Crouched under a dinner table amidst feet in unfamiliar styles of sandals and the sounds of clinking silverware and alien conversation.

...Oops. Under a dinner table, seriously?

Her sister seems to feel the same way, based on the look she's giving her.

Sure seems like it. Small feet with painted toenails start swinging and may kick Illia if she's not careful.

Odette spreads her hands in incomprehension--I don't know either--and then, still embarrassed, sucks it up and starts crawling out from under the table.

"Eep!"

Chattering in unfamiliar languages. Brightly blonde people peering down at them.

Gosh that sure is an intense blonde.

"I'm sorry," she says, hoping her tone will get across even if the words don't.

More chattering. One of them tries another language.

She shakes her head and tries the other four language she's fluent in.

Nope.

Kid with painted toenails reaches for Odette's hair. A word from one of the adults stops her.

Illia crawls out from under the table and tries snatches of languages they're not fluent in but know a few words of.

One of these has enough false cognates to elicit a sentence back. But: no.

Mmkay time to try something else.

What did they say?

Most recently, "Is that Litholeen?"

Hm.

She shakes her head, points to her ear and snaps her fingers, sending up a small shower of multicolored sparks.

They are startled!

This is reasonable. She waits for them to say something else, still magically listening for meaning apart from words.

One of the adults looks at another and says, "I still don't understand how they got here. We don't even have a basement."

"They're aliens, obviously," says the kid.

"They've probably just got hair dye," says the other adult, "and maybe we've got some kind of tunnel we didn't know about?"

Huh.

She repeats the words that seemed to go with "hair dye" with a querying tone and a terrible accent.

"You got alien hair," says the kid. She looks about five or six.

"They can't understand you, Alaior, we just established that."

She snaps her fingers again, sending up more sparks, and repeats "understand you."

"She can, she can," says Alaior.

"We just determined they don't speak Oahkar or Tapap or Litholeen," says an adult, "she's probably just mimicking."

"What's with the sparks -"

"No idea. Doesn't look like she's wearing pyrotechnic gloves."

...They're not getting "magic" from the sparks, okay.

She levitates a few inches off the floor.

"She's floating," says the kid.

"...okay, maybe she is an alien - I wonder how it works -"

She turns her hair yellow, then reddish-orange, then black, then back to brown.

"Whoaaaaa," says Alaior.

"I still don't understand what she's doing here. Or why the sparks or the floating - do you suppose she's dangerous -"

"Well we shouldn't presume - let's call the senator's office, though, Luta can make the call."

"Ooh -" Someone pulls a rectangle out of her pocket.

She peers curiously at the rectangle.

Luta taps the rectangle.

"But she doesn't even know our senator," says Alaior.

"She's going to make a good first impression," says one of the other adults.

Alaior watches the rectangle and waits.

She points at the rectangle and makes a querying noise.

"...she doesn't want my pocket everything, does she?" asks Luta. "I'm on the call queue."

"Who knows?" wonders another adult.

"...Want knows," she tries.

Alaior giggles at her.

"Like a parrot," someone says. "Parrot alien."

"Understand," she insists.

"If you can understand Oahkar how come you can't speak it?" asks Alaior.

She waves a hand and a cloud of multicolored mist comes out. "Magic," she says in Genoshan.

"I don't speak alien," Alaior says.

She sighs.

She waves a hand, throwing mist. She snaps her fingers, throwing sparks. She hops a few inches higher into the air. And then she points at her ear.

"You're like a movie," says Alaior. "I wanna be a movie."

"Movie?"

"Yeah!"

"Want understand."

"Ummmmm..." She sings the alphabet.

This is useful! She sings it back.

Alaior giggles. Luta is still in the call queue. Adults are variously peering over her shoulder, finishing their dinner, or watching Odette and Illia warily.

This is reasonable.

Odette explains the alphabet song to Illia.

Illia also sings the alphabet song, then.

Alaior claps.

"Cute kid."

"Mhm."

"Want understand--Senator?" she tries.

"A senator is one of the blues who runs the country," says Alaior. "Grandma works for one and Auntie is calling him."

"Blues?"

"Yes. We are yellows," Alaior adds helpfully.

...She looks at their hair.

Nod nod nod. (Alaior's hair looks like spun gold.)

...Huh.

She picks up her braid. "Blues, yellows...?"

"You're aliens," says Alaior. "Hair doesn't be brown."

Huh.

Odette explains the relevant facts to Illia, and then, "Blues hair run the country?"

"Yeah!"

One of the adults is starting to pay slightly more attention to this conversation.

"Blues hair, yellows hair, doesn't brown hair...?"

Alaior tilts her head. "I dunno what you mean."

She turns her hair black again.

"People don't have black hair, either."

She turns it red-orange again.

"People have orange hair. But that's a bad kind of orange, they'd paint it."

"Bad?"

"Yeah."

"- it might confuse someone," says the more attentive grownup, "it's ambiguous with red..."

"Red hair bad?"

"Yes."

Alaior nods along vigorously.

...She finds this deeply puzzling.

"...can you actually understand us or are you a parrot alien," asks the adult. "Uh, turn around twice if you can understand."

She turns around twice.

"- the alien understands Oahkar," the adult tells the other adults, and now Odette has a lot more attention.

She considers.

She conjures an illusion of two people talking, one with yellow hair and one with brown. Both have their mouths moving as though they were speaking, but no sound comes out. Different scripts scroll underneath them. They clearly can't understand each other. Then the brown-haired one waves a hand, throwing sparks, and the script under the yellow-haired one turns into pictures that show what objects the yellow is talking about, and the alien nods along in understanding.

"Oh, she's got fancy translation that works on languages she doesn't actually know," concludes a yellow.

"I'm still in the call queue," says Luta.

"Well, now you'll have more to tell the senator."

She nods when the yellow describes her translation.

"She doesn't have an everything or anything maybe it's ear implants."

"Weren't aliens supposed to be listening to the radio?"

"They appeared under the table, they're not TV aliens."

"Everything?"

Luta waves her pocket everything.

"Want understand everything."

"We don't have any spares -"

"I'm going to upgrade mine but the work stuff is sensitive -"

"Understand," she says patiently. She pulls up the illusion of the yellow and the alien again, this time with a pocket everything in the yellow's pictogram slot.

"I wonder how she does that."

"Hologram projector or something."

"Where, up her nose? Anyway, uh, not sure how to give a tutorial on pocket everythings -"

She sighs.

She calls up more illusions.

This is her healing a sick person, this is Illia making a diamond out of ash, this is Atennesi raising the city into the air for the first time, this is a glassworker making molten glass flow through the air...

"You're a movie," says Alaior again.

"Sure is, kid," chuckles a grownup, patting her on the head. "Movie aliens. Sufficiently advanced and all."

"Mother do you have any way to jump the call queue," asks Luta.

"Not from outside the office."

"Call queue?"

"The senator is very busy, so when people call him, they have to wait."

"Call?"

"How does the translation not - I don't know any synonyms for 'call' -"

"Phone?"

"Sure, bust out the period piece vocabulary."

"Phone?"

"I dunno what else to tell you -"

Alaior says, "When the waiting is over Auntie will talk to the senator and he will talk back."

"He--talk? He..." She looks around dramatically, indicating that there aren't any senators around.

"The pocket everything gets his talking from where he is."

When this is translated Illia looks very excited!

Alaior giggles behind her hands.

She gestures to the everything, makes a querying sound, and then holds her hands apart. Lightning jumps between them.

Everybody startles.

"Those are really good pyrotechnic gloves," someone mutters.

"Pocket everythings are electric," Alaior confirms.

She seems very excited when this is translated.

Odette gestures at her sister. "Want understand electric."

"I don't know how electricity works," frowns Alaior.

"Now hang on a second," says one of the adults, "how the heck do sufficiently-advanced aliens not understand electricity -"

"Don't understand 'sufficiently-advanced'."

"It's the thing where the aliens know so much technology and hide it real well that it looks like magic or something."

"Magic!" she says brightly, and repeats the alien word she said earlier.

"Oh, magic's not real," clarifies the yellow who explained, "it's just in stories."

"And movies," says Alaior.

"Movies are a kind of story, darling."

...She frowns and shakes her head. "Magic," she insists.

"Magical aliens!" chirps Alaior.

"There'll be some explanation or other," someone opines. "Maybe it's like 'Ruins of the Oyster Lagoon'."

"Is that the one with the noncanonical movie, about the sea people -"

"You're thinking of Oyster Beach Horrors, Ruins is about people who use a lot of lost technology and don't know how it works and think it's magic."

She shakes her head. "Magical aliens."

"Sure," he says, not convinced, but Alaior bounces.

She rolls her eyes at him and smiles at Alaior.

Alaior smiles back.

Cute kid.

She has paper and a charcoal stick; can she coax Alaior into drawing the alphabet from the song?

If she sings it - "- you want me to draw it? Drawing is for pictures not for letters." She has her own pocket everything and types it out.

...Huh. Okay. That works. Odette copies it down for future reference. Can she be induced to describe what sounds they make?

Yup!

Cool! She will guess at the spellings of the words she knows.

Alaior does not know many spellings but some of her relatives will help.

Excellent. And she will transcribe their names--she's Odette and that's Illia.

"Hi Odette and Illia!" says Alaior.

"Hi Alaior!"

She laughs.

Odette giggles.

"Odette Zavier. Illia Zavier."

"I'm Alaior Adaro."

She nods and looks questioningly at the others.

All of the women present are Adaros but the men have various other surnames.

Makes sense. She does illusions of their parents and points them out as Karole Zavier and Raikel Lehnsherr.

"Oh so you are pat-ri-lin-eal," says Alaior, pronouncing carefully.

"Anglia patrilineal, Prussia patrilineal, Genosha doesn't."

"Doesn't?"

"Genosha..." she spreads her hands. "Odette Zavier, Odette Lehnsherr."

"You have two last names?"

She shakes her head.

"What does it mean that your country - is Genosha your country? - doesn't?" asks Alaior's father.

She nods. "Genosha Odette country, Prussia Raikel country, Anglia Karole country. Odette Prussia, Odette Zavier. Odette Anglia, Odette Zavier. Odette Genosha--" she holds out her hands to either side. "Odette Zavier," she says, gesturing with one. "Odette Lehnsherr," she gestures with the other. Then she closes the Zavier hand firmly.

"I can't figure out if she means they let her pick or if it's because her parents' countries agreed on -"

"This is obviously green work, don't hurt yourself."

"Then the senator should answer his priority line in more than an hour and a half, what can possibly be taking so long -"

"Something's always on fire at the Senate."

"Then why even bother calling it a priority line?"

"Parents pick," she explains.

"Well isn't that rather liberal."

"Maybe it's only the names."

"Is anyone else eyeing the last wedge of bread..."

"It's all yours."

"Only the names?"

"Here last names are matrilineal because caste is. When it comes up, but usually people don't mix like that."

"Doesn't caste."

"They're aliens," says Alaior.

"Aliens could have invented castes too."

"They haven't invented electricity."

"Electricity was after castes."

She considers. "India caste, Nihon caste?" she doesn't sound very certain. "Prussia doesn't caste, Anglia doesn't caste, Genosha doesn't caste."

"Oh, it just hasn't spread around yet - maybe they don't have the right ones."

"Where was it that it started here, I forget -"

"Ancient Prato under Confl the Third."

"Showoff."

"India caste long time. Prussia, Anglia, Genosha doesn't caste."

"Mustn't have the right ones."

"Or they're just aliens."

"Obviously they're aliens."

"I mean that they can be different."

"I know what you meant."

She does not look super impressed. "Caste...yellow, blue?"

"And green and grey and purple and orange."

"That's mixed up," protests Alaior, "it isn't how the song goes."

"It doesn't matter, darling."

She considers this. "Red?"

Everyone makes various faces. "That too."

"But they aren't in the song because they're dirty," says Alaior, "and don't go in a song with us or anywhere else."

"Mm."

"If the aliens don't have reds -"

Some of the adults take a step or two back and one picks up Alaior.

???

"They're not red," says Alaior, "they're brown."

"They still might not be clean," murmurs her mother.

"...Clean?"

"It would probably be best if the senator and his people were the ones to explain things to you instead of a one-year-old yellow."

She considers this and then nods.

"Why wouldn't they be clean -" asks Alaior.

"We should still be polite to the aliens, darling."

"I'm not being impolite."

"Shhh."

...She does an illusion of herself washing her hands.

"Well, that would be enough for everyday..."

...Appropriately-censored illusion of herself taking a bath.

"It still depends - can you wait for the senator to pick up the call please -"

She sighs and nods.

It doesn't take much longer. Luta tells the senator that there are aliens in the house. She takes a picture of them.

If they care to explain this beforehand Odette will levitate for the picture.

Sure. "I know that could have been doctored, Senator, but -"

"Mm-hm, mm-hm, I'll send out Cadra. Which of the brood were you again -"

"Luta, Senator."

"Mm-hm."

This guy sounds a bit of a dick but she shouldn't judge off this little evidence.

"Thank you Senator."

"Of course, of course, your mother's been good to me - as you know -" he laughs slightly. "Cadra'll be there in fifteen minutes."

Illia finds this a bit puzzling once Odette's translated it but that's only to be expected considering the completely alien culture.

The yellows wait. Some of them pick at what's left of dinner.

Mmkay.

Do they have a fireplace or anything like that?

Nope.

Oh well. She practices the language with her sister.

And in about fifteen minutes someone knocks and is let in. It's a blue woman. She peers curiously at the aliens.

The aliens: are aliens.

"Hi," says one in badly-accented Oakhar.

"Hi!" the other one says from her vantage point floating about a foot off the floor.

"They can understand Oahkar but their translators are still working on the generative side," says one of the yellows.

"I see. How did they get here?"

"We're not sure, they appeared under the table."

She shakes her head. "Doesn't generative."

"Doesn't it?" says Cadra. "Are you learning it manually then?"

"Learning," she nods.

"Perhaps you'd like to come meet some linguists and they can help you out. I'm sure the Adaros have some scarves you can borrow and changes of clothes so you won't attract attention on the train?"

Adaros scurry.

The twins have a brief discussion and then Odette nods.

Adaros come back with clothes in close enough to their size.

"They can change their hair with magic," says Alaior.

"Can they," says Cadra.

Odette changes her and Illia's hair yellow.

"Oh, splendid. Can you do that to other people too?"

"Do other people," she confirms.

"Interesting. We'd attract less attention on the train if I looked temporarily yellow too."

She waves a hand unnecessarily and her hair turns yellow.

She peers in a wall mirror. "Fascinating. Will you be so kind as to change into local clothes and accompany me to the Senator's office?"

She nods, and an illusory privacy screen goes up. When it comes down, the two of them have changed into the provided local clothes. Their original garments are bundled into an unrecognizable as anything in particular except fabric lump in the crook of her arm.

"Perhaps the Adaros have a shopping bag..."

They do.

That works. Clothes and language notes go in the shopping bag.

"The train station is just down the way. Do you have trains?"

Headshake.

"Trains are a conveyance that travel along tracks, in this case through underground tunnels, so people can get near their final destinations quickly. We'll just go in and I'll pay for all of us and we'll sit there for a few minutes and get out at a different station."

Illia seems very intrigued by this description!

"I'd rather no one notice your alien abilities or your accents on the way, is that all right?"

"All right."

And Cadra leads them out the door.

It's really hot out, and sunny.

Bit of a change.

Odette doesn't float at all.

And neither of them talk.

And there are stairs down into a nice breezy ventilated subway station and they wait forty-five seconds and then a train pulls up! People get off it, and then they and others can get on.

Illia excitedly uses magic to examine the structure of the train.

It is electrical!

There are tiers of seats. They can get three together across a couple rows.

That works.

And then two stops later they are at the capital complex and can be ushered in! There is an elevator involved.

Ooooh how does that work?

There is also electricity! Another elevator car swings out of their way as they go up.

Eeee!

And now they are up and going down this hall and through this door and "all right, as long as you don't raise your voices you can talk safely here."

"Not raise voices," Odette assures her.

"The senator is wrapping up some other things so no one will miss him while he talks to you. Do you have any questions for me?"

"Knows language--Oakhar. Don't knows country."

"We're in Calado. Welcome!"

She nods. She says, "Reds doesn't clean?"

"Reds aren't clean," corrects Cadra.

"Why reds aren't clean?"

"Reds do work that makes them unclean, and have been doing it for many generations."

She illusions a bathtub with a querying noise.

"Oh, a sufficiently long shower suffices if a clean person touches something polluted but the reds aren't the same."

"Why reds aren't the same?"

"It's generational. I'm afraid I can't be much more detailed than that, not being a theologian."

"...Why theologian detailed clean?"

"It's part of their job. I'm not sure why, it's a green track and not popular in Calado. Now I've got a question for you - how did you two get here?"

"...Not knows all words. Uh..."

She considers this, and then shows an illusion. The two of them are in a city with a completely unfamiliar architectural style. A man is looming over them with an incredibly unfriendly look on his face. Illusory-Odette clutches her sister and suddenly the two of them are under a table in Calado.

"So you were - running away from someone? And then..."

"Magic."

"...you're pretty sure you've got 'magic' translating correctly -?"

Nod.

"Can anyone learn to do magic?"

"Anyone alien. Don't know Calado."

"We're Amentans. What would you need to find out?"

She considers this.

"Don't know Amentans. Amentans don't know magic. Need to know Amentans learn magic understand magic, understand doesn't--" she considers. "Understand things need doesn't do. Need to understand safe."

"It's dangerous to try to learn magic?" attempts Cadra.

She nods. "And--Amentans learn magic dangerous, magic dangerous--" she makes an illusion of a floating alien hitting another alien with lightning, then firmly banishes it and shakes her head.

"I'm not sure I follow."

"'Amentans learn magic' dangerous to 'Amentans doesn't magic'. Need understand Amentans learn magic not magic to Amentans not magic dangerous."

"- maybe we should start with some more Oahkar lessons. Now, I can get a linguist in here, but the more people know about you the greater the chance everything gets out of control with you in the middle, so I think I'll try myself for a bit, okay? And if I'm a lousy teacher we can get one of the senator's polymaths."

Nod.

She illusions someone stabbing another person. The stabbed person falls over with an unrealistic fountain of blood and doesn't get up again. She gestures and raises an eyebrow.

"...that appears to have been a representation of murder?" says Cadra. "Are you looking for vocabulary or trying to clarify how things may get out of control?"

"Vocabulary."

"The one person stabbed the other person. With a knife. Why is this vocabulary useful?"

"Amentan learn magic murder Amentan doesn't learn magic easy."

"...I do think dead people would have a hard time learning magic, yes..."

"Magic Amentan murder doesn't-magic Amentan easy."

"- magic makes it easy to commit murder? Well, so do guns - do you have guns -"

Illusion of a cannon. "Murder--one dangerous thing." She starts ticking off numbers on her fingers.

"Okay."

She sighs. Vocabulary building? Numbers?

Numbers!

Body parts?

As many as she likes.

And she has "patrilineal," what's the other thing?

Matrilineal.

Okay. ...Her country doesn't do castes, by the way.

"Well, it wouldn't be reasonable to assume every species would."

"All countries Amentans have caste?"

"All countries on Amenta have castes, and the same ones, yes."

"Know why?"

"The places that had them succeeded better than their neighbors and over time a combination of conquest and imitative adoption spread them everywhere."

"Huh. Have countries have caste systems."

"Well, it's possible that your species isn't as suited to it as ours, or that the caste systems you have work differently."

Shrug. "Don't know."

"I certainly don't either. So can you teleport whenever you like? How far did you come?"

...She makes a so-so gesture to the first and shrugs to the second.

"Do you have a way to contact home?"

...Shrug. "Not try yet."

"Why not?"

"Maybe go home, maybe don't come back, maybe senator doesn't think yellows truth."

"You can't talk to them without traveling there?"

...She struggles for vocabulary. Eventually she pinches her arm, winces dramatically, and then looks at him.

"...pain? It would hurt?"

"Magic hurt," she says. "Talk magic hurt them."

"Oh dear."

She does illusions of someone reacting well and poorly to the same food item.

"...people have different tastes? Allergies?"

She shakes her head. She does another set of illusions, this one with one person petting a cat and another walking away from it.

"...alien cat. Uh, some people like cats and some people don't."

"Like! I like hurt."

"That... seems like a personal matter..."

"I like hurt," she says, and holds out her hands at more than shoulder width. "Magic. Illia not like hurt." She brings her hands about a palm's width apart. "Magic."

"...masochism gives you magical powers?" says Cadra incredulously.

She shakes her head. "Magic hurt. I like hurt, I do magic. Illia not like hurt, Illia do less magic."

"...oh. How odd. Why does it work like that?"

She shrugs.

"Huh." Her pocket everything chirps; she looks at it. "The senator will be along in a moment. You can put all our hair back now if you don't mind."

Hair returns to colors starting with the letter B.

Cadra checks hers. "Great, thank you."

Nod. Smile.

And the senator comes in. His hair is also, differently blue. He peers at the aliens. (Cadra bows.)

Odette is not part of this legal system and gives a jaunty wave.

Illia is slightly politer but only inclines her head instead of bowing.

He doesn't take offense. "I'm told you can understand Oahkar but are still learning to speak it."

She nods. "Translation magic."

"How do you know it's magic?" he wonders.

...She gives him a confused look.

"- historically, whenever Amentans have thought something was magic, it has turned out to have another explanation," he says.

"Amentans don't magic."

"Mm. Where did you come from?"

"Genosha."

"Where is that relative to Amenta?"

Shrug.

"- don't know or don't have the words?"

"Don't know."

"Did you come here accidentally?"

"Yes."

"Could you find your star on a map?"

...Shrug.

"Presuming it was the right galaxy, I mean."

She thinks about it and sighs. "No."

"Hmmm. Do you normally travel between planets often?"

"No."

"Was this an experiment or a test of some kind?"

"No."

He looks puzzled. "Do you think you could do it again?"

"Don't know."

She hesitates.

"...Magic away, not to. Not know Amenta. Not know between planets. Yellows talk Amenta, know Amenta, know between planets."

"- you were - magicking yourself out of a place and could have landed anywhere? What if you'd landed somewhere uninhabitable?"

"Then murder," she sighs.

"...murder? Of whom?"

She gestures at herself and her sister.

"Appearing somewhere you couldn't survive would be more like an accidental death than murder..."

"Not know word death," she says. "And magic away from murder."

"Ah."

"Would you like a dictionary," says Cadra, "or would that be too much too fast - I don't know if you're having to remember this in a more or less Amentan way or if you have magic for it -"

"Not know Amentan learn. Not magic. Dictionary not bad."

Cadra calls up a dictionary on her everything and shows Odette how to type and scroll through it.

Oooh. And: "Illia want understand electric."

"- Senator -"

"Mine has sensitive materials, Cadra."

"Well." She can navigate away from the dictionary to an explanation of electricity.

"Understand electric--need words--"

Odette illusions a diagram of electrons jumping between atoms. "Illia understand electric work, understand magnets, want understand electric make rectangle book and train."

"- I'm afraid neither of us is competent to teach electrician school..."

Sigh. "Understand."

"The, uh, rectangle book, is called a pocket everything."

"Oh, right."

"The thing we'd most like to be able to do," says the senator, "is travel to other planets, empty ones, and send people to live there. Is that something magic could help with?"

"...Probably? Why want?"

"Amenta is very crowded," he says.

"Oh. Magic..." she trails off. "Magic now." She holds her hands a certain distance apart. "Magic later." She brings her hands farther apart.

"Your magic is going to get - bigger -?"

Nod nod.

"Over how long - days months years -"

She makes a wobbly gesture. "Do not-bigger magic, magic gets bigger years, do bigger magic, magic gets bigger months."

"What sorts of things would be good for growing your magic?"

"Do magic."

"Yes, but what sorts of magic are best to do for it?"

"...Bigger magic?"

"I don't know what things are bigger when done with magic," explains the senator. "For example, with computers, it turns out they find math very easy, and identifying birds very hard, even though people find identifying birds easier than doing math."

"Computers? Everything?"

"Pocket everythings are a kind of portable computer."

Nod. "Genosha doesn't computer. Uh--know things magic bigger, not know words."

"Can you do the illusions for vocabulary some more?" suggests Cadra.

Illusion! Herself, holding a piece of metal that seems to be growing more metal.

"Making more - metal of some kind - out of existing metal, growing it? -"

Nod. She dismisses the illusion and does one with a piece of metal changing shape in her hands.

"Changing the shape of the metal."

"Making more thing bigger magic changing the shape of the thing."

"So making new material is a bigger deal than just molding something. All right. What can you do in general terms - I'm wondering if you can season the rainforest -"

"Season?"

"The places on Amenta where people like to live have four seasons every year. The equator and the poles don't. If people try to live there, their hormones do unpleasant things."

"Aliens live equator don't hormones do unpleasant things."

"Well, you're aliens," he says, "it stands to reason that not everyone would evolve the same way. But we're very crowded and have some uninhabited rainforest."

"Don't know magic season rainforest."

"So there isn't magic invented for it, all right. How is new magic invented?"

"...Magic do thing. Need understand thing."

"You would need to know more about how seasons worked?"

"Need understand seasons to know magic do, not-do. Need--" she does an illusion of snow-- "can do, need Amenta--" she makes an illusion of a random planet changing its axis of rotation-- "not do."

"- right, we don't want the entire planet changed. Weather doesn't have much to do with it, it's about latitude."

"Not changed latitude, not understand latitude seasons, need understand magic."

He nods. "Would it help to read an article about it or should we think of other ideas first?"

"Translation not read."

"- why not?"

"Translation magic need--alien or Amentan--for words. Amentan words read not here."

"You need a person? Why?"

"--Words not--aliens or Amentans make words. Words not words, aliens or Amentans make words, no aliens, no Amentans, magic not words."

...the blues are confused.

"We could call the polymath to help with the language barrier," says Cadra.

"No, no, I think his sister's being courted by that idiot Admai -"

"Dictionary," she tries. "Dictionary, words..."

"Definitions?"

So-so gesture.

"Concepts, ideas?"

"Words not ideas, aliens Amentans make ideas words, magic not know ideas words, magic need Amentans ideas talk."

"...so you're reading minds?"

"NO!"

Cadra jumps. "Shhh!"

Oops.

"Magic know ideas, magic talk Amentan talk. Not read minds."

"I'm afraid I don't quite get the distinction but it's probably just a vocabulary problem..."

Nod.

There's a knock. "Is everything all right in there, Senator?" calls a voice.

"Everything's fine!" he calls.

"Read minds bad," she says, quietly but firmly. "--Think you talk, you touch trash, I talk you red."

"...would reading minds make you unclean somehow, that doesn't - seem to make sense -"

"Not unclean. Not all bad unclean."

"But you mentioned reds and that's the problem with them."

"...You not want I talk you red. I not want you talk I reading minds."

"- you don't want to discuss reading minds, all right."

"...No. Reading minds bad. Unclean bad. Different bad. Still bad."

"Don't want to be accused of it? Associated with it?" suggests Cadra.

Nod.

"All right."

"Magic aliens think I reading minds, I death."

"- so it's a crime, I see."

Nod. "Magic translation--close enough reading minds, don't when not-magic translation. Yellows don't know alien languages, Odette Illia don't know Amentan languages, need magic translation."

"The polymath -" begins Cadra.

"This is the biggest thing to happen in history," the senator tells her, "if it gets out the capital will be a kicked anthill, do not make me regret hiring you, Insho, I know where your brother works too -"

"Yes Senator."

"Kicked anthill?"

"Everyone will want to get you to do things and make it look like their idea," he says. "I'm not claiming to have nobler motives but I can't compete with myself in three hundred directions and the full Senate is more than capable of that. The polymath Cadra keeps mentioning is brilliant and not obviously disloyal but his sister is being cultivated by another senator's office."