It's a nice beach! Very pure white sand. Clear waters. Some trees, a few of which have small, rock-hard fruits growing in clusters on their branches.

There's something sticking out of the water, a few hundred yards out. Very smooth and shimmery, too tall to be driftwood. Some kind of... spire? Minaret? Steeple?

Oh. People. 

Fortitude flinches away. She's read a lot of articles about barbarians, and-- she knows most barbarians aren't like that, but the worst atrocities run through her brain. She takes a deep breath, clenches her toes, and deliberately relaxes them. "Talk to people from the Teachingsphere" is not an option here. Her options are "talk to barbarians" and "not talk to anyone at all." If she talks to barbarians, she might die, but if she eats a poisonous plant or tries to live on fish alone she definitely will. 

She strips out of her clothes, folds them neatly, tucks them away somewhere that looks safe, and begins to swim to the thing. 

If she's at all aware of her surroundings while swimming, she'll see the barbarians(?) long before she reaches the spire.

There's just one, at first, floating around a few meters below her and staring up at her in fascination. It looks disconcertingly similar to a child, at first: pink-pale skin, wide shiny eyes, no hair anywhere, a few reddish fronds around its skull. Its hands have two long fingers each, and a slightly shorter thumb to each side of the hand; its feet are similar. It has no visible sexual characteristics bar an inconspicuous cloacal-looking slit. The most visible departure from the body plan with which she is familiar is the relatively enormous frilled tail continuing its spine for nearly two feet.

It click-squeaks rapidly at her, chittering like a laughing bird. Its teeth look quite sharp.

Fortitude swims away from the oddly humanoid animal with sharp teeth, but takes care not to disturb them or make them think that she's trying to attack them. 

The oddly humanoid animal swims back and forth in time with her movements, staying mostly in one place and smiling in a way that would be very disarming were it not for the aforementioned teeth.

Cute! But Fortitude knows better than to anthropomorphize. An animal bearing its teeth is far more likely to be a threat than a welcome. 

She continues heading towards the spine. 

It swims down near the base of the structure, giving her ample space.

And as it becomes more visible, it becomes clear this is a pretty grand structure. It's sort of overdesigned, really; a nest of minarets and arches and domes, obsessively symmetrical, totally inorganic for all that it's slathered with mother-of-pearl. There's carvings in that layer of nacre, which are only legible from very close-up, but when she gets close enough, depict various motifs. Round staring eyes, geometric patterns, tiny intricate fish.

That topmost spire, the one that was visible from shore, is set with a single pearl the size of a ripe peach, and filigreed with dozens of seed pearls.

Can she sit in it somehow and rest?

It's not really designed for that, but there's a relatively flat base that she can rest on, with her legs in the water.

She climbs up onto the soft base to rest, and hopes that the sharp-toothed animals won't get any ideas. 

It is a beautiful building. If there are barbarians who would make something like this, they're remarkably civilized ones. She finds herself thinking that this isn't her home planet; she'd flinched away from the thought for so long that without noticing she'd started believing it. The plants didn't look right. If barbarians could make something this beautiful, Fortitude would have known. And if she's being impossibly teleported anyway...

The swim was good for her-- Fortitude has always liked swimming. And it's calming to sit in what Fortitude has to think is a temple. 

Fortitude begins to sing: a hymn about the speaker's longing to meet aliens and their certainty that the aliens will be strange and glorious and wonderful in ways that the speaker can't imagine. 

Once she's been singing for a few mimutes, the creature's head breaches the surface several meters away. Its eyes are closed, and it's swaying back and forth.

Awww! Little guy likes music! Fortitude guesses that makes sense-- birds and whales invented music too, maybe it would evolve in an alien species as well. Or maybe those theologians were right that because music is so deeply connected with math all sapient species should be expected to be blessed with it...

Maybe the little guy's species created the cathedral?

She keeps singing. 

The little guy starts singing along. Mostly in a wordless harmony, but it tries a few of the words in the chorus too.

Awwww! Fortitude is wondering if this guy is the local sapient species. 

She waits when the song is done to see if the little guy wants to contribute.

It starts singing a song of its own.

She probably already noticed, but above water there's none of the shrill whistleclicking of earlier; instead, the creature sings like a well-trained human child, a clear and piping soprano. The song has a pretty simple verse structure, and the creature slaps the water with its hands at the conclusion of the chorus by way of percussion.

Also, she can understand the words??? It's about swimming swimming swimming while the sea is warm, nestling in your nesting when the cold pours in, and other vaguely onomatopoetic actions connected with various states of water.

...honestly that's both convenient and not as weird as anything else that's happening. 

"Hello, soulbearer!"

"Oh!" The creature chirp-laughs in delight. "I was wondering if you talked. My lover can't talk to yours, and you had the song but birds sing too... um! Hello soulbearer."

"My lover is on a different planet, I think."

"Oh no!!! And you were still able to swim all this way - do you need me to borrow my neighbor's mobility shark -"

The creature pauses in its fretting. A calmer expression spreads across its face. "My host needs to breathe," it says. "And if he panics you as well, it will help nothing. I am sorry to interrupt."

"It's all right," Fortitude said. "Let me know when he's ready."

She had passed beyond panic to a floaty sort of calmness. 

"I actually had some questions of my own," the part of the creature that is apparently not "him" says. "Has the loss of your lover affected your metabolism in any way? You are already very tall, but if you are a normal height for your species, and might undergo metamorphosis at any time - Tanikit, please calm down, we need to know these things -"

"I'm sorry, I don't-- I think I must have learned this language wrong some way," Fortitude said. "My lover is a man named Kahan, I don't think losing him would affect my metabolism-- I could be pregnant, if that's what you mean?"

Tanikit stares at her, then physically shakes with relief. "Oh. Oh, oh, okay - um - so, that's technically a meaning of the word lover but no one has used it to mean that in hundreds of years, I don't think, except poetically - your boyfriend, maybe your mate, is on another planet? Do you not have a - a symbiotic organism wrapped around your cervical vertebrae? That sounds really uncomfortable but maybe it's fine for you."

"No, I don't have anything like that. It... regulates metabolism?"

"Among other things."

Tanikit's face shifts again. "We provide our hosts with immediate, perfect control over their bodies, doing what needs to be done even if they would otherwise fail to do so themselves. The average member of Tanikit's species would starve to death if not assisted in this manner or constantly tended to by others. Historically, many did. We also release hormones which prevent our hosts from undergoing metamorphosis, which -"

Tanikit's face shifts back. "- is not an appropriate topic for our first conversation with the alien!!! Um. My name's Tanikit what's your name."

"I'm Fortitude!" Metamorphosis is clearly a sensitive subject. "I'm the only person in my brain. It does sound useful to have someone to make you do things when the Do Thing is inexplicably broken, but I have to do them all by myself. And we can feed ourselves... I mean, mostly."

"I think most of us could feed ourselves most of the time without a lover but we'd eventually spiral and starve or get sick and not take care of ourselves. So I'm glad we have them. Even Alinik."

Alinik assumes control just long enough to flick their body in the head, making Tanikit yelp and start laughing.

"-sorry. Um, you said you were pregnant. Do you need somewhere to lay your eggs? It didn't look like you could breathe water but I bet I could find somebody who thinks building a house and coparenting beachside sounds fun."

"I could be? I'm-- almost certainly not, I had my first uncontracepted sex last night."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Tanikit giggles. "I got all mixed up, there were a lot of words happening. Um... is there anything you need or else you're going to die? I can get you fish. Or fruit. Or pearls! I guess you probably don't need pearls that badly."

"I don't need pearls especially badly! What do you use pearls for?"

"We make art with them!" Tanikit swims up and runs his fingers over the pearl design on the spire, shivering happily. "There's lots of pretty things you can make art with - gold, gems, I saw someone make this beautiful picture out of black volcanic sand and white coral sand that he traveled years collecting, and then he went stomping through it, and that was part of the art - sorry, that's not really relevant. There's lots of pretty stuff but almost everybody likes pearls."

"Art isn't really very urgent for me right now. I can gather my own fruit, but it would be good to know which fruit is good to eat and which is poisonous."

"Wanna come to shore with me so I can show you?"

"Sure!"