer down it's clear they're holding a vine-hat and a big, paper bag with a picture of a pile of pebbles formed from some red-brown flour.

They touch down on the water a ways away from him, and give him a wave while displaying what they've come to deliver.

The dog barks at them as they approach, but quiets down when he tells her to, and he comes over and adds a chute to the bubble for them to send the things down.

Is there anything else, while they're here?

They should have brought a signboard. As they float the hat and bag of dog food into the chute, the representative of the five searches their pockets for moment before finding a pencil and notepad, manages to write out a short message across several pages, torn out and held together as a single canvas with their flow. "There hasn't been much news for us. Our leaders are still talking about what to do, and it's all secret. If you have anything you want to talk about though, or have thought of more questions, we can take them back with us."

"Mm."

He turns part of the bubble into a signboard and extrudes a pen cup on the outside with a hot/cold pen inside, then ansibles the signboard and mounts it in the proper orientation to be able to read it.

He's not sure if this is going to make it harder or easier for their people to make their decisions, but he's decreasingly confident that he can handle being here in the long run; if they're making some big complicated plan they shouldn't assume that even the best case involves him still being here in five years and probably not even in three.

They'll fold up the torn sheets and pack them away into a pocket, before writing their reply on the signboard. "That's reasonable. It seems like things here are a lot worse for you than they were wherever you came from. We'll let our leaders know. We hope that you're able to find somewhere safer and more comfortable."

They'll wait for a while longer in case something else occurs to him, but otherwise they'll take back off and fly back to the city.

Yeah. He'll manage it the best he can, anyway.

When they don't seem to have anything else to say he goes to play with his dog, and he goes in after a while and doesn't come out again until dinnertime, when he makes himself a little shaded table by the door to eat at.

As the Sun is starting to set, if he happens to look out over the eastern ocean to observe the darkening sky, it may be notable that only a few stars are visible, and even then only just barely.

That's weird and kinda bad, but there's presumably even less he can do about it than all the other weird and bad things he's dealt with today. He eats and heads back in.

He's back out after a couple hours, to puff part of the deck's surface up into a mattress and lay down to watch the sky with his dog cuddled up next to him; he's having trouble sleeping, and this probably isn't going to help, but nothing else is helping either.

The stars are definitely more visible now. This also makes it more obvious that they appear to be moving.

Not in the sense of the heavens moving as one, but rather, individual stars or groups of stars are moving independently. Not especially quickly, but enough that it's obvious after even just a few minutes of watching. Some seem to be caught in a sort of celestial flow, moving at varying speeds along a curvaceous course across the night sky. Others move much more in unison, like a school of fish, while yet more seem to bounce and wobble but are drawn back to some fixed point, as if they were the lights on the tips of the branches of a great tree being blown by some kind of cosmic wind.

That's bizarre but also kind of pretty. Maybe when he can't take being here anymore he'll see if it's any easier to go look at them up close here than it is at home.

He falls asleep, after a while, watching them.

Unless he sleep until well into the afternoon, he won't be woken up by the doorbell. The waves will also get a bit bigger as the tide rises in the morning, not to the point of being massive, but enough to meaningfully roll his ship a bit.

The tide won't wake him, but the sun does, and he hoists himself up and heads back inside; after an hour and a bit he's back out to expand the deck and convert the new section into a chicken pen.

If he's still working on that around noon, he might notice another five groups of five flow mages fly in from the north, carrying three more vine-boxes. They just fly past him, off towards the city.

Well, he doesn't know that that's not normal, presumably there are other things besides him happening here.

When he finishes getting the pen set up he makes a big glyph asking the watchers to come down so that he can ask them if he can get some dirt from the shore to grow plants in.

None of the teams circling at this specific moment actually know how to read crafter-glyphs, but they can tell he's made a glyph for a reason, which warrants one team coming down to investigate, eventually landing within communication distance.

He wants to get some dirt and plant cuttings from shore; he's going to need some dirt eventually for the food plants but he also wants to have the chickens' pen planted and ready for them before they get here. Is that all right for him to do?

The team looks between each somewhat anxious, before answering with a single word in unison and nodding all their heads. From their posture, despite the evident worry, the answer is probably positive? They seem hesitant to fly off but aren't saying or doing anything else.

He can't really tell the difference between them, all dressed the same as they are, but if these are different guys who don't know his writing system they can gesture in this direction for 'yes' or that direction for 'no' or upward for 'more complicated' or downward for 'something else'.

All five point in the 'yes' direction with one hand and upwards with their other hand.

The people here might have a collective problem with yes-or-no questions.

You don't say.

If he makes himself a boat and goes to that bit of coastline right there, and shovels up twice as much dirt as he needs for his chicken pen from wherever it looks easiest to dig and takes cuttings from four or five bushes that he likes the look of and comes back with them, and brings his dog with him but makes sure she stays on the beach the whole time and doesn't bother any wildlife, do they expect that to cause any problems, including any people being upset about it.

They all point to no, though there's still some hesitance in their posture.

He'll do that, then.

A crow swoops down to land on him as soon as he steps out of the boat: He wants to know where the Crafter brought the flock and what the Crafters here are all so afraid of and what they have to do to go home.

Ah, geez. Well, he's not sure where they are, and the humanoids aren't Crafters and are mostly afraid of each other and of new things which probably includes communicative crows, and he doesn't think the crows or himself are going to be able to go home. He also doesn't think it's going to be unusually unsafe for the crows right here, though other places are pretty dangerous and he's not sure which ones. If they stay within sight of the ocean and don't go west of here that's probably fine. If they want to come to him for help that's also fine, for now.

...there are (??not-??) Crafters flying by themselves above his house and that's scary.

Yeah, he's not thrilled with it either. He can ask them if they have any problems with the crows coming and going; they can't craft so they can't communicate the way the crows are used to but some of them can write to him.

...he'll tell the others and come back tomorrow to say what they think about all that.

All right. Here's a mirrored pebble on a string, if they hang it in the sun he'll notice and come over.

Ooh, mirrored pebble on a string.

Okay, thanks.

And he gets to work gathering supplies.

The flow-mage team who came down to investigate seem distinctly befuddled by the interaction, but don't say or gesture anything about it. Seeing that he's taking the initiative to collect his soil and plant samples, they'll take off as well. They don't rejoin the circle, though, instead heading back towards the city.

Well, okay, if they don't want to stick around and get his explanation he won't explain himself.

He fills his boat with dirt and his pockets with leaves and heads back to the house, and half an hour later the chickens' pen is nicely planted with a variety of different bushes to hide in and he goes inside to take a break.

Another half hour or so after he's planted the chicken pen, his doorbell will ring. Outside on the water, there's another two flow-mage squads, including the familiar five, and two vine-boxes, one of which is open, along with four unfamiliar people standing in front of it. One is an older man dressed in a green suit with a white color, like two of the ones before. One is a seemingly middle-aged woman, aside from her stark white hair, dressed in all white similar to the doctor before, and with a tightly-wrapped white cloth covering her nose, mouth, and neck. One is a younger man with long hair and beard and dressed in a much less neat shirt and shorts compared to most of the other people who've come out here. The last is another older man, dressed in darker greens and grays and with spectacles perched on his nose. The green-suited man has a vine-hat, while the two other men have moss caps and the woman in white has no head-covering.

He comes up to the rooftop wearing his new hat, and is surprised not to find anyone there. He spots them after a minute, spends a moment contemplating the situation, and extrudes a dock at the base of the house and a stairway leading up to the greyed portion of the roof.

The older man and woman will lead the party onto the dock and up the stairs, followed by the other two men and then by the familiar flow-mages, while the boxes and other squad remain on the water.

The representative among the familiar five has one of the smaller signboards with them, and have a greeting for the afternoon pre-written on it as it floats up to present itself to him.

Hello to them too, is everything all right?

The greeting is erased, and more messages are written in sequence. "There are two matters which we have come to discuss."

The woman in white is gestured to by the representative. "The first is the availability of White Maiden Prastsek. With your participation, she may be able to use her white magic to determine the risks presented by your exposure to spiritual energy."

Then they gesture to the two other unfamiliar men, evidently prompting the younger man to wave and smile. "The second is your collection of soil and plant samples, which ecologist Mjekadzarm and his protege Trettsedwet intend to review and assess the potential effects. This doesn't strictly require your help, but knowing the particular reasoning you had for the individual samples you took may help their work."

Well, he got the dirt he did because it was the easiest to move that wasn't too sandy, and he picked these three bushes because they look like good shapes for the chickens to hide in - not that he's going to leave the pen open to predators, but happier hens lay more reliably - and this one because it smells good and he hopes it might discourage parasites, and this one because the leaves are a neat shape.

What's involved in participating in the white maiden's thing?