“First you should ask them what they want.”

“I already told you…” Arguments were made and in the end, Alan was overruled. Afterall, he’d asked that before they were all there. Probably that and they wanted to make sure he wasn’t just being lazy and summarizing things. “Alright, fine. The committee has spoken.” During their deliberations, Purleo had waited patiently.

“Was wollen Sie mit… uh…. uns? Unsere? Dieser vier loita?”

“What did you say?”

“What you wanted! Shush, they’re responding!”

Purleo seemed to snap out of a trance, blinking for a moment, then looking slightly amused again.

“Ich werden kennen, wo Sie ausgekommen haben.”

“What did he…”

“Shutup, I’ll just relay alright! They want to know where we came from.” Alan was feeling the migraine coming back, having only partially left while he lead Purleo to the campsite. That’s right, committees suck.

So it was that they went back and forth, neither side willing to really open up.

We come from California.

Where is California?

In the United States.

Where is that?

North America… Western Hemisphere… Earth…

Purleo didn’t seem to be… surprised… but they did seem to be progressively more sure of something and disturbed by it at the same time. They tried asking questions in return about the Talor and got only the same response Alan had. They’re nearby, not too far. The subtext was probably that they couldn’t just attack Purleo and escape the other Talor, but such subtlety was lost in their broken conversation. Particularly since while Purleo had a more expansive vocabulary, it didn’t always match what Alan knew and they were both pretty bad at conjugating a lot of what they did know, or substituted a similar sounding word… Hell, Purleo seemed to randomly insert French and Spanish or some other unrecognizable language words into it too.

After almost two hours, both parties were mentally exhausted and the amused expressions Purleo typically held were completely gone. The Talor looked very troubled, as well as incredibly frustrated. Purleo pulled out a little bound book and something like a pencil and started writing, signaling a pause to the conversation. Alan and his friends discussed what they had learned.

Purleo was some kind of regional guardian. The Talor lived in the grasslands and used magic to monitor the area and keep out undesirable creatures, like the monster beaver that wouldn’t enter the grasses. Four people had been detected, but there was something really wrong about them, Purleo came to investigate. Just before they’d been detected, there was something that happened… what it was, Alan lacked the necessary verbiage to understand or Purleo was obfuscating the explanation on purpose. It didn’t seem to be the case though… on finding out that they didn’t have magic and having them all together, the Talor seemed a fair bit more open.

They confirmed that Purleo could do magic, receiving a demonstration in which Alan was blasted over by a gust of wind (voluntarily), but when they asked how to do it themselves, the answer was just ‘not ready yet’. It wasn’t a no… but still dissatisfying. Purleo passed out more biscuits and jerky and water, having a seemingly endless supply in their small pouches. When questioned about that… they were denied an answer.

Finally, as the sun was reaching high noon, Purleo was done with the conversation, asking for a break. They conferred and agreed on the points they’d gotten, as few as they were. Communication in a language where both parties were limited to really basic things was slow and frustrating and involved a lot of pantomiming and limiting themselves to concepts that could be pantomimed or cobbled together. Alan lay down and closed his eyes, opting to just check out and let his brain relax. The others discussed their options.

They needed food. Their shelter wouldn’t hold against storms and Purleo had said it was indeed well into spring and they should anticipate the onset of thunderstorms as the weather grew much hotter. The river was snowmelt and was expected to flood very heavily very soon as well as the spring weather reached up into the sources, distant mountains that were still almost totally covered in white where there wasn’t forest.

Additionally, the Talor would not tolerate them just living out here on the edge of their lands. This was within a border region, but definitely Talor country. Purleo wouldn’t go into details about the neighbors excepting to suggest they would kill the group on sight. Humans weren’t welcome in this part of the world, excepting with the Talor. Rather, that was what Purleo claimed. They had no other source of information other than setting out and trying to leave the Talor region and encounter another species.

They had broached the topic of meeting other Talor, but it was immediately shot down. Purleo wanted to be confident they weren’t a threat. Something about them was weird and it troubled the Talor. Not that they were human, something related to where they came from and how they got there.

They’d tried to describe simply waking up here. It was agreed that they wouldn’t refer to teleportation or anything. Purleo looked suspicious at their dumbed down and simple explanation, but the truth of the matter was only Alan had seen anything differently and only while extremely groggy, for just a short few seconds.

It was a point of contention among them though, not being extremely forthcoming. Alan pointed out that providing the names of locations immediately confirmed they weren’t from around here. After all, there had been no monster beavers or Talor on Earth. The others didn’t seem to want to accept that they were really in some other world. There was magic though. Hadn’t they all watched and read all those Isekai and talked about them time and again? It almost erupted into a refresh of the old argument, ‘Would you even want to be transported to another world?’ The answer for Lucy and John had been no, absolutely not. They were happy with their careers, ostensibly they were happy with each other, even though their relationship didn’t seem to grow much in the last decade beyond the secret hook-ups.

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Maybe that was going to change. Lucy’s admission that she hadn’t ever had sex with anyone else seemed to have really rattled John. His declaration in return seemed to have rattled Lucy. They were arguing with each other even right now about whether or not the group should just trust in the Talor, try to get shelter and food and guidance from them, yet they were still finding the opportunity to touch each other’s hands or arms throughout the somewhat heated debate.

How Aaron was so dense about it was beyond Alan. The guy was actually very perceptive in general and did not hesitate to simply take the reins of leadership whenever it seemed appropriate for there to be a singular voice. Neither Lucy or John tended to fight that either. Alan thought on it and realized that he too really trusted Aaron to only make a firm decision when the man really thought about it and felt it was for the benefit of the entire group. Hmm, when had that happened? Before the whole teleport thing… maybe all that CEOing had changed Aaron from the quiet and nervous business student he’d been when Alan first met him.

Well, there had been a type A person inside that nervous guy. Lucy had been obviously type A from the get-go. If anything, her being a lot more observant of other’s needs and considerate of feelings was the recent development. She’d been a bit hard to be around at the beginning. Damned cute, but as likely to cut you to pieces in conversation as to offer you tea. John hadn’t really changed much though. He’d purportedly had lost a lot of weight after graduating High School. He’d taken a couple of years break before going into college, which is why he was the oldest one of the group. When they’d met him though, he was already this ‘sexy guy’ that had a girl on his arm almost every Friday night. That and he paradoxically had an incredible knack for rooting out all kinds of harassment issues in his HR positions.

At work, known as the guy who stood on the side of women and in private, going through hot girl after hot girl until his friends no longer even cared to remember their names or learn anything about them. That… that probably wasn’t any less cruel than John’s objectification of them, now that Alan thought about it. Why. Why did stressful situations like being transported to some magical world come with all of these stupid revelations and reveals? Why did it bother him so much to admit he was a total virgin to his friends? It’s not like he was ashamed of almost anything else.

“It still comes back to the main issue, we need shelter, food, water. Assuming we can make it through summer, look at that snow line!” Aaron pointed at the distant mountains. There was visible snow not terribly far up. “I’ll bet that this prairie gets goddamned cold, if not totally snowed in. We’ll need food stores, a real shelter, clothing. A lot of that will mean hunting large animals and I frankly, don’t think I want to find dozens of monster beavers just so we can all have coats and pants.” Nobody had a response to that. Lucy of all people had been advocating for not trusting Purleo, gathering up some food and then relocating a few days walk away in the hopes of hiding, maybe trying to find other people to confirm the stories.

John was all in on going to see the rest of the Talor, despite Purleo’s lack of commitment on that point. Eventually, he reasoned, Purleo would put them in contact with others. He didn’t think the Talor was being dishonest, just cautious.

Aaron was also leaning on the side of seeking aid from the Talor, purely from a point of pragmatism. The devil you a little bit knew and that had biscuits and jerky and clothes, rather than the unknown. Hadn’t they encountered almost no animals? What would be out there that they didn’t expect? Why would the beavers be so freaking terrifying? Where was all the other wildlife? They only saw otherwise totally normal looking insects and a few small mammals, things similar to squirrels and mice, plus a variety of fish in the river. They’d only been here for just over one day, it was just a matter of time.

Plus the issue of food was a big one. Assuming they could get really successful at the fishing, they would have something to eat. Also assuming fire happened. Clothing… yeah, they’d have to upgrade to animal skins if they could, there was no way they were going to be processing plant fibers from the grasses and weaving something, so it was weaving better grass clothing from the grass itself or animal skins. Skins took processing that they thought they might be able to sort of do, scraping them clean with rocks and stuff. It was all very caveman, the plans, yet they were city-dwellers. It was a bad idea, Aaron insisted.

Alan just wanted to have reliable food, water, and shelter. He didn’t want to be cold or have to wake up to a wink and a nudge from little Aaron every day. Plus he didn’t want to have to fight and kill that beaver or a dozen other similarly sized animals, just for food and clothing. Purleo’s clothes looked comfortable, functional. The biscuits were clearly travel food, not standard fair. It didn’t escape notice that Alan was also the least physically prepared for the demanding nature of survival starting without any tools or resources, excepting that he’d probably be the last to die of starvation. Fat stores would finally serve their intended purpose.

“We’re in agreement then?” There were nods of various levels of enthusiasm. All nods though. “Alright, go for it Alan.” Aaron gave him the go ahead. Alan approached Purleo, who had since closed both their little journal and their eyes, leaning against a tree trunk while sitting in the leaf litter. The spear was still over to the side and out of reach, impaled into the dirt. Alan made sure to stop a good distance away, but it was very clear that he was specifically coming to talk again. Purleo cracked open an eye and watched, waiting.

“Wir wollen mit Sie gehen, zum Talor.” Purleo shook their head though in response. They’d gotten the answer before, Purleo wanted to ‘be more confident’ first. Commendable, being cautious about bringing strangers back home. Still, the Talor had come looking for them. “Wir haben night Kleidung!” They didn’t have clothes, if his German was not failing him. “Wir haben keine Haus!” We didn’t have… well, he wasn’t sure Haus was the correct word for shelter, but it rang right to him. “Wir brauchen Essen und frisches Wasser, und Sicherheit.” Food, water, security. Damn, Alan was feeling good about those language classes now! Getting the calories in him earlier had helped a lot with clearing his mind too.

Purleo seemed slightly swayed, considering. Alan repeated their request and their needs again, making it clear to the Talor. They didn’t have what they needed to survive. They weren’t prepared for this. They were… at the Talor’s mercy. To their credit, the committee just let him go at the one sided conversation on his own, not arguing or weighing in or demanding to know what was said in return. Almost nothing was said in return anyways.

Eventually, the Talor seemed to relent. A half a dozen biscuits were brought out, bundled in a waxy leaf pouch. Then another with jerky. The water skin they’d shared with Alan earlier. After a moment of consideration, Purleo tore off a small bit of the pouch and wrapped up one biscuit and a returned that to their personal storage. This was probably all of the food supplies that Purleo had left. Alan accepted the things and brought them back to his friends wordlessly, nodding thanks to Purleo who’d stepped well away from where the food had been set down.

“Ich werde im zwei Tag, hinter kommen.” Then they left, swiftly. They left the spear. Another gift or forgotten? The Talor could run goddamned fast. Purleo was into the grasses and diminishing from view before it fully registered that they’d just been bailed on.

“What did he say? Is he just leaving us…?” Oh right, German.

“They’ll come back in two days.” John choked a bit on the biscuit that he’d crammed into his mouth. There were five biscuits for four people for two days. John had just eaten an entire one.

“Damnit John!”

“Sowwy.” He mumbled, struggling to swallow the last of it. Normally, it would have been funny. Their stomachs growled though and…

Nobody laughed.