"Resistance isn't something you build. Well, I guess you can build good meditation skills. It's a personality thing."

"How common are extremely powerful people? In a thousand, how many have the potential?"

"I don't know. Most people back home just aren't mages. But--there are only six living Great Mages, right now. Not counting Odette."

"How many people, on your world?"

"Billions. I--combined with the thing where people still die of old age regularly, this is starting to worry me."

"I am not quite sure I follow."

"There shouldn't be that few. Odette's an exceptional person but I wouldn't call her one in a billion, and even if most people aren't mages-proper there are a lot of hedgewitches who would have become mages-proper if they had the talent, and--both it and the old age thing don't quite make sense."

"No," he says, thinking about it. "Your world has far too few mages for the demographics you've described. Is it possible that assassination attempts like the one against your sister are common, and are usually covered up?"

"Disturbingly."

"Great. That problem will have to wait for a dimensional teleport, I take it? Ah, we can all read minds, if you wanted to take a visitor back with you to determine whether it's safe for you to stay..."

"We...should be mostly safe, I think. I mean. The one murder attempt did happen, but that was before Odette decided to spend as much time as possible doing magic to become the second coming of Elisha."

"Who's that?"

"Religious figure. Supposedly he was so pious that God raised someone from the dead at his request."

"Back home, anyone could have done that.

It's - hard to realize that I might see again people I'd grieved for and forgotten centuries ago. And it's hard to be afraid again of nightmares I'd laid to rest when the Sun first rose."

"Nightmares?"

"Fëanor. I imagine you're tired of the subject."

"Oh. Yeah. Kind of." she looks briefly uncomfortable.

"And it's been a busy day. Did you still want to learn to read our letters?"

"Oh, yes, definitely."

So he finds some parchment and ink and begins teaching her.

It's such a logical alphabet!

"Is yours different?"

She explains the horrific tangle of spelling irregularities in Anglic.

"That sounds nightmarish for teaching people to read with. We have a hard enough time with the Men and this sis a very good alphabet."

"It's easier when you grow up with it but, um, yeah, in some schools they have contests where you get a prize if you remember how to spell everything right."