[The tympana on his foreheads are humming away in their usual seemingly-random pattern of ultrasonic sweeps and spikes, but the activity seems to pulse brighter for a few moments after she finishes speaking. Then...]

A... a couple of tendays ago, before I came here, me and my friend Jefri... it's a long story, but... we had to escape from a castle. We found some secret tunnels, but Mister Stee... th-the person we were escaping from, he started filling the tunnels with oil. We only barely made it outside the walls.

Jefri's friend Ravna had just landed with her friends from space, and one of them came over to help us get away, but... but the oil outside had pooled in the field, and someone set it on fire, a-and... and we were trapped.