No-one notices, at first, or at least no-one nearby.

There's a hawk's cry overhead, but then nothing for several minutes.

If undisturbed for an hour, she'll eventually wake up, turn down the impeller field from 'lightshow' to 'faint flicker', and curl up into the fetal position with a moan. And lie there for... Considerably longer, nursing the mother of all headaches as the med system she was a genius to integrate slowly does its work.

Every single system is complaining about being badly damaged by spatial effects. Why hasn't she been picked up by S&R yet? ...Eh. No more room in the brain for thinking, only the most nail-pounding migraine she's ever felt. And then the fuzziness of strong painkillers, thank God.

It takes considerably less than an hour for someone to show up, but he decides that discretion is the better part of valor and doesn't mess with her shield, and has moved off a bit by the time she wakes up; she'd be forgiven for not noticing him.

He comes back over when she moans, though, and she doesn't have long to wonder about her situation before she becomes... aware, by some unclear method, that someone nearby is curious about whether she's hurt and how she came to be there.

"Whassat?" It's kind of hard to think right now.

She musters up enough focus to flick her lonesome camera drone into 'sitrep' mode.

...It deploys with a pop but promptly lands on the ground, camera down, with a pitiful whine and clicking noise.

She rolls over onto her back and tries to look around.

The observer makes a startled sound and backs up several steps when the drone appears!

When she looks over, she finds that the person who's come to investigate her appearance is a man of indeterminate race, perhaps in his late twenties, wearing a long poncho-like robe of pale blue leather with matching arm-guards and carrying a walking stick of a waxy green material with a decorative swirl at the top. There's a sense of cautious hesitance to the awareness that comes to her this time: he sees that she's probably not too badly hurt, and approves of that.

"Nah mate, I'm pretty fucked up here. Call U-V-F if you can."

She flicks her visor back, grimacing at the sudden light. Her face doesn't look particularly injured, at least.

...what interestingly complicated noises. He has no idea what sort of animal might make them.

With a grunt of effort assisted by a slight shimmer of impeller field (that makes her headache spike), she sits up. "...Kay, I'm out cold and dreaming. Yep." She tries a casual wave? Wait. She undeploys the guns, and about half the outer armor, folding it into nothingness, then gives a casual wave.

He waves back, still a little hesitantly.

It's a little weird at this point that she hasn't said anything to him. Can she understand him? If she can't communicate normally for some reason she can make an intentional action three times in a row at him to communicate that.

Huh.

It's really much easier in the haze of painkillers and pain getting past the killers to treat this as a dream, but. Huh.

"Eins, zwei, drei?" She giggles to herself, then winces. Then, thinking that might not have been clear enough, slaps her still-armored knee with her hand thrice.

It's good that she can understand him. He doesn't know what kind of animal she's... referencing, presumably? He's never met one that makes sounds like that; whatever she's trying to get at he's probably not going to figure it out - maybe someone in the local community will know, he can ask when he gets home.

Two for yes, three for no: does she want him to help her to his house? He has a trundlecart nearby that can carry her. And four for if she wants him to take her out of his territory, he has unclaimed land on part of his border, but that doesn't seem very wise if she's alone and not able to stand.

"Ugh. Territory?"

Three. Then five. Not like she has any other way of communicating confusion, since the dream-alien is telepathic and doesn't know English. Well, it'll probably be fine unless it suddenly dream-logics into a nightmare of being picked apart by Antagonist missiles or Type Zeros- If this really is a dream, it hurts kind of a lot and very consistently-

Oh, there's an idea. She gropes around for the camera drone and turns it so the tablet-sized screen faces him with twitches of her fingers on imaginary controls, then googles- No network connection, ugh. 

...She opens fucking VPaint and then leaves it blank as she struggles to think of what to draw.

None of those, something else, okay - if she wants the doctor the first step for that is to bring her to his house so he can contact them, maybe they do that differently where she's from.

He's still wary of the drone - things don't just appear like that, what the heck, and also how is she controlling it without touching it - but he waits patiently to see what she's trying to do; it's welcome-and-expected to do it here, whatever it is, and the awareness of the fact that he thinks so comes with subtext that he thinks it's important to communicate, that it might cause problems for her if he didn't.

She smiles! She's a VK user, Mr. Dream Alien. Or Dream Native, maybe? Looks pretty humanish. Explaining valkyrie cores sounds way too hard right now, though.

She sketches bad lineart of... A red stick figure holding a circle, stick figure with a lot of spikes going everywhere, stick figure lying on the ground with a couple of spikes still in it.

Then: Another stick figure in blue, with green stick, walking up to hers. Hmm. How to put the next part...

He doesn't comment yet, but settles back a little to wait.

......Squiggles over blue stick figure's head, then gesturing at her own head.

Squiggles coming from her stick figure's mouth while she mutters aloud about how this is a sentence in English and her head hurts.

Then more squiggles above his head, then she slaps her knee three times again and marks squiggles by her knee.

Oh! The sounds are communication? That's pretty clever, he's never heard of that before.

...probably not, uh, useful, though, since he has no idea how to make sense of it. He'll try?

She smiles and shrugs (winces again). Good luck to them both with that, it takes a helluva long time to learn a language.

...Two slaps. "Yes." Three slaps. "No."

...Hmm. Writing, do they write? Blue stick figure holding a 'pencil' (line) that's adding squiggles to a square, with a question mark added to the right side when she's done.

He can write, yes - "y'ssh". It doesn't seem very likely that they do it the same way. He'll show her anyway if she wants to see; does she?

...actually, first, should they be doing something about her injuries?

She mimes writing. "Yes! I can learn." Mimes bandaging herself. "No," and shakes her head.

...Bright yellow circle near her stick's midriff. Bright yellow circle with arrows to drawings of her body armor, to the drone, to a wavy blue square, to a red plus sign. Arrow from plus sign to several of the spikes she drew earlier.

...She checks a time estimate.

Sun, moon, sun, moon, sun, moon, red figure without spikes.

He only followed some of that; he doesn't understand the wavy blue square or the red plus and he's not very clear on the yellow, either, but it seems like she's claiming something's being done about her injuries, yes/no?

He's really reluctant to leave her here for days. If it's not safe to move her he'll figure something out but it'd be much better to have her somewhere more central, even if she doesn't want to come to his house.

Injuries, "Yes."

She points at the blue wavy thing and flares her Impeller Field, a blue lattice in the air between them, static in the air, for a moment.

...House drawing, box with triangle roof with blue stick figure in it. Red stick figure giving a small red circle to blue stick figure. Three question marks.

He does not like the Impeller Field and she should not do that again.

He finds her new drawing pretty baffling, when he's calmed down enough to look at it - the box means nothing to him, the spike on top is flattened enough not to be very worrying but is still a spike, he's only vaguely confident that the question marks are the same glyph as before and doesn't have a good guess of what they mean - three could be no, maybe? And the part about her giving him something isn't much better, he does recognize that that's what she's drawn but he has no idea why - it doesn't seem like she's confused about this being his territory? Maybe she's trying to ask him to go to hers, but it should be obvious enough that she's not from around here, he's never seen her before. Very strange.

This seems like it'd be improved by more shared vocabulary. He settles to the ground, laying the walking stick across his knees, and works the decorative end with his hands to remove some of the material making it up; after another few seconds he's shaped it into a thin oval that'll do as a writing surface, and he begins scratching words into it.

The glyph for 'house' is a lumpy oval subdivided into three roomlike sections.

The glyph for 'territory' is an irregular hexagon with two concave, two convex, and two straight sides.

The glyph for 'household' is a circle with five lines radiating out from it, each tipped with a smaller circle.

The glyph for 'head of household' is the same, but with only the central circle and lines, and the glyph for 'household member' is the same again but with only one of the peripheral circles present, and that one outlined with a second circle to bring it to the size of the central one. The glyph for 'guest' is similar to the 'head of household' glyph but with much shorter rays that terminate in a single circle around the whole glyph. She's a guest here, if that was somehow not obvious.

'Go', 'far distance', and 'give' are more abstract arrangements of lines and curves, somewhat evocative of the concepts they're representing but not trying very hard to be. The glyph for 'danger', which he adds as an afterthought after looking back at her drawing, is a starburst. Not/negation/no is represented by drawing a circle around a glyph and adding two parallel diagonal lines to the inside of the circle to frame it.

Wavy blue near blue stick figure, "No," she agrees.

She pays close attention to the lesson. Luckily, the camera works. She's too fuzzy brained to program something to speed this up right now right now, but.

-Pastes in the photo of the sign for 'guest' and smiles emphatically. Good, thank you.

...Question mark, with lines drawn to three dots and two dots. Question mark, three dots. "Yes." Question mark, two dots, "No." Question mark, five dots, and she shrugs.

Blue figure, head of household, question mark?

Blue figure, give, guest, red figure.

Red figure, give, blue figure, question mark?

Hmm.

Danger, go, red stick figure.

Red stick figure, danger. Then emphatically, she draws wavy blue between them.

Wavy blue, danger, "No."

He shares his glyph for uncertainty, when she's explained that that's what the question mark is - it's another modifier, like the negation glyph. He is the head of household here - that's what it means for it to be his territory, and it means he's in a position to give her things and he doesn't expect her to be in a position to give him things. It's actually pretty disconcerting that she's suggesting she could, his species doesn't work that way and it does look like she's one of them. Maybe she's not? He will keep that in mind while she's here, it might mean she has different needs than he's expecting.

...she was in danger and the Impeller Field fixed it, if he's following that? That's a handy capability to have. She has his permission to do it if there's a bear or something, not that he expects that to come up.

Three dots-uncertainty on 'maybe she's not'.

"Yes," he has that right, about fixing the danger.

She's increasingly sure she's lost in time and space or something. Things feel a lot less dreamlike now and the clock is steadily advancing. She's pretty sure clocks don't work right in dreams. But if these are rubber forehead aliens living here, who knows what she doesn't know?

Red stick figure, go, far distance x3, uncertainty around the whole thing.

He's never heard of a species that looked so much like his but wasn't, or any of the other strange capabilities she's shown, so she's pretty obviously far from home, yes. When he tells the locals about her he'll ask if any of them have heard of anything like them, maybe they can figure out how she can get back. And if she can't she'll be welcome to claim a territory here once she's recovered, they aren't overcrowded.

In the immediate sense he really does want to get her back closer to his house, though, it's more protected, and that's where his food and supplies are if she needs anything, and he won't worry so much about leaving her there while he does the rest of his chores for the day.

Go house yes.

Very small impeller field go uncertainty?

He's somewhat wary of this but sure. He'll go get the trundlecart after he sees what she wants it for.

She uses it to help her stand up, wobbling uncertainly, faint shimmers and a quiet electronic hum as bulging curves of force form in the air behind her. (Precise field control is tricky at the best of times.)

Yeah, that's a reasonable use. He still wants warning before she activates it, though.

It's a few minutes' walk to where he left the trundlecart, does she want to come?

"Yes."

She could probably manage hoverflight, but no sense alarming this guy more than she has to. Or taxing the impeller field, which is self-repairing but complaining really loudly about it. She walks, occasionally with a faint blue shimmer to keep from falling over.

He offers her his walking stick the first time she needs to use the impeller field to keep her feet, and keeps an eye out for a suitable fallen branch to use himself in its place, but doesn't find one on the short walk.

The trundlecart turns out to be a low circular platform piled with leaves and underbrush, standing on six crablike legs positioned at regular intervals around its circumference and made of a steely blue version of the same waxy material as the walking stick. It's too low and too wide to be very comfortable to get onto, but it seems like it'll do the job, at least.

Her host wants to know if she'd like a backrest; it's a fifteen minute trip to his house from here and it'll take him maybe twenty minutes to make one from the available materials.

...Huh.

She sets down the 'bot again, clearing the VPaint window. Draws, Go.

Then shrugs and picks it back up. And caaaarefully shimmer-blue floats into a crosslegged sitting position on the magic robot cart thing(?).

The impeller field is still offputting, but he's getting used to it and doesn't object. He does take his walking stick back, once she's settled, and taps it on the edge of the trundlecart to start it walking up the path, tapping again whenever it needs a course correction. Their route is gently uphill, along a dirt path just wide enough for the cart to be comfortably guided along; there's birdsong from the trees, which he occasionally whistles mimicry of.

He's thinking, as he walks, about what she's going to need to know here. He's not very sure. How he's expecting having her as a guest to go, probably, at least to start - his species doesn't do well, trying to operate outside their own territory and especially in other territories. It's inhibiting; the exact details vary from one individual to another but all of them have trouble taking at least some kinds of actions in places they don't feel fully comfortable - it would have represented an extreme case if she'd been unable to stand without his help because of that, but it's not unheard of. If she truly doesn't experience that, that's - pretty bizarre, and probably has lots of implications he's not coming up with yet - but he's not going to assume she doesn't, he's going to assume she needs things done for her until he knows that she can do them for herself, and even then he won't be surprised if there's some variance in what actions are available to her. That's intrinsic to having a guest around; if he decides he doesn't want to deal with it anymore he'll put her out of his territory and that'll be the end of it, though it'd take kind of a lot to make him do that before she's healed - she is of course free to leave anytime, though. He'll also ask around for someone else to host her if she wants that, and she might have offers of other hosts even if he doesn't ask.

For specifics - he hasn't figured out housing yet; he does have a guest bunk in his house if she's comfortable with that but it'd be reasonable for her not to be, it's just a bunk, not a full room. He's not sure he has enough materials on hand to put up a second house, even a small one, but he can probably make her a tent at least, as an alternative. He has food plants she can use or he can bring her meals or both; he does have meat animals in his household and he'll bring her some of that in any case, since meat is good for healing injuries. Eggs and milk, too, in case that doesn't go without saying. He has crafting materials to spare, though it occurs to him that if she can't communicate normally she probably can't craft, either - well, she can ask him for things, he'll do his best. Probably at least one of the animals will take an interest in her if she wants company. He only has the one network connection, and she won't know any of the locals anyway even if she has one and picks up the local style of writing, but he can ask if there's a spare around that she can have anyway, if she wants.

"No," she calls out at the right moment. She doesn't experience that. Well, not quite the same way, anyway. If anything, it makes her twitchy and inclined to lash out. She has to keep herself from trying to unfold her guns.

...She pulls up a video of her friend Saka, using her impeller field and things suddenly appearing and disappearing or growing and shrinking to build drab emergency shelters for a bunch of refugees, digging up and drying out mud bricks, making the stacks of steel bars and drywall and prefab windows dance around in the air as she waves her hands like a conductor. Sound on low, shows it to the guy.

Okay. He's not sure how hosting someone might work if it's not based in compensating for those limitations, but they can talk about it when they get to his house.

He can't really watch the video while he's guiding the trundlecart but he catches enough to get the idea that the impeller field is also some kind of crafting method. It's... not done, to build large things in someone else's territory as a guest; if she wants to claim a territory straight away instead of recuperating in his that's fine and reasonable and he'll give her some starting resources but he's not going to let her build here.

"...No."

She sits silently, thinking and trying to figure out how to explain 'trade', or wanting to feel useful.

He's quiet for a little while, too.

It might be useful to talk more generally about how she wants things to go over the next few days. The way he sees it she's his problem by default, since she's in his territory, and of course he's going to be a good host if he's hosting, but - a good host by his reckoning, which he's less and less sure is going to work for her. He's willing to be somewhat flexible, but he's not that confident anymore that what he's willing to do and what she's going to need are going to mesh, and it seems best to figure that out before they run into actual trouble with it.

The problem, currently, is that she has no real way to talk back, especially not any new concepts.

"Yes."

She draws out all the writing sigils she knows now, and then a question mark below them. More words?

He can't write while he's walking. He'll print up a vocabulary list for her when they get to his house; it won't be long.

The house, when they get to it, is a windowless boulder-shaped structure made of the now-familiar waxy material in various shades of light blue, flanked by larger, deeper trundlecart platforms with plants growing in them. A flock of a dozen chickens comes up to investigate them when they approach, and a fat black one attempts to climb into Wanda's lap; her host informs her that he calls that one short-wattle and she's very friendly, but he can take her if she doesn't want to deal with her.

Her head still aches a lot, and there's enough room underneath the fuzziness for her to start getting deeply anxious about how lost she is. Honestly, she probably really needs a doctor, the fancy med suite isn't a replacement for an expert. Except she can't get one. Or go back to the academy. Or defend Earth. Unless she figures out what the fuck went wrong in that Wave Force experiment and replicates it without killing herself.

Deep breaths.

But she shouldn't just shut down, like these guys apparently do.

Sure, she'll pet the chicken. Real live animals, huh? The arcologies had some of those, but mostly pets. Vat protein's cleaner.

Short-wattle chirrs contentedly and settles into Wanda's lap; her host waits until it's clear that they're all right and heads inside, coming out after a few minutes with a jug of water, a glass to pour it into, and two bowls of berries on a tray; he scatters the contents of the larger bowl for the chickens before setting the rest down next to Wanda on the trundlecart.

The vocabulary primer she wanted is printing, it'll be another few minutes.

Nod, nod. Smile. (Do they not have a word for 'thank you'?)

...She nods and says 'yes' several times, trying to show him the connection between word and gesture.

Do they have tech or not. Weird robot. Weird telepathy. It could be like... Asgard from that one movie series, which has lots of tech but the people just prefer walking around with swords on an aesthetic level.

Or just magic. It's not like anyone understands enough about Valkyrie Cores to call them anything else. She technically has food in storage, but fresh fruit is better. Assuming the med suite doesn't think it'll kill her, when she tries it by tasting one and waiting ten seconds.

The berries aren't from a plant that has been domesticated on Earth, but they're perfectly edible, a bit like grapes in texture but flavored more like kiwi.

Her host has no trouble figuring out that the gesture is communication or what she means by it; he thinks that's a lot more sensible of a way to do things than making noises all the time.

Well, fair enough.

She'll just wait for the printout. She might be in good enough shape to get out of his hair tomorrow- It kind of seems like he'd like her to just get out of his hair.

He hangs around for a few minutes, and then goes in to get it, returning with two sheaves of rectangular pages, one of which he's binding with a strip of waxy material as he walks, crimping it along the top. When he hands the newly-made book over, the pages seem to be made of very thin pale leather, dyed with glyphs in the local style. The second sheaf is a copy of the first, and he reads through it for her, keeping an eye on her to make sure she doesn't want him to slow down or pause to discuss anything.

The words are clustered by theme, and 'trade' is in there, next to 'share' and 'give' (to an individual) and 'donate' (to a communal project); there aren't any words relating to money. There's somewhat more vocabulary around work, with different words for tasks done as maintenance, work done to achieve a goal, and useful things done because they're also enjoyable or habitual; none of these refer to having a job, and there's no vocabulary related to having a boss, or to working on a set schedule. The concept of slack also comes up, in the section about things one might have physically available; it's not an object, but the concept of having extra, of not needing to worry too much when something goes wrong or happens unexpectedly. He takes a moment when he gets to it to assure her that he has plenty of slack for taking care of her for a few days.

This is very useful! She does have him slow down a little bit, as she's transcribing all this down in a reference sheet with much longer strings of characters.

Slack is good! She writes out.

Hmm.

Purple and green speak trade.

Purple gives to green.

Green negation(gives to purple).

Sun, moon, sun.

Green gives to purple.

Green uncertainty-squiggle purple.

It's not uncommon or particularly noteworthy for people to set up a trade where one of them doesn't do their part right away, if they know each other well enough. It doesn't imply any specific relationship between then besides knowing each other pretty well.

Also if she's trying to ask if he wants anything in exchange for helping her out for a couple of days - no? That would be weird? If she had an established territory with cool stuff in it and wanted to give him a gift from her slack, that would be pretty normal, but she doesn't, and she's got enough to worry about right now.

...is there something she needs above and beyond him just keeping her fed and comfortable for a few days, that she thinks he won't be willing to do if she doesn't have something to trade for it? That might make sense.

Want negation(Blue give red and red negation(give blue)).

Want objects from red home. Want - white stick figure, grey stick figure, whole crowd of stick figures.

Negation get. Sad.

A pause. 

Blue has slack. Agree red guest.

Moon red-lying-down think danger uncertainty.

Oh, good, now they're getting somewhere. Well, sort of. He doesn't know where he'd start on getting things from her home, but if she does, he's willing to help. Or to turn the problem over to someone who'd be better at solving it, more likely.

His species doesn't usually come in herds like that, but he could bring her to the community center or invite friends over if she wants to meet some? (He draws the glyph for 'meet' for her; it's not common enough to be in the primer.) In the longer term she should definitely get a network connector if she likes company, the network is great that way, but shining-pebbleclinker who does their network will have to design one that she can use without crafting and that will take a little while.

...if she meant she wants people from her home, well, that's mostly the same problem as getting anything else from there; he doesn't think there's a way to do network connections to places you haven't been. He can ask shining-pebbleclinker, though, if she thinks that might work - here's how they sign their messages, it'll do for a designation.

She'll be safe here at night; his guard animals are out with the rest of the household right now but everyone comes in for the evening and they're good at keeping watch. It's safest in the house if she's really worried about it.

Hmm. No good way to get across 'nightmares, probably' at the moment, she thinks.

Meet community future time.

Crafting uncertainty?

Crafting negation(red figure with yellow circle, impeller field) uncertainty?

Network meet speak write far distance? Red figure knows negation(crafting) network.

If she can't communicate he's pretty sure she can't craft; they're the same sorts of mental action, just applied slightly differently. She can try with the writing-board, if she wants, reshaping crafting-material is the easiest type of crafting, but he doesn't know how to begin to explain what to do if she doesn't already know, in the same way he has no idea how he'd explain how to walk, or how to tell which animals are friendly. Her impeller field seems to be a different thing; it might be crafting-like the same way that cutting up fruit is crafting-like but it won't work for interacting with a network connection like his, he's pretty sure.

The network lets them share writing over a distance! Connections like the one he has let them send pages to and get pages from a central repository, is the simple not-very-true explanation; the repository is actually a ridiculously complicated machine that shining-pebbleclinker made. He doesn't know how it works in much more detail but shining-pebbleclinker would be delighted to come over and tell her about it, they love getting to do that.

She tries willing at the writing board a couple of different ways. Tries... Telepathy-ing at it? It doesn't seem to do anything.

But more importantly: Red figure know network. [Camera drone picture] like network uncertainty. Meet stick figure [gravel picture] yes good.

He'll send shining-pebbleclinker a message, then; he doesn't know much about their schedule but he won't be surprised if they can come over tomorrow. Is he understanding correctly that the drone is a network machine of some sort?

"Yep!"

She's pretty excited about it actually, if their magic lets them create some sort of - crude local Network - she's not a sensor type but she's absorbed enough computer science that it could totally make her rich or something. And getting excited over this distracts her from all the rest, so.

Jagged yellow line from dark cloud-

Then she erases it. 

Difficult write how make [drone]. [Pebbleclinker] want speak [drone] uncertainty. Blue-figure negation(want speak [drone]) uncertainty.

Red figure alone think okay.

He's reasonably sure that noise was a yes, from her body language. (The hissing part of the one she explained to him before is the easiest part to remember, even if 'interspecies defensive warning sound' is a pretty weird choice for 'yes'.)

Shining-pebbleclinker will definitely want to hear about the drone. He's much less interested and also does need to get back to his chores if she's done with him; is there anything she needs before he goes?

She shrugs at the language musing.

Bed?

Sure; has she decided whether she wants to come into the house?

"Yes. And yes."

She still has to de-integrate to rest and she can't access her Impeller Field or anything else like that, obviously, which is a bit worrying, but this guy seems honestly pretty trustworthy? Unless that's the telepathy making her think that, but boy is that a rabbit hole. Let's not go down it.

She wobbles off the trundlecart without using any Impeller Field, this time.

He hovers worriedly and offers her the walking stick again, then leads the way in.

The house is cozy and somewhat cluttered, inside; there are a few workstations, one apparently for cooking, another for working with brush like the kind he was collecting on the trundlecart, the rest containing various collections of inscrutable objects in the waxy crafting-material, all well-lit by glowing panels overhead. The beds flank the door on either side, set into enclosures sculpted out of the wall with sliding doors and leather curtains to offer further privacy, with a reading nook on the far side of one and shelves of storage bins past the other. He directs her to the one on the shelving side, pausing to show her the touch controls for the lights, water dispenser, soundproofing (which only works properly with the doors closed), ventilation fan, and heating and cooling before stepping aside to let her in; he can also get her more pillows if the two already in there aren't sufficient.

...Yep, that sure is a lot of magic, mixed with weirdly primitive stuff. Not sure what she was expecting but okay, imagine this is a hotel. Or like, a shipborne bunk.

She tries to express through the 'bot that she doesn't need anything but sleep at the moment, thank you.

She vanishes the drone with a faint shimmer in that weird folding-behind-into-nowhere effect. Manifests a thick heavy bracelet with a screen that she clamps over her right arm. She lies down in the guest bed, closes the doors, turns on the soundproofing, breathes deeply and tries to fight the rising anxiety, and with some trepidation-

-De-integrates her Valkyrie Core, leaving the shining ball of circuitry resting on her sternum, and is stunned for a solid twenty seconds by the feedback of being entirely biology again and all the lingering damage, head swimming in pain. Then the medcuff sedates her and she falls dead asleep. Probably for a fair bit longer than just eight hours, depending on if anything interrupts.

The soundproofing is quite good, and she won't be disturbed at all unless she's still sequestering herself at lunchtime of the next day.

She is woken up by a blearing noise specifically designed to be horribly attention-getting, plus a brief cutoff of her painkillers, about an hour before that.

She debates with herself whether to put the VK back in or not. Normally she'd want coffee and a shower first. She doesn't think she can get either here, without building it herself or using up a bit of her preciously limited Emergency Supply of the powdered synthetic stuff.

She can tell the medcuff to give her a bit of caffeine, despite its objections, however. Though it does insist that she needs WATER and PROTEIN and A HOSPITAL.

No VK for now. She sits up and opens the guest bed door and peeks out, armor all gone and just wearing a slightly grimy grey flight suit, rather than any armor, holding the glimmery golden Core in one hand.

Her host doesn't seem to be home, but there's a small table set up just outside her bed with water, a few kinds of fruit and vegetables, and a few hard-boiled eggs.

There's also a crow perched on the back of one of the chairs; it regards her levelly, croaks, and flies outside.

Slightly creepy but okay.

She noms it all and then gets more water and drinks that, and then tries to figure out the - bathroom situation. If she has to she can Impeller up a hole outside somewhere, but ech.

There's an obvious-enough half bathroom on one end of the house, a few steps from the kitchen with its sink; it seems to work on latrine principles, but there's no smell.

Well, fair enough. She could use a shower but this is fine.

She's not going to go pawing around for more food without asking but she's still pretty hungry. She briefly looks over the - crafting station? Magic workshop? - without touching anything. Then decides she's still really tired and lays back down on the bed. Ugh. Whatever her Wave Force mishap did to her messed her the hell up.

Her host turns up after about ten or fifteen more minutes, announcing himself with a soft toungue-clicking noise as he comes in.

How's she doing? He sees she's eaten what he left for her; is she still hungry?

"Yes, please."

Okay, she kind of needs the drone for this. She holds out one finger. Takes the fancy-looking golden thing she's still holding and presses it into herself with a wince and a hiss of breath.

She's suddenly much more perky, alert, energetic, twitchy even. She frames a wide space in her lap and appears the drone there, for further discussion.

Big injury negation(visible). Need large-amount food. Need some meat or - pictures, amaranth, edamame, quinoa - Food same-category meat.

He figured she'd need meat; he explains as he goes to cook it that he only didn't leave it out for her since it goes bad so quickly. He doesn't recognize those other plants but he has some beans and he can ask the doctor what other foods are like meat and beans, if she needs more than he has. Are eggs also good? He'd understood eggs to be good for injuries the same way meat is. Also, is she feeling nauseous at all, should he be making this bland or spicing it normally?

Soon he's got a plate of what look like miniature chicken breasts for her, seasoned with fruit juice and herbs if she's reported being up for that.

Beans are good. Eggs are good health but taste no.

(Weird how they have chickens)

She is not nauseous. Spices uncertainty.

How make this meat small?

Uncertainty about the spices gets her unseasoned meat with a little bowl of spice mix on the side for sprinkling; the spices are herby, not hot.

Those are dove meat, that's their normal size - was she expecting chicken? Chickens aren't very good meat animals, they're much better for eggs. He has cavies, too, if she doesn't like dove, or he can trade for something else, he should be able to get cow or goat or deer pretty easily.

She was expecting chicken, yes. Chickens are the only bird meat she knows, or [turkey]. 

(Good thing she has a scrape of Wikipedia. But... Cavies?)

She's used to eating meat crafted from plants and chemicals, actually. No cavy meat please. Cow or deer would be fine but don't go out of your way, she tries to explain.

She eats the dove! meat with the herby spices regardless, though. No sense wasting it.

All right, he'll ask around about cow and deer meat. He's familiar with turkeys, too, but they're not really in season right now, he doesn't expect anyone to have any on hand. Where she's from has meat plants? That's very impressive.

Shining-pebbleclinker is outside, if she wants to meet them when she's done. No rush, though, they brought over a project to work on and aren't bored at all.

(It's taking a fair while to compose responses as she flips back and forth in her notes and starts working on something to at least try and auto-translate for her.)

Yes. Not quite meat plants but it'd take a while to explain.

(Well, she's glad she has the Core in for this. She's actually excited to meet the local nerd but they tend to be exhausting about their specialties and she should know, she is one.)

Does he mind if she takes out [this thing] like she took out the drone? Wakeup-drink-maker. But she only has enough wakeup for maybe 5 drinks.

Sure, she can do that. They have a local wakeup plant, too; he can show her if she thinks she can tell if it'd be safe for her.

She can tell by tasting it just a bit, thanks.

Out comes her instant coffee brewer and a paper packet of instant coffee. Soon it is burbling into a ceramic mug she also appears.

He gets a canister out of a cabinet; the contents look, smell, and taste like roasted coffee beans of the type she might have had coated in chocolate back home.

She thinks that's the same thing as her wakeup, just not processed! That's great, she really likes coffee.

It's strange how they have the same kinds of plants and animals if they're not quite the same kind of person, with territory and not taking actions in unfamiliar places and uncertainty other things.

It's a little strange, definitely. Some other species are really similar to each other, though, it's not that weird as a concept, just weird to run into all of a sudden.

Yeah, there's convergent evolution and things. Maybe two legs, two arms, and a human head is just the ideal civilized-tool-user form or something.

She picks at the remnants of the meat some.

Red do important work at home.

Community hurt community possibility uncertainty?

Community hurt community, uh...

Oh - different communities, right? That pretty much doesn't happen here, not among his species. If it's a risk from hers they'll want to be careful about that.

"Yyyyep. Yes."

Negation(community red hurt community blue) likely.

Person like Red "Human". Person like blue-

She erases that.

Create new writing uncertainty?

Community number of people uncertainty?

There's a few ways to refer to his species in writing - 'crafters' and 'the ones with hands' are both common, he can show her the glyphs for those.

There's no, like, formal membership in a community the way there is in a household, it really depends on how you count - there's about sixty households on the local network and maybe a couple dozen who aren't on the network but are close enough for him personally to trade with; figure about two of his species per household including kids, maybe a bit more.

That's good enough for an order of magnitude, maybe a hundred households in a "community", so order of 200...

"Town" is community of communities in number of people. 4000 humans. She glyphs it with the square-and-spike she used before.

"City" is small community of towns. More than 100000 humans. She glyphs it with a tall rectangle filled with a grid of dots.

"Arcology" is large city guarded from danger. She glyphs it like "city" but within a big circle.

She brings up a huge panoramic view of the Perth arcology's interior biodome with its false-sun walls and roof, including the massive central residential spire, with "City" and a short arrow pointing to it. It's mind-boggling even to her just how big the arcologies are, so it should be impressive.

Yikes? What kind of danger are they dealing with that it makes sense to do that to themselves?

Humans (mostly) like it that way if he means [the spire]. They are closer to other humans and food and fun and tools and resources.

The danger is not-human people. She glyphs them as a stylized blocky 'A', with a danger-ball in place of the hole.

Antagonists don't talk to humans. They don't seem to have bodies other than- ([this thing], a gleaming angular swept-wing stealth bomber in black, silver, and blue. Or this one, a tank. Or that one, an AA-missile launcher. All gleaming metal and menacing.)

Antagonists arrived at human home without talking. Antagonists hurt all cities.

All humans hurt all Antagonists. All Antagonists hurt all humans.

Red was learning to hurt Antagonists. Red emphasis emphasis emphasis dislikes Antagonists.

It seems pretty reasonable she hates them if they're hurting her people. He still has no idea about transportation to where she's from but if they figure it out maybe one of the crafters can go try to talk to them, if the humans haven't managed it? That might not work but it seems better than them killing each other.

Maybe a crafter could try it. Humans have tried lots of ways like sound and light and other things to talk to them, but not crafter speak. The crafter might die even with strong human guards.

She doesn't know how she got here either aside from - she does a little bit of finagling to get the idea of 'experimental weapon technique' across - going wrong and hurting her instead.

If they're people at all crafters should be able to talk to them; communication just works, that way. It's trickier if it's dangerous to get close but he bets someone very old or sick would be willing to do it, most people prefer a useful death to a pointless one and that would definitely be useful, even if it doesn't work out.

If she can explain how her weapon works someone might be able to help her figure out what happened with it - shining-pebbleclinker is a good choice for that, too, actually, if it's not their kind of thing they'll know whose thing it is.

Good idea. It involves the impeller field and lots of math.

She wants a little bit more to eat, please, and then to go talk with shining-pebbleclinker.

Sure; more dove, or something else?

Once she's fed, he shows her the walking stick he crafted for her last night - identical to his in most details, though the edges of the top curl are crisper on hers and it's a reddish-brown rather than green - and leads her outside.

Shining-pebbleclinker is sitting on a chair made with similar design sensibilities to the trundlecart, leaning in to adjust something on the cart-mounted contraption they've brought with them. It seems at first glance to be a marble maze, with the marbles and chutes scaled down to a fraction of the size that's standard in her world and dozens if not hundreds of marbles in motion through it, some plain and some glowing; if Wanda watches, though, she'll soon notice that they take relatively short paths before reaching collection points, where they're passed on or lifted back to their starting points when they're joined by another marble; a little more observation makes it clear that the collection points are in fact logic gates, reacting to the glow of the marbles.

Beans with spices would be good. And eggs, she doesn't like 'em THAT much but needs food in her. She appreciates the walking stick!

...That's kind of amazing!!!

She begins the discission by finding and opening this computer science learning program that lets you click and drag logic gates around and pulling up a full-adder, one of the most basic units of modern computers, pointing it at Pebbles (as Wanda is thinking of her) and running some examples. The gates light up on activation, on screen.

Oooooooh. How does that work? Pebbles has never seen anything like it before. It's showing... an adder? Works a little differently from the one she has at home (which does more digits, too), but it's recognizable.

She can't talk like that, but she is learning to write!

It works with millions and even billions of switches like her marbles! So small you can't even see them.

You can put a bunch of these adders together like... This! And add arbitrarily large numbers!

Yeah! Millions, really? In something so small? That's super impressive and she wants to know all about it as soon as Wanda can write well enough to explain!

If she's not stopped, pebbleclinker will spend the rest of the day bringing Wanda up to speed on the state of the art in crafter computing; they haven't developed multipurpose computers, even at assembly level, and the size limitation of working in pebbles is pretty significant, but they've got arithmetic down, and the network, and some simple robotics, and automated use of crafting gadgets like shrinkers and scanners and so on; she's currently working on a multipurpose cooking system that will let someone make food for someone else via the network.

It also turns out, as she's demonstrating, that the 'shining' part of her name isn't just from the glow of the marbles; she can also make her fingertips glow, to work with the logic gates without having to finagle as many marbles into place.

She knows a bunch of computer science (binary search is pretty basic, but how about this lovely elegant parity checking algorithm for making sure you have no errors when transmitting your data! It hardly even consumes much of the data's space!) but is kind of limited in explaining it. You can make really tiny logic gates with some rare materials and specialized tools. Then you can make machines that make the same thing over and over and over again and bootstrap from there.

What are all the things that crafting can actually do?

'Rare' seems to be beyond what Wanda can communicate with the vocabulary she has; pebbleclinker makes some guesses, but gives up before hitting on it. Her computer science is super cool, though.

Crafting can do lots of stuff, and people are inventing more all the time - the basic action of it, once you have crafting-materials to work with, is to impress traits onto your materials, like 'glowing' or 'producing heat' or 'moving in a particular way', and then you combine those to make whatever thing you're trying for, like her cooking machine uses a self-heating cooking surface and a robotic arm with a bit on the end that can morph into different tools to fry things. Any physical trait can be changed, though this can be dangerous; there's a few ways of changing materials' traits that don't seem to do anything but actually make the materials harmful to touch or unhealthy to be around. (Fortunately it's always possible to reverse a change if you know how it was made in the first place, and visible changes are generally not subtly dangerous like that.) It's also possible to make something that has the trait of changing other materials' traits via crafting; the second material has to already be crafting-material and it's clumsier that way than doing it directly, but this allows for a lot of complicated machines. And you can 'link' two objects and have them able to affect each other at a distance; this is a relatively new discovery and led to the invention of the network.

Maybe crafting-material can be made into semiconductors, (which are the tiny logic gate material) but she's not sure where to start explaining the properties they have to have. Maybe she can guess what's dangerous about the dangerous states if she hears a little more? They've discovered lots of dangerous things.

Her people would probably really like crafting-materials even set up for simple things like 'being really REALLY hot and put in a safe container to heat lots of stuff at once', if there's enough to go around.

The weirdest ones are the one that hurts to touch and will make sparks and set things on fire if you give something too much of it and the one that glows and makes plants and animals super sick if there's too much of it - they think it makes them sick if there's less but it's around for too long, too, even if it doesn't glow. And then things like changing the temperature something evaporates at, that's less weird than those two and lots easier to figure out what's going on but it's still not great to breathe a bunch of material in all of a sudden.

Basic changes like making things hot aren't hard at all; they're not quite as enjoyable as making basic crafting materials, for most crafters, but Wanda's people shouldn't have a hard time setting up trades even if they can't learn to do it themselves.

Yeah that sounds like electricity, pretty dangerous if not handled well but actually what her computer uses, and radioactivity, which is SUPER DUPER DANGEROUS if handled poorly, and useful in some niche cases.

She tried doing it herself a bit and couldn't get anything. Is there a right way to learn?

She should probably start by trying to figure out how to communicate like crafters do, it's basically the same sort of mental motion - you're putting your thoughts in someone else - and much easier. It's definitely weird that she doesn't already know how, though, even clever animals can pick it up and pebbleclinker definitely would have guessed that anyone who could write would be able to do it.

She's been reading and writing since she was 5. This is new.

Can pebbleclinker think the mental motion at Red?

...maybe? Give her a minute to think about it.

The problem is that it's so automatic she isn't aware of the details anymore, it just happens when she wants it to. Doing it feels like this, though.

Huh. It's alien in the same sort of way Wave Force manipulation was alien. A complete new twist to the brain, thinking in a way never thought before.

Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.

She just feels silly. Doesn't really expect it to work.

Again?

Communicating feels like this and making crafting material feels like this and making something hot feels like this.

She thanks pebbleclinker and tries thinking at her without any particular strategy for half an hour, occasionally asking for the feeling to be sent again. If nothing happens maybe she'll do... Mindfulness meditation about it or something? (God, she should be in tactics class about now...)

Pebbleclinker thinks she got something, after about twenty minutes - not anything coherent, but it's still progress!

Encouraging if it's not a false positive!

She mmmmight need to take a break on this though, brain hurting. And she's getting reasonably fast at writing, with a complicated algorithm she reused for this, so they can still talk a bit without her learning how to do the thing.

What is living in this place like? Does everyone everywhere have territories and small houses?

It varies a bit more than that! Lots of people want to run their own households once they're adults, but not everyone, so some crafters stay with their parents or find households to be members of rather than starting their own - it's simpler that way, they don't have to make as many decisions, but also more restricting. And most but not all households have set territories; some are mobile, with everything on trundlecarts - usually traders or people with migratory species in their households but some people just prefer it for itself, temporarily or permanently. She herself has often thought about going mobile for a while to see what kinds of computing things have been invented in other places.

There can't be that many crafters on the planet if they live in such low density.

And with so few people...

One person doing one kind of work gets very good at it. If pebbleclinker can just clink pebbles all the time and not do any farming or chores, and someone else who is good at farming does all the farming, that would mean more of both things get done, yes?

But with fewer people around you can't do that as much.

...has riverwalker not shown her how they craft food? Nobody needs to spend all their time on farming; people who really like plants get into breeding interesting kinds, and meat takes work, but someone who only keeps easy things doesn't have to spend more than a few minutes on it, most days.

Ooh, riverwalker is a good name.

She isn't explaining what she means correctly. Maybe she'll try again once she can speak properly, if she learns.

Shrug; all right. Does she have any other questions?

How does the food-crafting work? Can you craft one carrot into two carrots?

Not directly; what foodcrafting does is force-growing plants. It's best for things like fruit or nut or legume plants where the edible part is pretty separate from the main body of the plant, that way you can just grow exactly what you need when you need it and leave the rest of the plant there.

...Does the plant need huge amounts of water and fertilizer when you force grow it?

It needs water and crafted fertilizer, yeah, no kind of crafting can make matter. Not huge amounts, just equivalent to what you're making it grow.

She is relieved. If crafting could make new matter that would be very surprising.

(...But can it reduce negentropy? ...Well, Valkyrie Cores do that, they think, so nevermind.)

Her going home is unlikely but maybe pebbleclinker could help, or knows who could help. She messed up a [golden sphere] technique to get here, and she has logic-machine recordings of what happened, but it almost killed her and she doesn't know why or even understand how the thing she was trying to do works exactly. It also involves some very weird math.

That sounds like it might be a big project, but one that'd be in pebbleclinker's wheelhouse, and definitely interesting. She can take a look at the recordings and see if she can make any sense of the format, that seems like a place to start. And old leaf likes weird math, it'd be worth telling them about it probably.

Uh...

Explaining how to interpret Impeller Field recordings would be very hard until she learns to speak properly. But she doesn't feel ready to try that some more right now either. She might just need to go back to sleep.

That's fair. Should she call riverwalker back? Wanda might want to cover her ears if so, it'll be loud.

If the house is negation-can-go, yes please. Hopefully she'll be more able to do things tomorrow.

...well that's baffling, how would Wanda not know... oh... riverwalker really wasn't kidding that she's an unfamiliar species, were they. 'Cannot go into houses' is a property of crafters, not of houses - has riverwalker said anything about it being okay for her to go in without his invitation?

Humans make entrances do 'cannot move entrances'.

She doesn't remember clearly if he has or not. She thinks it would be alright but does not want to be rude.

If she's operating as a crafter and goes into someone's house without their permission that's basically saying it's not actually their house. It might be that riverwalker is thinking of her as not-a-crafter clearly enough for that not to apply but that's a hell of a risk to take if she's anything less than rock-solid certain about it.

That might be a human thing. Or a from-far-distance-place thing. She won't go inside without asking.

Do crafters have a thing that can be traded for anything, and that anything can be traded for? A thing that isn't useful except for how it can be traded for anything? That is 'money' and she's used to doing work to get money and trading money to get a house and food. As opposed to building a house and food herself.

...no... crafting materials are common to trade if you don't have anything else the other person wants, that might be close enough to what she's asking about. Trade itself isn't that common, though, and working for someone outside your own household is especially rare; she'll have a much easier time trading goods rather than services. Or possibly finding a household to join, if she's inclined to that; most crafters aren't but she has no idea about Wanda.

She doesn't want to make everything herself. She especially dislikes cooking and cleaning.

She can probably make things that are worth trading. Joining a household is (big uncertainty).

Joining a household is a big decision, yeah. Especially since Wanda barely knows anyone here.

She might be able to get a crafter to join her household; having an assistant to take care of things is reasonably common. Again it'll be trickier since nobody knows her, but probably not impossible - it'll help if she's open to having people on a short-term basis, six months to a couple of years, lots of teenagers want to do something like that between leaving their parents' households and starting their own and there's never enough households that want them.

She is so not qualified to be the head of a household. She's also a teenager!

She has a concept called 'roommates' where two people... Live in the same place on a temporary basis and are friendly but have no deep attachment or obligations beyond politeness and chores to each other, is that a thing?

Pebbleclinker's species doesn't do that - they're a little more social than other territorial species but they don't live together without a clear hierarchy. That said, having someone join her household temporarily could work a bit like that if she wanted it to - the head of a household will often assign a member a sub-territory of their own, usually just a room or a small building but it can be bigger, and can task them with looking after their own day to day needs.

Being head-of-household and giving a sub-territory and assigning someone to take care of themselves is still different from being roommates. She will think about it.

Red would like pebbleclinker to call riverwalker now, please.

Pebbleclinker does so, whistling loudly; it only takes a few minutes for their host to appear and invite Wanda back into the house.

Hey Riverwalker,

Red uncertainty will need to sleep a lot. Call Riverwalker all(go to bed) uncertainty? Want go to bed not(call Riverwalker) uncertainty?

He doesn't mind being called to let her into the house but he can build her something temporary to sleep in if she wants, sure.

...Red leave house good? Red enter house not(Riverwalker open) bad?

...right, alien. She's always allowed to leave - the house or his territory or whatever, it's a very general principle, if she wants to go she can. Going into his house without him is... it's his house? If she tries to claim it for her own he will be pretty upset about that? (He's pretty upset just thinking about it, in fact.)

Not claim house!

...She draws two stick figures, purple and green. Purple: Human, head-of-household. Green: Human, guest.

Purple says green is a guest. Green can enter house without purple. Green can go in house-center without purple. Green can go in green's room without purple. Green can take small food without purple. Green can NOT take not-food things in the house or go into other rooms.

...Humans have territory think territory small. Riverwalker have territory think territory big.

Pebbleclinker thinks Wanda shouldn't push on this, it won't go well - Wanda is a different species but she looks like theirs, it's not surprising that riverwalker is reacting to her the same way he'd react to a member of their species, and if she keeps going he's liable to kick her out entirely, for very good reasons.

She writes-

'Not enough words to write. Will try to speak.'

She screws her face up in concentration, in focus, and tries to send to both of them that- She was trying to explain, not demand.

Who knows if it comes through.

...Ugh, headache.

Yeah, that didn't work.

Pebbleclinker thinks riverwalker should let Wanda in to lie down and then go get started on the building, and she will try to write up a better explanation of the problem for when Wanda wakes up.

'Sorry. I will not go in your house without you.'

She's feeling very, very tired and lonely, suddenly. It's kind of hard not to start crying.

Riverwalker can get a dog for her to cuddle, if she wants. Anyway, here's the house.

"Mm, no..." Sigh.

Aliens. Gotta remember that. It's a wonder this is the first hovercraft eel incident. When she's a bit less... Nano-shredded by spatial warping... She's definitely going to go make her own place.

On the way to the bed, she writes: Red sad for making riverwalker feel bad. Red did not mean to do that. Riverwalker is good at give guest. Red will go claim empty territory when not(danger). One two days uncertainty.

It's okay, he's not upset at her. This is mostly his and glowing-pebbleclinker's fault, they're the ones who can communicate properly right now, he's just never had to explain why territory matters before. She's fine to stay for a few days; more than one or two, if she needs to, it'll probably be fine once she has her own subterritory.

Humans feel bad when humans crafters they like feel bad. Feel more bad if human made feel bad. Most of the time.

Crafters not in territory not(can move) uncertainty? Feel danger uncertainty?

...Red wait this if riverwalker thinks wait good.

(She's calming down some now.)

Most crafters can function pretty well in unclaimed spaces, it's mostly being in someone else's territory that does it - it doesn't feel dangerous, it's just taboo, going into someone's house or messing with their things just isn't done, it's hard to even think about except very abstractly. It's a felt sense that's hard to act against, the same way that someone would have a hard time touching a cooking tool they knew was hot, even if they weren't scared of it. And that's the real problem - if he lets her do something that looks like claiming his things, even if he tells her she can, it could very easily start feeling like they're actually hers, and then it doesn't matter that they both agree that the things should still be his, he won't be able to use them.

Huh. She nods thoughtfully, then remembers that body language might be alien and writes out 'I probably understand. Humans don't have-' She erases that last bit and replaces it with, 'Very big not do thing symbol uncertainty?'

...She yawns and shakes her head and looks towards the guest room she used before unconsciously.

He shows her the symbol for 'taboo' and waves her off to bed.

Drone, away. Wanda, on bed. When she takes out her Valkyrie Core in the safety of the guest room, pain and exhaustion hits her like a crashing wave and she's out like a lightbulb.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

She wakes up feeling even worse somehow. And the medical bracelet assures her it will get worse before it gets better, and complains that she needs food and a HOSPITAL and DIALYSIS, but in two more days she might be stable? And only because VK users have all sorts of nonsense that makes them healthier going on. This is less optimistic than it thought yesterday. Greaaaaat.

She doesn't come out of the bed until she manages to badger the thing into giving her a (small, reluctant) dose of narcotic painkillers despite her age. She needs a shower. And coffee. And her big fluffy bed. And network connectivity. And Lizzy to pat her on the back and hug her. First two might be on the menu, at least. Third one with some work.

She blearily looks around Riverwalker's house some indeterminate amount of sleeping later, Valkyrie Core held defensively close to herself but not activated.

There's a tray of food by her bed again, and a note, presumably from pebbleclinker, explaining the territoriality; she gives slightly more detail, but the upshot is the same as what riverwalker explained earlier. Riverwalker is sitting at one of the benches on the other side of the room, engrossed in something, with a dog sleeping at his feet; he hasn't noticed that she's up.

Okay first thing, bathroom and washing her face and hands just to feel slightly more awake. (Ugh.) Second thing... Back to the bed to eat, or to eat at the table? She's fuzzy brained enough that this conundrum results in her standing there by the bathroom a bit blankly.

Riverwalker notices her after a minute: he thinks she should eat, if she's hungry; she can have that seat at the table there.

Nodnod. A weak smile.

She doesn't have the drone out right now, and getting it out would require integrating, so... No. What's for breakfast? Regardless of the answer she eats quietly.

...Oh wait. She has the med bracelet. It has a sketchpad... Thing. For diagrams or something. It's a much smaller canvas but big enough to write 'More sick'.

Yeah, she looks it. Fortunately the community healer is already on their way over, they were curious about her when he mentioned her on the network. Dogrunner will be stopping by with their nice walking tent for her to borrow, too; she doesn't have to move to it, it might not be a good idea if she's unwell, but it'll be good to have the option when she's ready.

He caught some fish last night; does she want some with her breakfast?

Well she needs protein. "Yes..." Though she doesn't look entirely happy about it.

(She wants to offer to pay him back again but didn't he tell her not to bother yesterday, because she's a guest? It'd be weird to keep bringing it up.)

There's eggs or leftover dove if she'd rather; he's sure someone will have some deer to share but nobody's offered yet, maybe by dinnertime.

Eggs, thanks (emphasis), she writes. Red guest, thanks, that too.

Eggs it is, then. (The dog, a big fluffy black thing, wakes up when he stands, and comes over to sniff at her.) And it continues not to be a big deal that she's visiting - maybe it's less a done thing where she's from? What else would someone do when they're sick or injured and can't care of themself, he wonders rhetorically.

A proper response to this would take up too much space but she can write, Some community negation(like strangers)

She will pet the dog.

The dog appreciates the petting.

Riverwalker thinks that worrying about strangers like that sounds stressful; maybe they have a way of doing it that works for them, but it doesn't sound appealing at all to him. Or make much sense; she's been a perfectly reasonable guest, even with the rough patch yesterday.

Agreement. Some human negation(taboo) different taboo.

Sigh.

Well, he'd feel pretty weird about it if he didn't help her out, so she doesn't need to worry.

And here's some scrambled eggs.

Does she want anything else today, or just to rest?

Eggs, yum. As much as she wants coffee, med bracelet is telling her 'no'.

Thanks. Rest.

All right. He found instructions on the network for a simplified connection gadget that'll let her call him back if she needs anything, he's putting that together now and he'll make sure she has it before he goes anywhere other than just right by the house.

Thank you.

Red do helpful thing when not sick uncertainty?