They find that really confusing, but it was already pretty confusing. "Where's Rebecca?"

"Asleep, she was up in the night three times with swarms."

"Hunh. I'll let the captain decide whether to wake her, I suppose."

He's curious — is Rebecca one of these sorcerers? — but not enough to spend time prying. "I can only maintain this form for a few minutes at a time," he admits. "Might I see this map?" 

"- not if you might turn into a dragon again indoors if you get distracted!" someone exclaims, while someone else runs off for (presumably) the captain.

"Distracted? No, it requires no ongoing maintenance on my part. It merely has a limited duration. A bit over ten minutes, to be precise. I can triple that time if necessary, though I'd rather not." 

"Now I know that isn't how anything works," comes the irritable reply.

The captain bustles back, accompanied by -

- a shockingly beautiful young woman with feathered wings, wearing a thoroughly impractical dress and sandals themed with snowflakes and frost patterns.

A bit of irritation flares at the implication that he would lie. He allows the feeling to fade without reaching his face; it is he, not they, who is a stranger here. Misunderstandings are to be expected. 

He can wait for the captain to return. 

...is that an angel? Or perhaps an azata? (Did that mad beautiful Emissary send him to Elysium?) 

Regardless, they have impeccable taste. And very nice wings. It's not very often that Ipaxalon feels under-dressed. 

He's not sure of the proper etiquette for greeting a sorcerer/angel/azata/??? in this society, but he can do his level best. "Favored of the Light, hail and well met." He smiles warmly. 

He's hot and those are not two words she ever expected to think consecutively ever again!!!

"I - I'm the ship's magical girl, my name is Rebecca Arden," she says, curtsying with a bit of wingflare. "Are - you not a - I suppose I've never tried turning into -"

"It is an honor and a delight to meet you, Rebecca. I am called in the mortal tongue Ipaxalon, of the silver flight." She seems considerably more confused about his identity than he expected an azata to be, but he's too confused himself to answer the half-questions.

"A-and what might an - immortal? - be doing visiting the Shotley -?"

"Dragon, to be precise. Due to a magical mishap, I am unfortunately very lost. While seeking a means by which to navigate, I saw your vessel from afar. Your Captain and crew were most welcoming." Which reminds Ipaxalon, he has a task to accomplish. He is here to orient to an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous environment, not get distracted by ✨wingflares✨. "They were kind enough to offer me a look at the ship's map. Perhaps you would accompany me?" Okay, maybe a little distracted. 

She looks at the Captain, who has been murmuring to one of the crew. The captain says, "There's some concern that - he? - can't be sure to stay small and not dragon-sized, in the map room."

"I have assured the good Captain that there is no substantial danger of my accidentally exiting this form. Unless your map room is home to an antimagic field, which I very strongly doubt." Or unless they intend to physically restrain him from leaving for half an hour, which (a) would not work and (b) would leave him much less inclined to avoid putting a hole in their boat if it did.

"It is not a kind of magic that requires ongoing concentration to maintain." Wait, why is that such a long phrase in this language? Do they not have...? "Captain, I have the utmost respect for the integrity of your vessel, and would not propose a course of action which needlessly endangered it or your crew."

The captain considers this, then finally sighs and nods. Rebecca leads Ipaxalon into a room which contains maps.

He follows politely, and observes said maps. 

Oh. 

Wishes, he knows, can send people pretty much anywhere. He appears to have been anywhere'd quite remarkably hard. 

"I do not recognize these continents," he murmurs. "I fear I am very lost indeed." 

"- that's America, there, and we're headed for England, here."

"Thank you, Rebecca. I think — I expect I may be missing a great deal of context. I will not know many things that seem obvious to you, and I will need to ask what must seem like very basic questions. I beg your patience in this.

"Ships and those who sail them, these things I knew. Yet much of what I have seen and heard here is alien to me. A creature of shifting blackness attacked me from beneath the waves without provocation; I had never seen its like before, and know not its nature nor its motives. The Captain, and crew, and yourself, all seemed surprised by some aspects of my appearance. I seem to have been mistaken for a 'magical girl', and I do not know why. Of Ireland, America, England, I knew nothing before I came here. I do not know the name of this planet, if it has one, nor what plane it inhabits. Could you...explain these things as best you can, the way you might to a child?" 

As he speaks, his eyes flick across the map she indicated, attempting to commit its contents to memory. 

"Gosh. Uh. The planet is Earth. The black things are monsters. They just - attack, they don't seem to want anything besides to attack people. Uh, here on Earth, all the magic is girls. Only some of us, but only girls. And then we can change how we look," she gestures with her left wing illustratively, "and what we're wearing, and we get other powers if we're pretty enough. And if we change how we look too much then our souls leave early and some kind of benign creature runs around in our place fighting monsters, so if you showed up looking like a dragon I guess they'd think that happened, and then it turned out you could talk, so..."

That is even more strange than he was expecting after several instances of updating towards expecting strangeness!!!

...but still no Maelstrom. He'll cope. 

"That does help quite a bit, thank you." Even if it does raise Many Additional Questions. Pretty enough? Their souls leave early? Did they think he was some kind of benign undead? No, still too many assumptions. "By 'all the magic is girls', do you mean, only biological women inherit spellcasting, only they can learn it, they are the only ones chosen by the gods, something completely different...?" 

"There's only one God, let's start with that!"

Curious. "Are 'magical girls' Their chosen clerics? Are Their domains and ethical-orientation known?" 

"...His domain is all the world and He's all-loving and all-good? I don't know if He's picking magical girls though, the Church thinks it might only be Him the same way everything else is."

"...hmmm. Where I come from, there are many gods, each with different but sometimes overlapping areas of interest. Farming, healing, war, fire, knowledge, destruction, law, and the like. They can be good or evil or somewhere in between, depending on their interests, and often carry out their conflicts through mortals. Many, but not all, choose some of their followers who are most aligned with their interests to become clerics, shaping their souls to enable them to perform a particular brand of 'divine' magic. Your magic does sound different. Clerics in my world know when they've been chosen; being contacted directly by a god is fairly unmistakable."

He's still skimming maps, moving the loose ones with care. 

"There are also arcane spellcasters, whose magic is usually learned or innate, and creatures with innate magic of their own, including dragons like myself. How do magical girls originally receive their magic? How did you come by yours, if I may ask?"

"Oh, uh, girls get a - vision, sort of, of ourselves, and stars behind us, and then we can change the us part, and then we look like that, however we changed it, to everyone else too. That's how it is for everybody I think but I haven't met many others. I'm pretty sure pagan deities are all demons or something. If they were angels they'd explain that they were working for God."