Dinner was ready not too much later. Sylvia was limited by the food they'd packed, but she was a pretty good cook, and the soup she had made was definitely passable. Jon wondered how exactly Nina would manage with only her talons, but she proved quite capable, picking up the bowl with one claw and steadying herself with the other, sipping it down slowly while it cooled. The more Jon saw of how a real harpy handled herself, the more embarrassed she felt for having had so much trouble in her brief time as one. Then again, she hadn't had even Nina's short lifetime to get used to it.
Karyn's troubles had less to do with a shortage of manipulable appendages and more to do with the fact most of the things in the soup, from chunks of reconstituted meat to thick, heavy noodles, were nearly as large as her head, and the only spoon small enough for her to use was too small to pick up anything. Eventually she gave up and settled for slicing off portions of the chunky stuff and interspersing them with sips of broth. She was in the middle of a sip when her eyes suddenly went wide, and she performed about the most impressive spit-take someone of her size could manage.
"Are you all right?" Jon asked, worriedly. "What's the matter?"
Karyn stared at Sylvia. "You!" she sputtered. "You knew what we were talking about!"
The dryad looked puzzled. "Huh?" she said. "What do you mean?"
Karyn took a deep breath. "When we found Nina," she said. "Jen and I were joking about Aliens, and you knew what we were talking about! How'd you know about that!?"
Sylvia gasped. "I...oh my," she whispered. "You're from...from...?"
Jon joined in the group amazement. "From Earth?" she replied. "But how do you know about that, either?"
Sylvia gave a long sigh. "I was from Earth, too," she said. "But that was so long ago...it has to have been about fifty years since I found myself here."
"Fifty years?" Jon yelped. "That's impossible! They didn't even have arcade games in the '60s!"
"Not to mention that the movie's from 1986," Karyn said. "But maybe time passes faster here?"
The dryad shrugged. "Maybe," she said. "But it's been about fifty years, I know that much. I've watched trees in my forest grow from saplings to full adulthood in that time. I...to be honest, it's been so long that I've forgotten who I used to be."
Karyn gasped. "Oh, that's awful!"
Sylvia shook her head. "No," she said, "it's...well, it's ancient history now, and it's just not that important to me anymore. I'm happy with where I am and who I am, and that's what really matters. I assume you're more recent arrivals?"
Jon nodded. "Just a few days ago, actually." She hoped she wouldn't have to relate her whole embarrassing story.
Sylvia nodded thoughtfully. "So I suppose you're going to the library in hopes of finding a way home?"
Karyn and Jon answered strongly in the affirmative. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" Karyn asked.
The dryad shook her head. "Sorry," she said. "I actually spent about my first decade here under the impression that I'd die if I left my forest, and by the time I found out otherwise, I was already comfortable in my new life. But that's not to say there isn't a way, or that it's not in the library; I just never looked hard enough to find it."
