It's... unfamiliar. There's really no other word that can explain it. The trees don't appear to be of the same type as the ones from the forest he was flying over before he got down. And a bunch of huge towers stretching out into the sky can be seen in the distance. Nothing seems particularly wrong, in fact it's like there's never been a forest fire at all.

What.

No, really. What.

He continues descending, looking for signs of Crafter presence.

Well, the forest looks extremely well-preserved and untouched? But that'd be the opposite of Crafter presence, wouldn't it? There's a few people visible in a clearing, though. Strangely dressed.

Most of the crows have abandoned ship at this point, not being any happier about the close confines than he was, but a few stayed, and he asks one of those to go ask the gathered people if he can land there.

The crow in question swoops overhead before landing in a tree, and waits for a moment to see if the people are busy rather than immediately delivering his message.

They're not busy, they're just standing around in what looks like long underwear and a jacket, together with a helmet equipped with a visor that's currently up. They glance at the crow, just shrugging, before returning to sitting in a circle and talking to each other.

...those aren't the kinds of sounds Crafters usually make. He waits for a few moments, trying to figure out what's going on, before deciding he'd rather just deliver the message and get back to the ship.

From the Thomassians' perspective it's suddenly weirdly obvious that the crow is paying attention to them, with an intention to interact, and that he'd like to know if this is a public place for humanoids because a humanoid in an airship asked him to find out if the humanoid could come here.

They're stunned, just looking around in confusion. They shrug, and nod, not coming up with any other way response to the... realization.

The crow is also confused, they can tell, though it's not at all obvious how they can tell.

He flies off again after a few seconds. If they look where he's going they'll see a small dirigible-like airship in gently glittery indigo with gold trim; it's hard to make out any details at this distance but it seems too small to comfortably hold even one person, according to Thomassian sensibilities.

They try waving at the ship, curious and not understanding any other method of communication. They're excited, hoping that it's a treasure-hunt surprise coming from the mayor or something.

The ship drifts parallel to them for another minute, then turns and starts heading closer. It's a ways off, but it moves at a pretty good pace once it's underway; it'll take it maybe ten or fifteen minutes to get to them.

They take a closer look at the ship, curious about how it works and what it looks like. Does it have any kind of chest on board, maybe?

There's no chest that they can see, though they're not really at a good angle for it. The hull of the boat is shaped to cut through the air, with several sets of propellers on the sides for propulsion, and the bottom of it is stained with smoke. There's a person on board, too, an older man, slender and bare-chested with the look of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors without sunscreen; he keeps checking on them, first with a spyglass in the same indigo-and-gold color scheme, and then when he gets closer by simply looking over the side of the ship.

The ship stops when it gets overhead, drifting gently in the breeze, and after a minute the man looks over the side again and drops a thin indigo sheet - it's not quite paper or plastic or anything else they've seen - with a few lines of unfamiliar gold glyphs on it.

"This means nothing to us", one of the men in the group of people says, before they all look at the man with confusion and disbelief on their faces.

He gives them a few seconds, then sighs and ducks back into the ship. After a second, a section of the hull turns transparent so that he can watch them closely as he slowly brings it down to land at the edge of the clearing.

They're too confused to be amazed, again shrugging and looking around without saying anything. "None-" the man starting to speak is too confused to say anything more.

As long as they're just confused and not distressed.

Around the time he passes the treetops the nearest people will get a distinct impression that he's busy with landing the ship and they shouldn't distract him, with the rest of the group coming into range as he descends; it doesn't take long after that for the ship to touch down, though, and then it's just a moment for him to take in the balloon a bit - he puts a hand to it and the whole thing retracts in an uncanny way quite unlike the way mechanical things move, and the ship loses some buoyancy and settles more firmly to the ground - and he turns to address them.

The effect is similar to the one with the crow: it's not clear how they know what he's intending to communicate, he's not making any noise or gesture, but they know it nonetheless. He's confused and very worried: there was a fire, and he went above the clouds to escape it, and when he came back down he was here, and the terrain is different enough that there's no possible way he could have gotten here from where he was in the time he was overhead. Do they know anything about this? Do they maybe have a map he could look at, at least?

No, they have no idea about magical airships teleporting to arrive above this group of backpackers! They can show him a map, on their phones. There's lots of maps, actually. Including a map of a globe that's completely unfamiliar.

He appreciates the map. It's definitely not of the world he was in, which is distressing. It's also pretty weird and distressing that they aren't communicating with him... they're obviously plenty smart enough, crows can do it and they aren't smart enough for maps. Hopefully it's not that they have a taboo about it or something? They can shoo him up and he'll go, it'll only take a few seconds to take off again.

"I mean, I think it's clear that there's a communication gap. Is there something you're going to do, eventually?" The man speaks to him, understanding that it'd be futile. He obviously doesn't have any kind of translation magic that lets him understand them. Unless very clearly trying to think about the idea of confusion does something? Probably not.

If the sounds are meant to be communication they're not doing the job, yeah. He'll... maybe try somewhere else, he can tell he's bothering them; if they have a recommendation of where it'd be appreciated.

They've given up on speaking, and are just looking at him, trying to get some idea of what to do next. They don't get any idea of what to do next. Eventually, they have nothing better to do than to walk off.

Well. Okay. Very weird.

He lifts off again and lets the ship drift, taking the occasional sighting with his spyglass but mostly just giving himself some time to adjust, and making sure his ansibles are still working and trying to draft a letter to his friends and family back home about what's happened. He'll want to go down and pick up some dirt to grow food plants in, eventually, but for now he's not in the mood.

A woman enjoying the sun on the roof of her skyscraper eventually notices the flying ship slowly moving through the sky. She tries thinking about what might be happening, but has no idea about what it might be. She decides to use her phone to take a picture, wanting to see for herself that her eyes are really seeing what's happening.

Yep, it's definitely there.

... what can she even do about it? She just keeps her eyes on it, excited to see where it goes and what it does next.

It eventually drifts close enough that she can see that there's someone aboard; he seems to be reading something, at first, and after a while looks up and takes stock of how close he is to the buildings, and makes the ship rise a bit and turn so it's drifting more alongside them than toward them. The prevailing wind is still pushing him toward the city, though; he'll go over at least the outskirts of it, if nothing else happens.

Nothing else does happen, as he comes ever closer to the woman on the roof, who waves at him in confusion and not knowing anything else to do.

The motion catches his eye, and he nods back, looking pensive, before making another adjustment that sends him up and over the buildings.

He checks the rooftops, occasionally, as he overflies the city, making sure he's not bothering anyone too much flying overhead, but no one seems any more bothered or to have any more idea of what to make of him than the people he's seen so far, and eventually he reaches the outskirts of the city and drifts back off over the forest.

A couple hours later, he figures that he ought to land and figure something out for housing, if he doesn't want to spend the night on the ship, and sets down in the next suitably sized clearing he sees.

It takes a long while, before he finds an extremely isolated patch of open ground within the forest. It doesn't like anyone's been there for a while, or would consider him a trespasser on the surface. This is probably his best option.

It's not clear whether it's claimed or not, here, or if that's even the right question; he reshapes the ship into a small walking platform rather than take anything for new crafting material where he's unsure about it.

He's still not in a hurry, or in a mood to do very much, but the dog wants a run after so long cooped up, so he harnesses her to the new vehicle and lets her guide it down the path while he watches for any sign of anything comprehensible about the situation here.

Looking around, the forest seems reassuringly well-preserved and unspoiled. There isn't a big "presently not claimed by anyone" sign to be seen, though. But the faint hints of trails can be seen, once in a while.

He lets the dog run until she's tired, and makes camp; it's been long enough without any plausible claim sign that he's able to assume nobody lives here. Which is good; he's not going to make a claim himself, not really, but he needs more crafting material, and meat for the dog, and water for himself and any plants he grows, and it's easier to get all those things if he stays in one place long enough to get familiar with it.

Nobody appears in the isolated area for the next few weeks, as the seasons turn and the weather gets cooler. Until one day, when a duo of hikers, including one carrying a baby on her back, walk past and randomly meet him. They're shocked to meet him, but nod at him and wave. They're sure he's here for a very special reason, and they're excited to hear his story.

He's sitting crosslegged on an indigo platform - rather duller than the airship was, without the sparkles to catch the light - that's supported by jointed golden spider legs and piled with brush and fallen tree branches, when then find him; he was doing something with a branch, staring intently at it, but the dog at his feet spotted the pair just a moment after they spotted him and gave an indicative whuf, which seems to have startled him out of his reverie.

He's lost a bit of weight, these last few weeks, and while he isn't in alarming shape, he doesn't look particularly well; his clothing isn't showing similar wear, though, and he's wearing a knee-length robe over warm loose pants, with a simple hat for warmth.

He doesn't say or do anything at first, just stares, but after a moment he shakes himself out of it, and they can tell that he wants to know if they can communicate in the same way he's doing, or if he'll need to figure something else out.

The duo look around, curious and confused. They're not understanding the - information flowing between them. They ask the name of the man in front of them, wondering if he's experiencing the bizarre... well, it's not a feeling, is it?

Yeah, (they inexplicably know,) his - it's not even a species trait - people from where he's from don't use sound to communicate, they just do it. Assuming he's guessing right that that's what the noises are about.

He tells them to give him a second, and takes a piece of brush from the pile and reshapes it like clay and recolors with a thought, dividing it into three different placards that he stands on the edge of the platform, one white, one black, and one grey, all with the same indigo for the supports that hold them up. With that done, he returns his attention to them, and explains that they can point to the white one for 'yes', the black one for 'no', and the grey one to indicate that they don't know the answer or it's more complicated than that or the answer otherwise doesn't fit into yes and no, and it's not great but it'll let them communicate at least a little.

Is it all right for him to be here, is his first question, not in the sense of it being a good place to live but in the sense that he's not trespassing or otherwise going to upset someone by being here.

They - point at the white placard magically made from ink, mesmerized and curious about how the things happening before them could possibly be real.

Would it be okay for him to go to the city, he needs some things he hasn't been able to find here and that seems like the place to ask. Is it the right place to ask, actually.

They nod at him, turning their eyes to the white placard. "Yes", the woman says, smiling slightly.

...looking at the relevant sign is clear enough, sure.

He's pretty sure they're just as baffled as he is about how he got here, but to make sure: they have no idea, right? People just appearing in their sky for no reason isn't a thing that happens?

They nod vigorously., glancing at the white placard again.

Right. Well. (He's clearly distressed about it.)

If they have any questions for him he can try to figure out what they might be getting at but he doesn't even know where to start with figuring out sound-based communication and he's not used to gestured communication other than pointing, either.

The couple motions for the man to follow them, noting how overly skinny he looks. The baby on the woman's back waves at him, too.

He dismounts from the platform and takes the handle jutting out from the side; it comes along when he walks with it, stepping through the uneven terrain on those long legs, without much effort on his part. After a couple seconds the dog jumps down and whines at him, and he asks the hikers to wait a moment while he transforms the handle to the harness and lets the dog take over leading the vehicle.

...they don't say anything. He won't know what they're asking. But they look at the... walking platform, consumed by confusion. They're hoping that they magically get more of an idea about ANYTHING that's been happening.

...it's a cart, he clarifies, noticing their confusion. He's been gathering things to turn into crafting material, which is what the cart and the placards are made out of, and needed something to carry it with. He doesn't want to just leave it here where he might not be able to find it again.

They're completely exasperated by his reply. The man, vaguely infuriated, taps his phone to find an image of an electric motor, waving it in front of the mysterious stranger. He knows it's not getting his point across, but it makes him feel better about how confused and powerless he feels.

Yeah he has no idea what that might be a picture of. - if the little rectangle makes/shows pictures that's pretty impressive, he doesn't know of anything back home that can do that in anything like that much detail.

Eventually, they find a road, together with a few positively massive cars parked at a small parking lot. The woman walks off with her baby inside a small rectangular room next to the side of the road, while the man opens up the rear doors of one of the cars and folds down the rear seats. He's hoping that they'd be able to fit the cart and the dog inside of it, so he wouldn't have to leave either of them behind, or bring them down to the city by foot.

He's not sure what that is - some sort of vehicle? but where are the legs? - but he's definitely not going to try to go inside it.

If it is a vehicle and they're trying to get him to the city, the best way would be to go back to camp for the rest of his crafting material and make another airship.

They shrug. If he thinks that putting together another airship will let him outrun their car, he's probably right about that. They quickly show him an image of the roof of the skyscraper that they live in, hoping that he'll be able to reach it using their airship. It's quite infuriating to be this ignorant about what's happening; but hopefully, they can get him some help and get some semblance of answers about what's going on.

Is that where they want him to go? The placards are still set up for them to answer questions with.

They nearly touch the white placard. Then they wave him goodbye, and begin their drive back home.

A few hours later he's back in the sky over the city. There are a lot of buildings, and he only has his memory of the picture, so it might take him a while to find the right one.

The woman is waiting on one of the rooftops, wearing a bright red pair of long underwear, and waving her arms around as she sees the mysterious man's airship floating through the sky. This is a mystery that she refuses to risk leaving unresolved.

That'll speed things up considerably, yes.

This airship is a little bigger than the last one, and the deck is enclosed in a clear dome, unlike the previous one's open design, with no sign of a door. The main body is indigo, again, with a subdued shimmer effect, and there are five spots of color along each side - black and white on the ends of the group, and red, yellow, and blue in between them, spaced out enough to be easy to see which one they're looking or pointing at. It sets gently down a comfortable distance away from her, on a tripod of golden legs, and he takes a moment to partially deflate the ship's balloon before turning his attention to her.

She sighs in annoyance for a moment. Then she leads him towards the gigantic elevator placed on a corner of the roof.

He seems a little confused at this attempt to lead him somewhere, but takes in the balloon and reshapes it and part of the ship's deck into a small enclosed walking vehicle, gets in and seals up the entrance, and reshapes the side of the airship into a ramp to let himself down onto the roof, reshaping the airship's side afterward to close it back up.

He'll follow her in the new vehicle to the elevator, regarding it cautiously.

She remains impassive, as she reveals that the elevator is enormous, taking it down a few steps before it opens directly into a vast main room, with a glass wall giving a view of the opposite skyscraper. She motions for him to follow her inside, where she elects to take a seat on the wide couch looking outwards.

He seems nervous about being indoors, watching everything she does closely, but he follows. His new vehicle conveniently has its own seating, and he arranges it facing her at a little bit of a distance.

She thinks to herself for a while, before getting a phone and finding a simple drawing of 2 parents with one child in the middle. She shows it to him, points to herself, and hopes this unlocks some kind of magic that lets him understand her and explain what's happening.

His face falls when he sees the picture, and he takes a moment to collect himself before explaining: his eldest grandchild is having their first baby soon and being stuck here means he's going to miss it, which he's pretty upset about. He did see her baby, her baby is cute.

He's not sure what this has to do with anything in the current situation, though. 

She quickly finds an image of two people talking. There's speech bubbles above their head, written in gibberish lines. In the next picture, they're both pointing at a tree, and two different words, written in an unfamiliar alphabet, come out of their mouths - clearly pointing to the same thing. Surely he can understand the idea here?

The people are being depicted as talking about the tree? He doesn't know her written language and he's assuming she won't know his.

She nods. Then she points at the tree, saying the thomassian picture for tree. She moves through a bunch of images, showing them to him, saying the words for it, and (presumably) building up a vocabulary, inch by inch. She finds an image of a wizard using a wand to make a glimmering star appear, floating in mid-air. Then she uses the thomassian term for you, pointing at the man inside the machine with legs. "You're a wizard!"

He struggles pretty badly with the spoken language; he has a hard time differentiating the sounds, in particular. 'You' is easy enough, though.

He's not sure what the wizard picture is supposed to be depicting. He doesn't do anything that involves holding a stick like that, or anything star-shaped. He can make things float but that's just a matter of making them neutrally buoyant, it's not hard once you have the trick of it. ...if you can craft, which she probably can't if she can't communicate the way he does; that might be what she's trying to get at? That's what lets him make arbitrary things, like the airship and the cart. He can explain if she wants? (He's added yes and no placards to his vehicle, by this point.)

She nods intensely when he proposes explaining "crafting", also pointing to the "yes" placard that magically appeared on the vehicle. She completely gives up on hiding her intense excitement as she wriggles and jumps as she's sitting on the couch.

He smiles a little at her excitement, the first one she's seen from him.

So the way crafting works is that he can take any solid material and turn it into crafting material, which he can then adjust to have any physical properties he knows how to give it. Most of the ones he knows are pretty mundane, since some properties are dangerous to be around and it's hard to experiment without risking doing one of those, but color is easy to change, and density - he can't change the amount of mass he has to work with, but he can make something arbitrarily bigger and lighter or smaller and heavier - and shape, and the various kinds of hardness and strength, and temperature and light output, and he can add simple reactivity, making something that changes shape to push back when it's pressed or changes color when it gets warm or whatever he'd like. The vehicle he's in uses a system of reactive parts to move; he's got a control panel in the armrest that's linked to parts underneath that move the legs however he tells it to. Another thing he can do is copy and resize things; he didn't design this vehicle himself and it would take him a long time to figure out how to build one from scratch, but he has a tiny copy back on the airship that he used as a pattern instead. Crafting can also work with living creatures, in a more limited way; he's been living off of plants he grew with crafting and fed with crafted fertilizer, and that's usually a perfectly reasonable basis of his diet, his problem is just that he didn't have enough different seeds with him when he was transported between worlds and also doesn't have any food animals here. It's possible to modify plants and animals with crafting, too, including people, but that's skilled work and he mostly doesn't know how to do it.

She stares at the man, jaws open, imagining the endless opportunities his magical powers would permit... "We cannot do anything remotely similar", she says back. "You could save so many lives!"

He still doesn't understand her language but he can guess that she's interested in trading, if she isn't able to craft things. He's also interested in trading; he could really use some chickens or other small livestock and a better selection of food plant seeds, and a couple more dogs once he has the food animals producing well.

"Why would you need a living chicken? You can get food that's already made for you."

...yeah he doesn't have a guess for that one.

Well... it's about time to eat something, anyways? She taps a few times on her phone. Then she shows him an image of the food she's ordered: soy-sauce chicken with rice. "It's here soon!" she says excitedly. Afterwards, she walks out to the room with her son, offering him a bottle of milk as she cradles him in her arms. "And the baby eats too!"

He will definitely trade for food at this point but that's kind of no way to run a household? If he just has food then when he eats it it's gone, if he has livestock then it'll make more livestock and he can eat the extras and still have a breeding population.

"Why does it have to be you with the livestock? Why not just your trading partner?"

He's guessing she's asking why he wants livestock but there isn't really more of an answer to that than he just gave. If the second bit was 'why not this other thing' he didn't catch what the other thing was.

She... really doesn't know how to proceed. She tries showing him the Farmer Doing Everything Himself, a comic with a farmer who has a farm that sells eggs. He starts rounding up the chickens, but he needs a shed. So he he walks over to a machine putting together the wood he'll use as pens for his chickens... then the factory where the wood he's using gets cut into shape... then he walks a few more steps over to the rolling machine, where he spends just a few seconds setting up the machine that cuts the corrugated rolled steel to lengths (he works INCREDIBLY fast...) then he assembles everything into an utterly gigantic chicken shed...

and then we see that there's an entire factory producing fertilizer, and grounding the inedible parts of soybean into chicken feed, and the machine that automatically grades and sorts and packages the eggs, and he also runs over to his factory that puts together the lithium and the anode and the electrolyte and the foil and the battery pack and the battery cell and its packaging and frame and the permanent magnets and the rotor core and the windings and the copper cable and the power electronics and the frame and the suspension and the polymer wheels and the doors and the dashboard and airbags and sensors and electronics...

and we find out that, this farmer, manages to run a chicken coop with more than 1000 chickens in it, just by himself! That even includes the time he takes to build the factory with the machine that makes the machine that makes the copper wire that he uses in the factory that makes the electric motor for his car, as well as all necessary machines before that. That's how much 1 modern thomassian farmer, doing everything by himself, manages to get done in a day of work! Of course, in real life, this farmer has neither the time to run around nor to learn to use all the machines that his farm relies on. But indirectly, using the power of specialization, one thomassian farmer can run a chicken coop that has 1000 hens in it, all by himself.

He uses crafting for that part... that part too... he's not sure what's even going on in that part, he doesn't do it... crafting handles that part... why would you even bother with that part... it's all fascinating, of course, what they've managed to do without crafting, he'll want to come back and learn all about it once he's in a somewhat less desperate state, but it's not exactly relevant to him and his household.

The reveal that this guy is trying to take care of a thousand chickens startles a laugh out of him. He's not doing that! Two or three dozen chickens is plenty for him and as many dogs as he'd care to keep track of! It takes maybe ten minutes a day to take care of a few dozen chickens, once they're set up in a good automated pen, which he doesn't have a mini of but it won't take him more than a day or two to put something together.

"Of course, if you have magic that makes everything near free that makes everything much easier! People poorer than you exist, you have no idea how much time and effort and boredom it takes just to feed yourself if you don't have magic making everything trivial!" She gets... outraged at the idea of someone not wanting to increase everyone's prosperity by collaborating and contributing. She feels like... there's something disrespectful about being so casual about things?

Oh dear, he's pissed her off somehow. His vehicle takes a few steps back toward the elevator before he thinks to ask if she wants him to leave.

She tries using body language to somehow let him know that she isn't kicking him out, she just got heated and emotional. "Do you... not want to save lots of people's lives? With shaping?" Then she points at the "no" placard, realizing that he was asking a question.

He stays put, then.

He's pretty lost about what's happening right now, he communicates, and that seems bad. He's not sure what he did wrong and doesn't think trying to guess is going to get anywhere rather than just upsetting them both.

Right now his priority is his immediate needs - he doesn't think he's in actual danger of malnourishing to death but it's a nearer thing than he'd like, right now, and he's not at all happy about only having the one dog to watch out for predators. So he wants food plants, and food livestock, and dogs. He doesn't know what she wants in trade but he's interested in finding out; he doesn't think she's tried to communicate that yet, so if she has he missed it and she should try again. Figuring out better communication and learning more about each other are also good, and in the long run he's going to want to do more of that, but they're not immediate priorities as far as he's concerned, except that they'll make trading easier.

Does that help, with whatever her issue is? He's also sorry if he managed to offend her somehow but if he did he has absolutely no idea what he did wrong.

Well, she doesn't want anything in trade; and nobody has ever had magical matter transmutation powers, so she has no idea who else would want to trade with him. So... she is at an impasse, at the least. She'd need to find someone in an RRF who knows what'd be useful.

It's at this point that a crow flies by outside, cawing loudly and projecting that it wants the newcomer's attention as she passes the window. She circles around to yell again; she wants him to come topside and explain what is wrong with this place.

...oh dear. He should probably take care of that. He has a guess of how he'd operate the elevator - this button and then this one, right? Or she can come up with him, crows from his world aren't dangerous.

...crows in general aren't dangerous? She happily comes with him and takes the elevator all the way up to the ceiling.

He doesn't know anything about crows here yet, he hasn't met any. Dogs can definitely be dangerous if they aren't socialized, that's the main thing he has to go by.

The crow is waiting when they get to the rooftop and hops onto the top of the newcomer's vehicle as soon as it steps out of the elevator.

Where did he bring them! Nobody communicates here! The Crafters don't craft, and get weird about it when they try to communicate with them! The crows get mad when they try to communicate with them and madder when they see them hanging around with the weird non-crafting Crafters! The weird buildings make the air currents all weird! There's no lakes! The weird non-crafting Crafters are very nice about feeding them but everything else is weird and bad!

Yeah, he's having similar problems. He didn't bring them here on purpose, it was a surprise for him too. His base is off thataway, he can put something up so it'll be visible from the sky, if they want to hang out with him, but he's not doing great for food so they might do better here, if they're being fed.

They're getting fed but not, like, well, nobody has any good bugs and only rarely meat.

Maybe the local can pass word around about that?

"...yes, that is one thing I can do. I'll inform people that the crows communicating through images, want to eat bugs and meat. And I suspect that they want to be let indoors when it gets colder, very possibly."

He relays to the crow that she said yes, and to the local that crows like a mixed diet - they're probably already getting fruit and vegetables and nuts and people should continue giving them those, just add meat and bugs. And if they can figure out how to communicate with them - which might be easier than communicating with him, crows already use sounds to communicate at more of a distance than crafting can do - they can be asked to scout and carry messages and do similar things.

"... actually, I thing that having crows scouting for something like forest fires, or aerial photography, would be very helpful. It'd be quite a bit easier than the drone systems we're using now, that's for sure. I think that we'll be very happy to have these crows, going forwards."

He's guessing that that was 'yes, we'll have things for them to do'; he expects the crows will be happy to hear that.

If everything stops being so weird and bad at least!

Well, if they're feeding them better and not so confused about being communicated with that'll be less weird and bad, right? He's not sure what they can do about the air currents or the weird crows but maybe something, once they're communicating with each other.

Yeah, that'll be better. And nesting places, they need nesting places that don't already have weird crows in them.

Yeah, that doesn't sound hard. Probably. He's not sure how hard things are without crafting but they do have these impressively tall buildings.

"... yeah, nesting places, with crows, and kids to adopt them as pets... that's just too perfect. You know what, I think I want one of the crows to live with us, to try it. If that's comfortable for them, of course."

He didn't catch the semantic content of that at all.

She angrily finds a video clip of a bird inside of a zoo on her phone, flapping around the spacious enclosure in front of a mural showing an exotic foreign land. "Like this", she says.

Rooms they can come and go from and interact with the local humanoids in seems like it might work. Most of the crows he knows aren't used to being inside but he doesn't think they'd mind, as long as they knew they were welcome.

The crow kind of wants to be done with weird things but an indoor nesting place might only be weird and not bad.

The woman smiles at the crow on top of the man's vehicle. "We'll put up a nest for you, and you'd get to sleep inside." After finishing her meal, she decides to order a compact table and a round pillow to create a nest of sorts for the crow. She also gets some curtains with a rack that can be used to subdivide the main room, creating a smaller space just for the crow; they arrive on an extra-large delivery robot before the day is over.

The morning after getting everything set up, she decides that she wants to go on a walk with her baby in a stroller, inviting the crow to come with her.

(The outsider, for his part, leaves shortly after the food arrives; he doesn't particularly bother to hide his disgruntlement at her choice to eat - and meat, nonetheless - in front of him without offering him any, when she knows he's struggling to feed himself, but he doesn't especially expect her to notice it. The differences in the locals' approach to interacting with other people compared to Crafters' would be fascinating, really, if he was a little less inconvenienced by it.)

For her part, the crow has only picked up a couple words of the locals' language so far, but she's familiar enough with what a humanoid getting ready to go out looks like to guess at it, and comes along with no complaints.

A few minutes after they're visible from the sky two more crows swoop down, wanting to know where the first one has been all night, and she flies off with them after indicating that she expects to be back soon, she just needs to tell them what's been happening.

She's wearing a sheer and white dress as she walks around, with her baby wearing a similar dress, to help the two of them remain comfortable in the heat. The electic motors built into the baby carriage is designed to make it feel weightless as she pushes it, on her walk towards the local park. Once there, she finds a bench and sits there, looking out on the pretty birds and flowers, curious about what the crow is thinking.

Two of the crows come back to perch on the backrest of the bench, after about twenty minutes; the one communicating with her is the same one she hosted overnight, the bird indicates, and the other is her son from her most recent clutch; her mate has gone to tell the other crows about the Crafter and about the idea of living with the not-Crafters here.

The other crow - they're very hard to tell apart when they're not communicating, but he's a tiny bit smaller and a little less bold in demeanor - is very curious about everything, but especially the baby, he hasn't seen one this close up before.

The baby boy reaches out towards the crow, behind the thin, breathable mesh in front of the baby stroller, smiling and giggling at him.

Little Crafterishes take a while to learn to be gentle, the older crow warns the younger, but she hops onto the handbar of the stroller anyway and he follows a moment after.

The mother pushes the stroller along, eventually finding a glittering pond with lots of lilies floating on it. She chooses to lift up the baby boy to let him have a closer look at the water, brushing his hand against the cool water.

The crows take this opportunity to look for bugs in the grass.

There's a few of them, hidden quite well within the grass; they're incredibly popular with children, so huge number of cities keep them around.

They make tasty snacks, too, though there aren't enough of them for the crows to live on.

The older crow keeps an eye on the humanoid pair so as not to miss it when they decide to leave.

After a few more hours walking around and enjoying nature, the mom decided to make her way home. This time, choosing to take a subway. It only had a few other parents with babies like her riding on it, leaving plenty of space for the baby carriage as she started on the ride back home.

The crows are not really happy with the idea of going underground, or indoors at all for that matter, and the third one of their group will be looking for them when he's done talking to the others. They'll take their leave at this point, with the older crow indicating that she'll keep an eye on the rooftop she met the woman on so they can meet up again.

The mother waves them off, before taking the quick trip back to her apartment, where she brings her son into his room to play with him for a bit longer. She heads off to the roof, inviting the crow there into her apartment, before she tries to communicate that she's curious about the crow's thoughts on life in the city.