The somewhere else is in some sense like the place she just was, except that the roads are really wide and the vehicles are huge.

There are people walking by outside the alleyway (thought no one in it) and their clothes are really weird, too.

Yeah!!!! Not a single person on this street has painted birds on their face, what's up with that. 

Truthfulness immediately approaches the street, keeping an eye on the huge vehicles to make sure none of them are going on the sidewalk. (Why are the nyooms so big????) She goes up to the nearest person. "Hello! I need to speak with a monk. Something very confusing has happened."

"Can't help, sorry."  They breeze past.

???!? 

What a rude person!

Truthfulness looks around for a person in monk robes, or failing that someone in a different official-looking uniform. 

(Everything about Truthfulness's life has taught her that the best solution to confusing problems is to report them to a trustworthy authority, who has more context on the situation and might not even be confused about the problem at all.)

No monks are obviously available.  There's... a person in all black, including a knit face covering?  And here's someone in a fashionably-sharp looking thing that's kind of like something other people have been wearing.

Truthfulness goes up to the person in all black! That's sort of like a uniform!

"Hello! I am having a very confusing problem! Can you help me with it, or alternately direct me to the person whose job is solving confusing problems?"

"...Sure.  What sort of problem?"

"I was walking to work and a portal opened on the street and dropped me into that alleyway"-- she points-- "and this is obviously not Watertree because everyone's sense of style is very different and you have extremely large nyooms. I would like to know where I am and how I am to interface with this location." Truthfulness says this with the supreme confidence of someone who knows that, if she hasn't heard of portals existing, this is surely because they are commonplace and everyday to the people on the other side.

...Truthfulness belatedly notices that she has said multiple sentences without including a single evidential, and in fact that this isn't her native language at all.

"Why doesn't this-- this-- this language have evidentials? WHY DOESN'T IT HAVE A PEJORATIVE SYLLABLE?????"

"I'm going to call 911.  Do you want to talk to them or should I do it for you?"

"I can talk to them!"

How does a society get advanced enough to have nyooms using a language that doesn't have evidentials????

The person initiates a call and passes Truthfulness the phone (and then awkwardly keeps her arm held up, since it's strapped to her wrist).

There's an initial automated choice section.  "If there is a medical emergency, press 1 immediately.  If there is a fire, instance of sabotage, or other environmental emergency, press 2.  To report a crime, press 3.  For non-emergency poison control, press 4.  For something not in these categories, press 5."

5!

What a clever device, a phone you can have on your wrist.

"911 miscellaneous, what's your emergency?"

"A portal opened at 37 Palladium Street, Watertree, Ravine Catchment Area, Newcontinent, and deposited me at"-- Truthfulness looks around-- "I can't see a street sign but I think it's a different place. Also, I did not believe that portals could teleport people previously." 

"Are there any physical threats in your immediate vicinity?"  Typing noises.

"Nope!"

Truthfulness is distracted by the buildings. They're all so boring! Why hasn't anyone painted any murals on the walls? Maybe in addition to portals they've invented immortality, although even then Truthfulness feels you would spend your immortality elaborating on the murals of people who died before immortality was invented or killed themselves or got into a caving accident.  

"Please stay on the line while we trace your location.  Is there any other information you think is relevant?"

"I have spontaneously acquired the ability to speak a language that I didn't previously speak"-- and that is very poorly designed, but that's not important emergency call information-- "and several aspects of the environment are strange enough that I would be surprised to be in the Teachingsphere at all." Everywhere has murals and sparkly clothes!

"Do you expect to be safe if you stay where you are for ten minutes?"

Truthfulness looks around. She figures that she can probably avoid stepping into the street where the big nyooms are. "I don't see anything obviously dangerous but I am unfamiliar with many aspects of this city and so there might be something dangerous I don't know about."

"Do you have someone available to wait with you?"

"No," chimes in the person with the phone, flatly.

How rude!

"No," she says. 

"Do you see the camera across the street from you, on the light pole a bit to your left?"

Truthfulness looks, finds something that looks like a camera, and waves hi!

"I think so. Did you see me wave?"

This conversation would be so much more convenient with evidentials! And all the other markers Truthfulness is used to putting on words. How can you get through life without emotion-markers...

"Yes.  We'll keep an eye on you until the agent arrives.  Try to stay still and you should be fine.  Anything else you think we should know in the next eight minutes?"

"I don't think so! May the Word bless you!" she chirps. 

"Mm.  Goodbye."

People walk by on the streets mostly ignoring her.  Lots of the really big nyooms go by.

And six minutes later, someone approaches her.  "Hello, portal-walker.  Care to come with me?"

"Certainly!" Truthfulness says. "Are you a monk?"

"No.  Monks do not usually involve themselves in these sorts of scenarios, here on Earth."  The woman starts walking, watching to see whether Truthfulness follows her.

Truthfulness follows her. "Huh! Then you're some kind of known trustworthy person who is not a monk?" What a weird concept! Why would anyone who is qualified for it not want to be a monk? 

"I am exceedingly trustworthy to get you where we're going.  Monks here mostly live apart from society and focus on building their personal fortitude.  You're used to them serving a different role?"

"Oh, that's one of the things monks do. But they're also judges and teachers and censors and liturgists and-- I don't think this language has a word for the primary things they do?"

"Would you like to try to describe it at more length?"

"Well, one of the things they do is have meetings with people-- once a week or a few times a week or once a month or whatever they need-- to answer their questions about what what the Word wants them to do and to help them grow in virtue. And you also usually have a monk within shouting distance of any street, so that they can help if there's an unexpected problem, like someone is too noisy in your building's quiet hours or there's a cat stuck in the tree." It would never occur to Truthfulness that the primary purpose of those monks is preventing crimes. "And they also perform rituals on holidays and do sermons so everyone knows important things, like that you should be kind to others and work hard, or the current status of malaria eradication."

"The Word?  - Let's go in here, please."  Side door of a building.

"You know, the Creator of the Universe who is morality and mathematics and physics?"

"I will listen raptly to your elaboration in a bit.  Please come inside, quickly."

Truthfulness comes inside!

What sort of place is she in?

A concrete stairwell.  "Up we go.  What is your name?"

"Truthfulness! What's yours? --Wow, this language doesn't have honorifics. Weird." 

"Very pleased to meet you, Truthfulness.  I'm Svetka.  What sort of honorific were you reaching for?"

"I would have called you '-na' which means 'being with a soul.' It's the polite way to refer to strangers you have no particular relationship with!"

"You are welcome to append that to my name if it would make you feel more at home."

"Well, you might prefer a different honorific! You are clearly a person who deals with unusual situations, and that might have an honorific associated with it so that everyone knows to go to you with unusual situations! In our world, I would use the honorific '-monk' for you because you would... be a monk... but maybe you would prefer '-police' or '-teacher' or '-nurse.'"

Obviously a doctor would be far too busy to speak to Truthfulness. 

"I did study with monks for a year, as a child."

"Cool! Was it a"-- Truthfulness discovers another lexical gap-- "were you trying to learn a specific skill like meditation, or to improve your connection with God, or to figure out the skills you need to live a normal adult life, or did you just need a break from your household?"

"I was learning a specific skill."  There sure are a lot of stairs, and Svetka is trying to set a pretty intense pace; it's getting a bit hard to keep up.  "If you get tired to the point that you prefer I carry you, I will."

Uhhhhh!!!!

"I would rather not have sex while I'm getting my bearings," Truthfulness explains. "Also I'm not attracted to women very much."

"It's important that we get you to a safe location swiftly.  I meant the offer in a purely professional spirit."

"Oh! Well in that case sure, I only work out four times a week."

Truthfulness gets hoisted at the next landing, then, and Svetka if anything picks up the pace.  Four stories later they exit into the main part of the building, which is much less sparsely decorated although still notably lacking in variety of color.  Svetka sets her on her feet and continues briskly down the hallway.

"Thank you!" Truthfulness says. "What is the orientation program for newly portaled people like?"

"There is not such a program.  You might be the first one, or close to that."  Svetka has a device in her hand, apparently, she taps it against a doorknob and it opens.  She ushers Truthfulness inside to an apartment.

"Oh!" Truthfulness says. "Have the portals been newly developed?"

"Yes.  Unless they were created elsewhere in secret first."  Here's a door to a balcony enclosed in striped winterizing vinyl.  "How would you say you are at balancing?"

"Normal at balancing?" Truthfulness says. 

"Try not to fall, but if you do, I will catch you."  Svetka unzips a doorway out of the balcony cover, and hauls a metal stack of grates up to the edge.  When she thwacks a clasp on the side, it extends rapidly and lands, to form a bridge, on the railing of a balcony across the alleyway.

Svetka hops onto it and offers Truthfulness a hand up.

Truthfulness looks at this nervously. "...I think your world's normal at balancing might be better at balancing than my world's."

"Come, now.  You wouldn't be afraid to walk on something this width on the ground, would you?"  It's maybe a foot and a half wide.  She repeats: "If you fall, I will catch you."

Truthfulness begins to hyperventilate. "No-- no, I'm scared, I can't-- please don't make me." She presses her back as flat against the wall as she can. There are prayers to say, meditations for when you are frightened-- but Truthfulness can't find any of them, they keep slipping through her head-- she realizes that this notamonk has no idea what she's doing and Truthfulness is never going to go home again--

She starts to cry.

"Shall I carry you again?  In a professional capacity."

"No-- no it's-- if you're scared of something, then you have to do it, that's the commandment-- if it's the sort of thing you're supposed to do--" Snot is running down Truthfulness's face. She drilled the fear-prayers as a child until they came up naturally without her having to do anything-- Word give me strength, Word give me courage, Word give me strength, Word give me courage-- I will let the fear pass over me and through me and where the fear is gone there will be nothing and only I will remain-- the scariest thing is fear, the scariest thing is fear--

She visibly pauses and draws herself together. She takes a deep breath. She focuses, very intently, on the feelings in her feet. She deliberately places in a box any thoughts other than the ones about the situation she's in right now. She says, in a voice that is calm in the way of people controlling complete hysteria, "does your plan account for the possibility t that people in my world are significantly clumsier than people in your world?"

"...I am not at all clumsy, and quite sure I would catch you.  You did not fall going up many flights of stairs quite quickly, as I may have expected if you were much clumsier.  It is not windy; the buildings here block it."

"Okay. I will go."

She begins to cross, reciting Word give me strength, Word give me courage in her head. 

Svetka is so ready to grab her.  She can even hold her hands if she wants; apparently Svetka is confident enough in her not-falling abilities to take the crossing backwards.

That would be helpful, yes!

Then they can safely make their way across.  This railing's a bit higher than the other building's; Svetka jumps off the grate, still facing backward, and then lifts Truthfulness down.

"Thank you!" Truthfulness says. She seems completely unembarrassed by what just happened.

"You are welcome."  She hits some sort of spring-loaded mechanism and the bridge stacks back up in her hands.  She sets it down and leads Truthfulness through the next apartment.  "Do you still feel basically well?  Physically."

"Yes! Is there a worry that I'll feel sick?" Truthfulness considered it. "Now that you've pointed it out I expect to have normal, uh, psychosomatic-anxiety-hypochondria-salience-of-physical-experience? Why don't you have a word for that?"

"I don't believe I have ever experienced that feeling to need a word for.  I am not very worried you would become sick, but your heights encounter seemed to shake you."  Out into another hallway!  And to the elevator this time instead of the stairs.

"So if someone asks you if you're feeling sick, you don't immediately notice all the small pains and stomach upsets and so on, and then conclude that you're sick, and then your heart starts racing because you're worried that you're sick and you notice that and then you feel even sicker?"

"No.  I am sorry to have caused you this."  Once the elevator's closed, Svetka rapidly types a long series into the floor-selection panel.  They start descending more quickly than Truthfulness is used to elevators doing.

"Your society has a lot of technology!"

"Does yours not?"

"We don't have doorways in our balconies, or elevators that go this fast, or phones that fit in your hand, or that thing you tapped to make the door open."

"Most elevators don't go this fast.  What do you mean you don't have balcony doorways; is your climate too warm to need them?"

"We normally go downstairs and then cross the street and then go back up?"

"...Ah.  They are not very usual here, either.  But most balconies are open, most of the time."

"Well, yes, you have a doorway from the apartment into the balcony, just not one from balcony to balcony."