[color=indianred] Observatory [/color]

The Egyptian frowned in confusion when the man with his back up against the pillar in the middle of the room knelt and started blathering in Latin.  It took her a momnt to mentally change gears from Aramaic to the Roman tongue, and Zosime thought she must have missed something important in what he was saying.  Something about debtors?

"Conantes dicere quid?" [i]What are you trying to say?[/i] Zosime asked, raising one hand to rub at the side of her head.  She was a little surprised to hear the man speak Latin - she'd pegged him for an Israelite.  Well, she didn't meet all that many Romans, there were probably some scruffy looking ones from the western edges of the Empire, where the Celts and Gauls and all sorts of other barbarians lived.

He said something else then, which sounded kind of like Latin but well, more like he wasn't saying all the letters, and the vowels were much more nasal than she was used to.  She didn't like the sound of it.  But, even though the words sounded unfamiliar to her, she was somehow certain that she could understand them.  At least she knew his name now.

"Mortui non sumus, Innocent," Zosime said flatly.  [i]We aren't dead, Innocent.[/i]  They couldn't be dead; she could clearly feel herself, physically connected to her body as she should have been.  Her ka had not detached; she knew that she was not facing neter-khetet.  This was not the underworld through which Amun-Ra sailed each night.  The more she interacted with the old man, the more the Egyptian came to believe that far from being her captor, he was a frightened idiot.

Zosime started to open her mouth to try to explain why they couldn't be dead, when one of the remaining sleepers awakened.  He spoke an even less comprehensible language, like something she had once heard a captive Teuton shout.  Like the pseudo-latin, she felt strangely certain that she could understand this young man's words, even though she knew the sounds coming out of his mouth were unintelligible.

She took a deep, calming breath and shakily forced it back out.  It seemed like everyone here was going to be just as confused as she was.  The scribe certainly didn't trust them, and she wasn't at all comfortable with the situation, but was suddenly sure that if she didn't stiffen her spine and take charge, no-one was going to.  

The man at the shelves picked that time to turn around and introduce himself, somewhat deflating her sense of self importance.  He seemed pretty calm.  And he seemed to be speaking that Teutonic-sounding language as well; she was increasingly suspicious that this whole abduction was a Roman plot of some kind.

"Salutem, Christopher," [i]Hello, Christopher[/i], she said, deciding to stick with latin.  At least one person there seemed to speak it.  The Teutonic men might too, for that matter, if they couldn't understand her mysteriously like she could them.  "I don't know where we are, or why.  It looks like we are all equally confused here.  If we are going to get any answers, we will probably need to stick together.  My name is Zosime."  She looked around the room, taking in the strange furnishings, living wood and unidentifiable metal contrivances.  "Does anyone have any idea what any of these things are?"