……
………???…?
let it SING …let what sing?
no, but see, there's- Dream plot. Where are they actually. (There's that sleepy floating feeling, unmoored from reality in favour of…) Oh, but come on! — they have reasons to wake up on time often enough.

(Their eyes are still closed, but they're starting to notice a sun's brightness on them, and it'd be hard to keep them closed for much longer… a light breeze.)

…they've fallen asleep on a bench? Notice — outside, comfortable — how about I-

They abruptly sit up, look around, as usual. Hold on- What do they see?

It looks like somewhere fairly in the middle of nowhere, with a few picturesque houses with tall grass and gardens of beautiful flowers between them. Further away is an out of place huge white building, with floors upon floors of balconies or rooms with huge windows surrounding it; people can be seen walking around, wearing gym clothes or short blue skirts, or sitting on the floor. Everything is placed among endless rows of neat and even fields of grain, with a train station next to train tracks built on a simple dirt road.

????????????… This is really not where they remember being last evening.

They're confused, and they don't have it overtrained, no opportunity for it, but they have still installed a bundle of checks to run if you're confused about where you are at some point. You can always have dissociated through your bus stop. So, check belongings, did they leave those anywhere? Are they in the middle of a train track or long-haul road, are they physically safe or should they move to anywhere right now- no, this is a bench, this is fine. Anyway, what are their immediate surroundings like? Any people?

(A mental current underneath like skidding on sand, at first. ?? Does this happen to people, could they have forgotten…? Never happened to them before, and- no, I don't remember hearing of cases either, but there's always something, minds are weird, haven't they been taught that too? Could they have been moved while asleep? Probably not the kilometres this implies —
— no, focus. Confused means confused, understand better later means later, they are still half-asleep. What considerations, what do I need to know right now…?
And deep breaths, to let the residual anxiety of surprise fall away. No scenario they can imagine in which it would help any.)

(Or maybe someone's rescue-simulating them, like in that novel… Isn't it, technically, exactly what you'd expect, odd peaceful place? (Continue to breathe, try-to-be-grounded —) I think this is you getting caught in stories again? Most of what you tried that with has not been anything unusual, in the past. But still, I really did not expect this! Acknowledging that, and going from there…)

Someone in a blue and white fursuit walks past one of the buildings to water some flowers. It's shinier and smoother, somehow, than the types of fursuits people are most familiar with. They turn to the new arrival and are confused for a moment.

…They haven't, actually, seen fursuits before, mind, though it sounds exactly like something an interesting-person would do somewhere, or for theater. And it looks like an odd kind of visual stylisation I've never seen before — of which there's, of course, thousands, and I haven't followed the goings-on of interesting-people even in other cities close by… but this is still some information on how close by they are to where they live. Unless they are completely wrong about the nature of reality- no, I think still true then, at least about how similar to where they live?

They get lost in thought for a moment, then, and have to catch themselves. Never miss an opportunity to stare at a beautiful thing, and it does look oddly — high-craftsmanship, I'd say if I tried to put it into words… Anyway, can you-

Anyway, they turn to the person and make eye contact to acknowledge their presence. Not saying anything, yet — it strongly depends on the person and culture, how much conversation they prefer in public spaces, and I would prefer to get my bearings more for now — but ready if they ask something.

(They look a bit more alert again, and sit up straighter, if you pay attention to this kind of thing.)

The fursuit-wearer waves awkwardly and in confusion. Whoever it is waits long enough for the silence to become wildly uncomfortable before saying, "Hello? Did you come here for a reason?"

"Ah, sorry, no, actually! I can leave to wherever if you point me there, so I don't interfere with your thing. I'm just… very unfamiliar with the place." They affect looking sheepish, and a friendlier smile, avert their eyes and lean back a little. "I've forgotten how I even got here, to be honest." Are you sure of mentioning this out loud? Well, too late now, isn't it? And they do have to ask their actual questions, at some point, if they still want the answers… We could read signs if they exist here? But mostly I concur. Though, hold on-
what language is this that I'm replying in, it's not one I remember knowing—

They pay attention, while they're listening to the reply.

"That sound pretty scary! Do you want to get your head checked? The school nearby has a really well-equipped clinic with ultrasound stuff."

"Huh, I wouldn't say- I know you want to be desperately careful, with brains, but I think memory issues are fairly common in places I know of… You might be right, though, this one's new for me. Could you sketch me a map of how to get there, if you've the energy or time for it?" I'm not sure if this language has that stock question, that's transparently a calque from one of their other ones. "And I might have to ask if they have the 'fund for nonpaying clients' thing, if I'm far enough this place's currency's different, or if they're volunteer enough to sometimes do without it…"

The sentence trails off. Not paying even close to all the attention they have, to the conversation, because- what is this language like, though? Have they remembered it as related to anything, or anything historical about who it's constructed by, if it was constructed? Maybe they wouldn't remember it as related, though, if they don't know anything it's related to, or would but entirely wrongly, that's not unusual… It feels like a language — an entire language, look at that! — ought to be very integrated into a mind, though, hard to just forget. Maybe they could elicit something if they introspect there.

"It's just..." he points at the out-of-place huge building. "There. There's an entrance on this side and from there you have to go left to end up at the medical wing. I'm happy to advance you the money just for a scan and come with and help you, I'm not working today! You're also right that some of the kids do free scans just for practice, though they don't give out too many."

The language is efficient, straightforward, and uses many different syllables and subtly different phonemes to let words be shorter! It does in fact feel a little unsophisticated.

Huh, that actually makes sense! Of course they would want a clinic to always be nearby. "Oh, thank you, hope it won't end up taking too much of your today. That's neat, though, that they do that-" Do you want to, or are you reflexively agreeing? Appreciated. "…Or, actually, I suppose, I'd like to find out how far I've gotten from home, first. Do you have a map of the wider area, by any chance?"

The language, though… Does it feel constructed? They've an intuition for it, because there's people building all sorts of things, but there are some features that barely ever show up naturally that they know of.

"-wait. If 'advance' means I would need to pay the money back later, I might not be able to take you up on that. Figuring out exchange especially depends on a lot of things going right at once, and I prefer not to depend on that even when I am less confused than this." Social politeness noise here? "…Sorry."

The language is constructed.

"Certainly, no advance then! And when it comes to a map, I can show you on my phone? There... isn't much of a wider area, really! It's fields that go on forever and the school behind me."

"…Wow. That'll be how many people living hereabouts full-time? How often does the train come, what's the closest places it would usually go? And, yeah, thank you again, that'd be wonderful…" And they lean in to look at whatever they're shown.

"Well with this village there's like 100 of us, the school has 800 students, and across all the fields there's another 60 or so people, the tractors and everything do a lot. The train comes every 10 minutes at the moment, it's self-driving and we need it for the two cities of 20,000 at both ends. It's like a 40 minute trip from one city to the other, and the train can stop by a few farms along the way."

"Oh, that's tiny! Students come to the school from all over, then?" !! wait. Could you ask- "…Also, just to check, are train tickets also paid, or is it funded differently somehow?" A personal story to make it less awkward… "My old hometown used to let all the trains to and from it be free deep in the morning, so- I think, so everyone was at worst a day from freely leaving if they needed it, but most people paid for the convenience. Don't think it worked out, though, overestimated how set it was, what's convenient for people…"

(— notice — these numbers are also information, they might have heard and remembered some living densities from different parts of the world, for example — to try to remember them to process afterward? Although not likely to be the densest most important part of the conversation… I feel it's fine! But I often feel it's fine at first glance in lots of cases where it isn't, actually, so go do whatever. Right, then, 160–800–20000–40h —)

"That's right, students come from far off and live here. You do have to pay for train tickets here, it's kind of in the middle of nowhere. So, do you need a place to stay? It sounded like you didn't think you were quite comfortable taking that ultrasound, yet."

"…Huh, I suppose I do, don't I. I wonder if you have anything systematic set up here, for cases like this, or if it'd be individual kindness? Fuck, it sounds hypocritical of me, though, how I keep repeating how I wouldn't like to impose on you and then I just keep imposing-" They laugh for a couple seconds, then abruptly pull back to serious and thoughtful. "…I, um, don't think it's about 'comfortable'? It's just, if I'm two hours of travel from home I'd prefer to know first, so I can plan about it, and if it's two weeks I'd prefer to know, and regardless I'd like not to take loans I can't pay back. …Wouldn't guess that it's two hours, though, honestly, I'm sure I'd have heard of this language, it's so interesting…"

"Well uhh... tell me about where you're from so we can know how far you are? Like, the corner? The language thing is quite worrying. Don't worry about the imposition, I don't feel you're much of an imposition really. You're a cool surprise! I have a big enough house." He tries curling his fursuit head into a bit of a smile, and it looks funny for a moment.

…Wo-oaha-ha-haoowwww, their animal costume can do what, if barely? :O "Oh, that's the best-case scenario, really! I always thought I'd try to find a relevant interest group, or something, if I ended up in this situation, so I could make sure… Right. Hm."

(While they're thinking: check, is the conversation going in the direction they prefer, have they only agreed to what they meant to (yes, looks like?) Do they trust this person enough to go live in their house — yes, most people do not pull ridiculous stunts that require harming someone, least of all without preparation. (This line of thought is overtrained, almost nonverbal at this point.) Though, was it without — well, the person looked convincingly surprised, though this is not much evidence? And I still have no model of how the language thing happened, the ability to do that is already far enough from what I expect, that also proposing a normal ridiculous stunt is — something like superfluous. I think they can let themselves be straighforwardly very grateful. …there you go, straightforwardly grateful now.)

"Well, Isohedral-on-lake-İilete, usually just Isohedral for us inhabitants, where I'm living now, is a city of… half a million people or so, last I looked, though that was a while ago and it might've changed in any direction. Its main lingua franca's Kawelen, it's what I mostly think in nowadays, though the community of Ghje home-speakers is sizeable, and I've heard the journalists do half their professional correspondence in Mhùlistē. The public-spaces editorial team loves sharp shapes and solid colour, and they've a couple of designers around that are really good at making its parks into environments that feel alien… though that's my opinion, there was a popular travel writer that thinks Ânursii's, nearby, are much better at it… don't recall the name, sorry, something starting with 'lh'? …Is any of that recogniseable?"

"Ohh nooo... I asked which corner and you sound like you don't even know what I could mean! If you can't say that then I have no idea about how you could possibly ever get back to that Isohedral place."