After a little negotiation, Kadra agreed to take him into town. They waited until the sky had gone dim, a red glow washing over the forest from a sunset that was impossible to see - obscured by the lip of the floating island.

Apparently, whatever she was watching for in her rickety little crow’s nest wouldn’t come by night. Pike made note of that. Daylight was the dangerous time in this world.

Together, they trekked towards the enormous fallen mech that had become a city, Kadra barely keeping her head up over the waving tall grasses in the sea of yellow scrubland. She pointed to things and named them, one by one, and Pike eagerly nodded, pointing to things he was curious about; he fiddled with his menu as he walked, managing to make it turn to Aedian script and back. Which would have been a useful way to learn new words, if he had any idea how to pronounce the strange, circular characters that blipped across the screen.

They looked a little like Earth-Han script, but more loopy and circling, softer. Just another way this world was alien to him-

But honestly?

He didn’t know alien until he got into town.

Most of them were roughly human-shape, but, well - the first creature he saw was like a flower made of ugly. Hard, petal-shaped keratin plates extended from the upper half of its face, spreading outwards in a fan or crown, and from the place where they met, numerous pinkish tendrils extended from a radial mouth.

It burbled in a friendly way, waving a two fingered-hand, and Kadra blew it a kiss as they passed.

Compared to that, the ones who were just giant, muscular toads with flat, rocky heads were positively handsome. Eyeless elves? Once you’ve seen one…

The closest thing he saw to human was a pale, blue-skinned girl with geometric clusters of square, dark gemstones sprouting from her arms and shoulders in formations of gleaming black. She turned to him, and he saw her eyes were faceted dark rubies, her lips a shocking splash of red against cerulean skin. All she was dressed in was a billowing dress of peach-colored gossamer, and when the wind pushed it against her body, everything, from the shape of her curves to the color of her skin, bled through the thin fabric.

Kadra swatted him for staring, and the girl laughed.

The city was vast. They were in the lowest district, the shanty-town built between the giant mech’s feet. Basket-elevators driven by grinding, clanking winches and long walkways of woven wicker led up to the buildings that clustered on the legs and crawled up the flanks. Through the holes that dotted from the titan’s side, remnants of some ancient battle, Pike saw the inside was full of closely packed houses on stilts, with rope bridges and ladders connecting them up. The entire thing had been hollowed out.

Kadra led them to a market beneath the titan’s shadow, and to a bustling stall where the tables were piled high with rusting junk, salvaged gear, and crystalline oddities. In the distance he smelled something delicious, like a fish stew, and turned to see a group of the rock-toads stirring an enormous vat that boiled and frothed, tossing in vegetables and giant chunks of pale flesh.

The stall owner, one of the eyeless elfin creatures, was bartering and haggling. Kadra had pulled out a pale chunk of crystal with three blood-red lines through its core. This was a left-over from the centipedes, dropped by the biggest of them as its flesh mysteriously melted away into lights and a drift of pale smoke.

In the end, she sold it for a fistful of heavy, thick coins made of foreign metal, and dropped half of them into Pike’s hand.

He was halfway to the fish stew stall before he noticed. Lying piled by the side of the vat were pieces of thick black chitin, piles of tiny red legs, and long blood-red pincers. Not fish. It was centipede stew.

The chef turned to him, talking in a low grunt, but Pike just shook his head and backed away quickly. No thanks. No fucking thanks. He’d starve first.

Turning to the rest of the market, he sighed. Kadra had vanished off on her own business. Leaving him to be jostled along by the alien forms on all sides, forcing him to walk just to avoid being a stone in the river of bodies.

There was something intensely lonely about hearing nothing but alien voices, not a lick of Inter-Basic or Han, just confusing lilts of foreign languages. It was a sea of sounds and sights that meant nothing to him, in which he had no compass, no stars to orient himself by.

In the end he found himself taking shelter in a junk-seller’s stand. The thick smell of rust welcomed him in to a red canopy, the light dim, the wares barely holding up to inspection. In among the eroded mix of gears, metal spars, and several bowls of loose screws, he paused, and plucked something interesting out of the mix. It was a tiny automaton, a beautiful metal bird forged out of badly tarnished, half-green brass.

Tilting it over to peer through the gaps in the loose metal plates, the machinery inside all he seemed good.

On a whim, he Mana Charged it. A spark leapt from his fingers and vanished into the mechanical bird’s inner workings. After a moment the wings began to flutter. The head tilted and turned this way and that. He set it down and the beak popped open, letting free a mechanical, stuttering burst of song.

Pike turned to find the shopkeep staring at him. It was a soft, jelly-like slug thing, and its black-blob eyes wobbled. Pike had to restrain himself from jumping back as it came creeping out of the shadows, extending long gelatinous tendrils covered in an oily outer skin.

He forced a smile, pointing to the mechanical bird and trying to mime-ask the cost.

To his surprise, it pushed the bird into his hand, making a complicated gesture with its tendrils.

“Hi, I’m from Earth.” Pike responded, to make it clear he didn’t speak the language.

The shopkeeper paused, and they pressed the bird into his hand again. A gift. He blinked in confusion, and then bowed. Which seemed to be the right thing to do, since the shopkeep repeated the gesture. Feeling uncertain and wanting to retreat, he headed back out into the market.