Unexpectedly, your hearing returns as the sounds do, a shuffle bump of the man or thing, and still a lack of water-noise. You note that the drift of time is moved again, is less immediately riverside. The balance of smells suggesting industry are stronger, or at least more unevenly biased. You do not know what to make of that. You wonder if you travel closer to some notional home after all, rather than farther from it. Perhaps you misjudge the intent of this place or its captain or pilot or orchestrator. You do not know why you assume you have come from a town or city.
You bark at your friend, call them that, at your companion newly re-announced, and in return you hear a sweeping swoosh. If you had been on top of the table and desired to make such a noise you imagine you would do so by swiping a hand, or an entire limb, across its surface. A recognition, however erroneous your deduction must be! Call it a noise of assent, of agreement, of society. Consider this something specifically prompted, an action-reaction, something that you can use in some way, for some purpose, you do not know what. Perhaps the beginning of a means for you to construct a greater shared structure of communication, still assuming that you do not share a language already, which seems an obvious deduction. If you can determine those base two, your yesses and noes, then all else must follow.
You will have to spend some time yessing then, until that becomes accepted. You both, assuming there are only two of you here, must grow to intuitively grasp the solidity of this interaction before you can then change it or introduce some additional component, something which would let you expand the total set of things which you hold in common. You will therefore need to be alert and wary. At any time that you hear movement in the manner of the original you must emit a single bark coincident with it, and rely on him then to make the sweeping swoosh. It occurs to you that this is precisely the worst case of affairs since it places responsibility for the continuation of the series upon him, or it or they, and therefore becomes something that you cannot consciously direct. You must become an active partner in the other entity’s attempts at the construction of a shared language, assuming that it does or will intend to do any such thing. You hope that you can make your own reactions precise and similar enough over time that it is an obvious deduction for it to make. If he, or they or it, do not then do so then surely that must reveal its own set of facts about them: perhaps they are indeed some automaton or thing, or some person so distinct from yourself that there is no hope of shared meaning and you may as well abandon the whole experiment.
You observe your limbs for their orientation but can no longer recall the particulars of your prior state, assuming you have shifted. You commit your current disposition to memory in preparation for next time.