Another human appears in the room, in the middle of their chalk circle, wearing comfortable clothes of a pajama-like nature, positioned as though she was curled up on a comfortable surface but without the comfortable surface.

She lands somewhat awkwardly with a startled yelp, sits up, and gives the girls a quizzical look.

Girls chatter to each other excitedly and one looks up another spell and casts it.

"You should be able to understand us now," she says.

"Fancy. Why am I here?"

"We're gonna show you to Nemaar," says the human.

"...who's Nemaar and why's he want to see me so badly?"

"- oh it's not about you in particular that was random," says the blonde elf.

"He was making fun of me, he said I wouldn't be able to do a summon," says the human.

"You sure showed him, huh? Or will, when he gets here. Do I have time to finish my nap?"

"I don't think it matters especially if you're awake even when he gets here," says the human.

"Sorry we woke you," says the elf.

"Eh, I'm not mad. Appreciate the apology, though."

She nibbles her lip contemplatively, inspecting the floor for signs of coziness and clearly coming up empty. Then she pulls a few loose threads from the hem of her shirt and frowns at them until they puff up into a squashy pillow, which continues to gradually inflate until it is big enough to lie on, at which point she curls up on it and closes her eyes.

"Cool," whispers the human.

(She grins.)

Girls wait. Eventually the human runs and fetches a lion-person, who inspects the summonee and concludes that she is a summonee, all right, and then asks how much it pulls, and -

"Isn't that above your capacity?"

"Oh, we co-cast."

"...so how are you gonna send her back?"

"Mm?" says the dozy summonee.

The elf has gone pale. "Oh no."

"...okay, I was wrong that you couldn't do the spell but I was right you're not any good as a wizard," snorts the lion person.

"I am so - what do you mean oh no, Korulen -"

"Can't - can't co-cast a reversal -"

"Oh boy."

"I am so sorry," says Korulen.

The lion boy leaves.

"Eh. How stuck am I, exactly?"

"Uh. At least till I can get a familiar," Korulen says.

"Yeah? And how long will that take?"

"...a few, um, years."

"Could be worse."

She sits up and attempts to leave the circle. The circle disagrees with her life choices. She prods the invisible barrier. "...okay, that's gonna get awkward."

"Uh. That part doesn't have to stay put if it's safe to let you out but I have to tell my mom." Korulen's voice shrinks over the course of the sentence.

"No!" exclaims Saasnil. "No don't I'll be expelled -"

"We can't just leave her there!"

"...I can technically survive a few years locked in a little circle but I'd really rather not have to. Also I'd like somebody to tell my girlfriend what happened to me, ideally without locking her in another little circle."

"We can send her a letter," Korulen says, "and we can send you food and stuff but we really can't just leave her there Saasnil -"

"Don't tell your mom, it's all right for you but me they'll kick out -"

"There is no bathroom in my little circle," Anlei points out.

"This is among the reasons we cannot just leave her there forever, Saasnil."

"Don't please please we'll think of something - go buy a drake or whatever now and do it -"

"It might not even work. I have to tell my mom."

"I'm not in a huge rush, but it seems like maybe you'd get in less trouble if you fessed up now than if you argued about it for an hour first," says their summonee.

"Also Nemaar might tell."

Saasnil whimpers.

Korulen's eyes close and a moment later the door opens. A green haired woman is frowning at the girls.

"Hi," says the summonee.

"Hello. I'm terribly sorry for the trouble." She looks significantly at the girls. They bolt. "Do you mind if I do a minimally invasive mental scan to determine if you're safe to let out of the circle?"

"Uh," she says. "How invasive is minimally?"

"I won't look at anything that doesn't bear directly on your ability or willingness to be dangerous."

"Okay, sure."

"...okay, I'm going to let you out, but I'd like to ask that if you run into something you don't know how to handle you ask someone - me, if nobody's around - for help first. You can get ahold of me by thinking my name, 'Keo', at me."

"Sure."

Keo smudges the chalk.

"Freedom," she says. "Or at least so I assume. I'm Anlei, by the way. What, uh, is the deal here?"

"This is a wizard school, where you have been summoned from another world," sighs Keo. "Where would you like me to pick up from there?"

"Until today I didn't know there was more than one world. I also have no idea what a wizard is, besides somebody who can do some really crazy magic I've never heard of."

"Wizards are a local kind of magic user. You won't be able to pick it up. There are plenty of worlds but it's in no way customary to summon people out of them."

"Yeah, I'm getting that sense. Okay. So where does that leave me for the next few years while your kid waits to get a familiar, whatever one of those is?"

"A familiar is a magically attached animal that expands the size of spell she'll be able to cast. The school's responsible for you; I can put you in an empty dormitory and get you cafeteria access and make Korulen take you shopping."

"Sounds good! I hope you don't expel that other kid, she seems nice."

"We won't expel her," Keo says. "They're both in a lot of trouble, though."

"They made a pretty dumb mistake. Could've been a lot worse than it was," she says. "But they got me and I'm not mad, so. Oh, I do want to reassure my girlfriend that I wasn't kidnapped... wasn't exactly kidnapped... sometime soonish."

"I'd be happy to drop a letter on her. And she can be summoned and unsummoned just fine if she likes, as long as it's the right spell cast correctly, which yours wasn't."

"Oh good! That works out fine then. I'll write her a note, I guess."

"Since you haven't gone shopping yet you can do that in my husband's office, plenty of paper there." She leads her to the end of the hall, where there is a tiny room, which moves when Keo says, "Headmaster's office."

"Magic here is so nifty!"

"I'm glad you like it! Wizardry's pretty useful stuff."

"It looks it!"

The office: is an office. It has an elf man with a strong resemblance to Korulen in it; he smiles politely at Anlei and offers her paper and a graphite stick.

Hey Fia, I got accidentally kidnapped by magic people from another world! It's weird. I'm fine but apparently it's going to take a few years to put me back. If you want

"We can summon the letter back if she writes on the reverse, and sure," says Keo.

to move to Kidnap World with me while we wait, you can do that, just write on the back of the note to answer. It seems nice here. The school I was accidentally kidnapped to is covering food and shelter and so on while I'm accidentally kidnapped to it. Love you. —Anlei

Elf man has begun to draw on the floor. "This will take some time."

"'kay. What should I do meanwhile...?"

"If you're hungry there's that or I can show you to your room," Keo says.

"You could show me to my room and then point me at food," she suggests. "If that's convenient."

So Keo shows her to a room, which is just like Korulen and Saasnil's without any stuff, and then to the cafeteria.

A cafeteria! It contains food! Anlei tries some likely-looking food items.

They are edible!

These are some pretty good food items! This place is okay.

"Will you want to go shopping right after sending your letter?"

"Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good plan."

At the office, Korulen's dad sends the letter away, asks when she'll expect a reply, and starts on the circle to bring it back.

Korulen appears sheepishly to escort Anlei into town.

She says it probably won't take too long for her girlfriend to answer and maybe they can retrieve the letter when she's back from her shopping trip.

"Hi," she says when Korulen shows up. She's strangely chipper for someone who's stranded in an alien world.

"Um. Hi. Shopping?"

"Sounds good! I'm really not mad, y'know."

"I'm very embarrassed anyway."

"Well, fair enough."

Shopping!

Korulen asks her if she can fly, when they've gotten out of the school.

"...uh, no? Why?"

"I can. It'd be faster. We can walk though." Walk walk.

"Huh, neat. How?" (Walk walk.)

She turns into a small jade-green dragon.

"...that's awesome!"

She turns back. "Thanks."

"So which kind of weird otherworldly magic was that?"

"I can do that 'cause my mom's a dragon."

"Oh, cool! Your mom's pretty nice."

"Yeah. She's cool."

"She is! Congratulations on having a cool mom."

"Anyway, what do you need - like sheets and shampoo I guess? We can summon your clothes or whatever if you'd rather that than buying some."

"Yeah, sheets and shampoo and - if summoning my clothes is convenient then that - and I think that's it but I might be missing something, what-all did you bring when you moved into your room?"

"I grew up in the school, I moved into the dorms kinda gradually. Summoning your clothes is like, medium-inconvenient."

"Well, sheets and shampoo and clothes will do for a start, then, I don't mind buying new clothes if that's less of a hassle."

"I guess it depends if you'd rather look like an offworlder or not."

"Looking like an offworlder will probably help explain why I know like five entire things about this world..."

"Okay. We can summon your stuff then."

"Okay, cool."

Shopping! She's pretty efficient about it. Asks for Korulen's shampoo recommendation since shampoo here comes in a lot more varieties than she's used to.

Korulen recommends her a shampoo. Shampoo is found in witch stores.

"What's a witch, anyway? Is this yet another otherworldly magic thing?"

"Yeah, they make potions."

"Neat. There's no magic shampoo at home. Wonder if this stuff's way better than what I'm used to? Guess I'll find out."

"I dunno, does my hair seem unusually awesome or anything?"

"It's in pretty good shape but not, like, so much that I'd go 'wow, where do you get your shampoo' if I wasn't already thinking about it..."

Shrug.

Shrug.

Back to the school to put her stuff away and see about clothes and correspondence?

Yup!

The letter is summoned back.

I am like half convinced you're playing some kind of weird prank on me but okay, accidentally kidnapped to another world, sure. I should maybe stay home to make sure our roof doesn't fall in. Depends how easy it is to visit, I guess. If it's really easy then I could just pop in to see you once a week or so, if it's a huge hassle or I'd end up stuck as long as you were then maybe I'll just give up on the house, we can always get another one. Love you too. —Fia

"Okay, how much of a hassle is it—I'm getting the sense you'd rather not do one of these every week, but two weeks here and two weeks there would probably work out fine, if that's not too much trouble."

"The circle's the main time expenditure," says Korulen's dad. "If we just leave it mostly in place, which we can, it's not much time to summon or unsummon."

"Okay, sure. Then I can grab my clothes and stuff from home and take a week or so to settle in and then have Fia visit, does that sound okay?"

"Of course."

"Thanks!"

She acquires a pile of material goods, writes another quick note to update Fia on the plan, and traipses back to her room. It's kind of a boring room. Once she's got all her stuff put away and has tried out the magical otherworldly shampoo (result: yeah it's pretty impressive) and assured herself of her ability to navigate the building via its magical otherworldly travelling box, she decides to go for another walk into the city.

And there are people in the city! Mostly humans and elves, but also halflings, vampires, leonines, and the occasional exotic. This one flies down as a booted eagle and then turns into a hot dude.

Goodness. That doesn't happen every day. She watches him curiously, trying to guess if he might like to explain the eagle trick to a clueless offworlder.

He notices her looking, waves.

She waves back.

"Hi! I've been in this world for like half a day and everything's very new and exciting," she says. "People at home don't turn into eagles."

"Fancy that! I'm a dragon," he says. "We can shapeshift into stuff. Like humans." He gestures at himself. "Or eagles. How'd you get here?"

"One of the kids at the magic school over thataway," vague wave in appropriate direction, "was getting teased about how she can't cast fancy spells, so she got a friend to help her do the summoning thing, only apparently if you double up on doing a spell you're screwed when it comes time to undo it. So now I'm stuck here until they get the right magic something-or-other to unstick me. The school was very nice about it though, I've got a room and a cafeteria pass for as long as I need 'em."

"Well, I guess that could be worse. Welcome to Elcenia! I'm Aurin."

"Thanks! I'm Anlei, nice to meet you!"

"You too! You looking for something? Not my city, but I've been here before."

"Just kinda wandering aimlessly. It seems to be working out for me so far."

"It's a nice town, Paraasilan. Good theater scene."

"Theater, huh? Anything you recommend I see? With, uh, my complete lack of local money."

"I have two tickets to Wintergarden tomorrow night. Not sure what it's about, haven't seen it before, so I don't know if it's ideally introductory, but I'd be happy to explain cultural references."

"Sounds like fun!"

"You finding your way around well enough that you'd rather meet me there or should I fetch you from the school?"

"Maybe fetch me from the school, I'm pretty confident I could get to a place at a time but I don't wanna find out I'm wrong by getting lost and missing the show."

"Sure. This option comes with a free dragon ride."

She giggles. "Nice."

"Great. I'll be there eleventh-and-naught tomorrow."

"Sounds good! I will... get somebody to explain time to me, I guess!"

"It's an angle before sundown, about?"

"And an angle is approximately how long...?"

"...there's twenty-five of 'em in a day."

"Eh, that's probably enough to be going on with, thanks."

"You're welcome!"

She grins at him. (He's so... wholesome! It's very endearing!)

Grin! "What's your world like?"

"We have way fewer, uh, things? Like, the only people are humans. And there's like one and a half kinds of magic - the one everybody knows about that's really slow about getting anything useful done, and the one hardly anybody knows about that sets stuff on fire if you fuck it up."

"Literally on fire?" he wonders.

"Literally on fire! It's, like, the magic really really wants to be doing things so if you try to use some and you aren't keeping a real close eye on it it will escape and go do some things, and the things are mostly variants on 'combust' and 'explode'."

"Goodness. Wizard stuff explodes a bit if they fuck it up..."

"This stuff explodes more than a bit."

"Sounds exciting."

"It's not for the faint of heart."

"What d'you do with it?"

"Stuff! I built a house with it, that was fun."

"Ooh, neat! Do you have to know architecture to do that?"

"It was kind of a learn-by-doing deal? And a pretty small house. I probably would've been better off if I'd known more architecture than I did, but I managed."

"That's really neat."

"Aw, thanks!"

"So I'll see you tomorrow!" He manages to turn into an eagle who is somehow already perched politely on her arm, and takes off without taloning her.

She waves to him, giggling, as he flies away.

The next day, she has managed to figure out when eleventh-and-naught is!

A shiny gold dragon lands outside the school. "Hi!" says the shiny gold dragon. He's a lot bigger than Korulen.

"Goodness," says Anlei. "Hi! You're very shiny!"

He laughs. "Thank you! How're you doing?"

"Pretty good! You?"

"Doing all right. We've got time for dinner before the theater if you like street food."

"That sounds like an excellent idea. So how does one ride a dragon—?"

"I've got a saddle on, see?" He shifts a wing, crouches.

"Aha!" She climbs up. "Comfy."

"There's straps if you're not sure you can hang on or don't wanna count on me catching you. I could though."

"I believe you!"

"Say when!"

"When!"

And into the air leaps a shiny gold dragon!

He circles the city once but it's still a really short flight. He comes in for a landing over a pond in a park and winds up neatly on the shore.

"I'm not gonna be able to do that in urban areas in a hundred years," he comments. "But it's fun."

"That was awesome," she cackles, climbing down.

"I'm glad you had fun." He shifts, offers her an arm.

She takes it. "You're very charming, you know that?"

"Aw, thanks! I try."

"You succeed!"

He pats her arm. "Spicy or not-spicy?"

"Ooh, let's go with spicy."

"Flatbread stand it is." And they find a flatbread stand, which sells hot flatbreads stuffed with things and slathered in spicy sauce, rolled up in paper.

She has to let go of him to eat her spicy flatbreads but they are good spicy flatbreads so she doesn't mind much.

Yummy spicy flatbreads. And when they have finished their spicy flatbreads: theater!

Wintergarden is danced through, with heavy musical overlay. The costuming is great. The narrative arc is not super sophisticated but it maybe involves this one dancer getting lost from her (friends? siblings?) and then finding them again???

Anlei is confused but delighted. She solicits cultural translation from Aurin and has a good time.

"It's just kind of a sparse plotline, honestly, I can't tell you much," he says during intermission. "Unless it's all gonna pull together in the last scene but so far I think it's more 'concept album on stage' than 'story'."

"What's a concept album?"

"Somebody records a bunch of songs that are all around a theme and releases 'em together."

"Records, like...? Is this a nifty otherworldly magic thing?"

"Yeah! You magic 'em onto a crystal somehow. I don't know the technical side."

"Otherworldly magic is so great!"

"Yours can't do that stuff?"

"I guess you could probably make an artifact that played music but it'd take, like, months, with normal magic. And I don't even know how you'd try to make an artifact with the explodey kind."

"Well, I'm sure it's good for some stuff."

"Oh, I like my magic! I built my house with it! But yours seems like it's way more convenient overall."

"I don't practice it m'self but I've got an aunt and a cousin who're wizards."

"Cool! Maybe I'll pester them if I want to learn about technical magic details, are they pesterable types? I'd feel bad asking the accidental kidnappers a million questions, they like, owe me, I don't wanna lean on that too much."

"They might be pesterable. They live in this country, if you wanna go on a daytrip."

"You could introduce me sometime, if you want!"

"Sure. Bit late to fly out that way now, I was thinking I'd go back to my hotel room."

"Back to your hotel room sounds like a place to go, certainly. —I should probably mention at this point that I have a girlfriend, but we do this kind of thing all the time, she won't mind."

"Can't scare me. - I'd ask if she wanted to come but she's probably in another world."

"Yep. I can introduce you when she visits. I bet she'll like you, you're very cute."

"Aww, thanks." Arm?

Arm! So cute.

"Fifteen minutes' walking," he says as they exit the theater. "No good place to land near it. Not big, anyway, I can eagle it."

"Fifteen minutes' walking is fine by me."

And then they are at his hotel!

He has a nice room and is good in bed.

Anlei appreciates these things about him! Anlei is not bad herself. And very cheerful and cuddly. They will have such a good time together.

Excellent!

Best accidental kidnapping ever.

And then she is welcome to stay the night or -

"I don't have a place to land here but if you want a ride back, this building is tall enough that if you jumped I could shift under you. Or just walk to the park, but you seem like the type to have fun with the jumping thing."

"...the jumping thing sounds awesome but so does staying the night. Guess I could stay the night and you could fly me back in the morning."

"Sounds good." Smooch.

Smooch! He's so cute and friendly and wholesome! And attractive and good in bed!

And he doesn't snore!

Gosh. What a lucky girl she is.

And in the morning, she gets to jump off a building!

And he can shift so he's got the tip of his tail where he was standing and the rest of him under her! She doesn't land square in the saddle but it's pretty close. He gets air.

"That was amazing!" she says gleefully, clinging to the saddle.

"It took a while to get it right but it's always fun when I get a chance!"

"How do you practice something like that?"

"M'cousin has this friend and I said I thought I could do it and she said no way, and we practiced it till I could. She can turn into a cardinal, she was fine if I missed."

"What is with half the population of this world and being able to turn into things?" she wonders. "And where can I get me some of that?"

"There's not that many of us and you have to hatch or be born with it, sorry."

"Aww."

"Yeah, no fair."

"So not fair! There, that's one way my world's magic comes out ahead, anybody in the world can use it just as well as anybody else if they put in the time to learn how."

"I think only witchcraft is that fair."

"Maybe I should try to learn it, see if it's fair enough to give me a shot."

"Maybe! I dunno where to get you started on that, sorry."

"I'm sure I'll figure something out."

"Good luck. We bothering my aunt and cousin or just dropping you off at school?"

"Bothering your aunt and cousin sounds like fun!"

"Alrighty then. Lemme know if you need a break or decide you want to stop somewhere and buy sunscreen or whatever." And around he wheels.

"Will do!"

Wheeeeeeeee dragon rides.

"I'm not an aerobaticist or anything, but if you get bored and wanna loop..."

"You're the best!! Yes I definitely wanna loop!"

"All right, here goes!"

Loop!

"Wheeee!"

He loops periodically for the duration of the flight, then lands outside a house in a sparse area.

A giggling Anlei hops off and hugs his shiny neck.

A very small bird flits out of a window and turns into a very small human. "Hello Aurin, who's this?"

"Hullo, Mial, this is Anlei, she's from another world and wants to bother wizards." He will continue to have a shiny neck until Anlei is done hugging it.

"Well, she's come to the right place! What do you want to bother wizards about?"

And now she is done hugging it. "I kind of wanna talk comparative magic systems but it'd be awkward to do it at the wizard school I was accidentally kidnapped to with the people who accidentally kidnapped me!"

"I am more than happy to fill in!"

Aurin ceases to have a shiny neck.

Anlei grins. "Cool."

"C'mon in," Mial says cheerfully. "Have you had breakfast? There's soup."

"Quick hotel stuff is all."

"Feel free to supplement that with soup, then!"

"Soup sounds great! Your house is cute."

"Thank you!"

Soup!

Soup!

"So what's your magic like?"

"There's two kinds. The kind everybody knows about, you can only do really small stuff but if you have a lot of time or a lot of people working together or both you can make magic artifacts that'll do things much more impressive than you could've managed directly - way back in the day there were healing fountains and amazing shit like that, nowadays mostly it's, like, lamps."

"And the kind not everybody knows about?"

"It gets a lot more impressive a lot faster than the normal kind, but it really doesn't like to hold still, if you're not paying attention it'll get loose and set something on fire instead of whatever you were trying to do with it."

"Interesting. Sounds inconvenient, unless you need a lot of things set on fire, I suppose."

"I did ask if she meant literally on fire, and she did."

"The fire is super literal! It's kind of a problem! I'm not surprised most people don't use it, it takes a certain type to go 'oh whoops I'm on fire, better try that again to see what I did wrong'."

"Sounds like a perfectly reasonable approach to me," says Mial. "How else are you going to learn? Anyway, I'm curious about the prerequisites - wizardry requires a channeling capacity, witchcraft doesn't seem to require anything, lights and sorcerers are born with their power, mages are born with their power but then need a specific kind of triggering event to activate..."

"You have so many kinds of magic. Normal magic is something anybody can do - anybody from my world, at least, I think you guys would've noticed if you had it here, although with this many magic systems floating around maybe not. There's no, like, different amounts for different people, or only some people being born with it, or anything, it's just there. The other kind's trickier to notice but I don't think it's actually that some people can't do it, just that most people never figure out how to try."

"...I apologize if this is a rude observation but when you talk about this other magic it kind of sounds like you're dancing around a sensitive subject..."

"...yeah. So, the power for normal magic doesn't, like, come from anywhere really, you just kinda have it and you can move it around and use it however you want. The power for the other magic comes from - if you're around somebody who's in pain, you can pick that up kind of the same way you'd pick up your normal-magic power, and it doesn't do anything to the person either way but now you have some power. I kind of expect people to be weirded out by where it comes from, so I was trying not to mention that part, but as you can see I'm not super good at that."

"...that is a pretty weird place to get magic from," he says, but he doesn't look at all upset.

"Huh. Like, the fire thing you could get around, have a fire mage or a dragon do it, but - yeah I brought you to the right place."

"Oh?"

Aurin gestures all-encompassingly at Mial.

"I'm a shren," he says, "which, among other things, means I have an alarmingly high pain tolerance. Also I'm exactly the sort of person you should bring your interestingly exploitable magic systems to. Aurin may have been referring to either or both of these qualities."

"Yes, those."

"Oh, nifty," she says. "I'm not sure I can teach you pain magic but I can at least think of a way I might try to; wanna see if it works?"

"Yes, but perhaps not in my house. In case of fire."

"We can go outside and I can be a fire suppressant. By rolling around on the grass."

"How much fire is involved, it'd be very awkward if I lost a form..."

"If you what? Not that much, anyway, I screwed up plenty when I was learning and the worst I got was 'badly scorched'."

"Oh yes, awkward. Perhaps wizard based fire suppression."

"I am super confused right now," says Anlei.

"He's got a thing and if he exploded it'd be contagious. Not to you, to me."

"Oh."

"I can go light myself on fire at my newspaper-burning spot on the bottom of the world," he says. "Just in case."

"...the... bottom... of the world?"

"We're on the top at the moment. Nobody lives on the bottom."

"...what, um, shape. Is the world."

"Square."

...she seems to be having difficulty articulating her confusion.

"What shape were you expecting?"

"Sphere!"

"That sounds sort of awkward."

"Funny, I'd say the same thing about a square!"

"What's wrong with a square?"

"How does... down... work?"

...he points, slowly, at the floor.

"That much I can figure out without asking!"

"There's down magic. It makes things fall down. It points towards - I think it's 'sufficiently large flat surfaces', but I don't remember for sure, and I forget the exact numbers on size of surface and range of effect - the world has a flat top and flat sides and a flat bottom, so all of those surfaces have down. But only the top of the world also has nice things like plants and weather."

"...I've never actually checked, but I at least heard that my world is just a really really big ball, so big that if you stand on it you can't tell it's not flat, and down just goes toward the middle."

"I suppose there's'n elegance to that," says Aurin dubiously.

"It seems way tidier than a square - what happens at the corners? - but that could just be because it's what I'm used to."

"What do you mean, what happens at the corners? Or do you mean edges too, corners aren't different really."

"Corners. Edges. That thing where you are not on a big flat surface anymore."

"Oh, there's no down without a flat bit under you, people who try to walk over an edge tend to get dizzy and throw up."

"If that sounds fun, Paraasilan's not far from an edge."

...she giggles. "It kinda does!"

"And if you want to kick off from the edge and float a bit I can retrieve you."

She beams at him. "Best dragon."

And with a vague wave at Mial, "You can be second-best."

...he giggles.

"He's not a dragon."

"I'm never gonna keep all these species straight."

"Oh, are there fewer where you're from?"

"There's one! And none of us turn into things! Aurin claimed turning into things was a pretty small niche but there keep being more of you!"

"Sorry, it's just like, the dragon section of the list of species, and vampires."

"Okay, I believe you."

"I'm not a dragon, I'm just dragonish. Anyway, want to see the bottom of the world? It's very boring there, perfect for playing with fire."

"Sure!"

"I'll hang out here and cadge some candy out of Finnah, shall I."

"Enjoy! And I will have fun catching fire."

He gets up and offers his hand to Anlei - "teleport spell needs physical contact."

She giggles. Off they go!

Aurin locates Finnah and acquires raspberry buttercreams.

And meanwhile on the bottom of the world:

"Okay, so when you say you have a high pain tolerance—"

"It would astonish me if you were capable of inflicting an amount of pain that mattered. Shren kids have to go to a light - d'you know about those, they're the healers - every few weeks to heal all our forms in case we picked up a serious injury and didn't notice."

"'kay," she says, shrugging. "I can heal too, so don't freak out—" and she reaches over and breaks his arm.

He waits a beat and then says, "Ouch," very deadpan.

She giggles. "Well, you're gonna make a really good pain mage if this works. So, I have no idea how to actually teach you to hold power, but I did pretty well at it just kind of trying it a bunch of times until I figured it out—I'm gonna try throwing you some, because I also have no idea how to explain how to pick it up—"

"Sure."

"Okay, catch," and then there's something there, something that sparks and fizzes and jumps, demanding to get out to get free to get active—

Mial feels a sense of kinship with it. He keeps hold of it for a tick or two and then it escapes his grip and there's a bright flash of fire.

"Nice," says Anlei. "So you can hold it—okay, now try doing something with the next batch, if you hold onto it and want to do a thing you can kind of get a feel for how—catch," and there's another bundle of power, invisible and intangible to all the ordinary senses, struggling to escape his mental grip.

He hangs onto it—it's almost like dancing, or like scoot racing, an active lively process of balancing forces—and thinks, all right, start small, what about silver fire like he could theoretically make all by himself... and he can feel it, just like she said, a kind of guide, like a phantom image he could trace on paper, or a faint echo to sing along with... he follows the hint, shaping the power, and directs a spiral of silver flame off to the side away from Anlei.

"You're picking this up fast," she says. "Okay, now you know what holding it is like, see if you can pick it up by yourself?"

He peers at his broken arm and thinks about the feeling of power. It takes him a few ticks to get a handle on it, but then there it is, right from the source, leaping into his figurative hands and immediately attempting to leap out again. He laughs and turns it into billowing clouds of mist.

"Wow," says Anlei. "It took me ages to get that good, what the hell's your secret?"

"I empathize with it," he says, half-joking. "The dragonish aging rate is one-tenth the human one, I spent a very long time as a child wishing I could do more than was available - eventually snuck into a scoot racing league despite being well below their minimum equivalency."

"Well, you and pain magic can be best friends then."

"I'm probably still going to want to do all my pain magic on the bottom of the world for the forseeable future," he says, pulling power again and making a simple pyramid structure rise from the dirt, "just in case I—" and a blast of flame scorches the edges of the miniature ziggurat "—get distracted. But wow. What-all can you do with this stuff?"

"Healing, like I said - let me know when you want your arm fixed - and conjuration, I built my house with it..."

He immediately attempts to build a house. The helpful hinting feeling informs him that he's going to need a lot more power for a project that big. He forms the dirt into the shape of foundations, then desists.

"What about magic stuff," he says, "you said the other kind of magic could do artifacts—?"

"Can you think of a way to get this stuff to sit still that long? 'Cause I sure can't."

He frowns thoughtfully. "It shouldn't be impossible... let me see..."

It's harder to get the hint to show up, this time. Apparently it has standards for how well-specified his plans must be before it'll help him achieve them. But he's done a little wizarding spell invention before; he knows how to come up with solid specifications for something. He attempts to invent a pain-magic spell to make a simple waterspout.

It takes him two degrees and rather a lot of accidentally letting go of the power and getting scorched by the resulting blast. But: "Ha," he says, "got it - proof of concept, anyway - you're not getting bored, are you?"

"Watching you pace around and make faces is actually kind of fascinating," she says, "but if it takes you ten more minutes to finish whatever you're trying to do, I'm gonna get antsy."

"Shouldn't be too long. All I want to do is—" and he pulls power again, and keeps pulling, concentrating on his desired end result. Conjure this shape and attach this complicated fiddly twist of magic and - wait what was that - the waterspout drops into his hand, and he uncaps it and turns it over and watches water pour out and then caps it again and hands it to her.

"Whoa," she says, studying the little widget, like a bottle that's just half an inch of neck with a cap on the end. "Artifact. How the fuck?"

"I think it's all the practice I have with wizardry," he says, "you really get good at precisely imagining the thing you want. But I'm going to do it again, because something weird went by in the hint-thing while I was building it."

Another waterspout, and this time he pays much closer attention to the interplay between the specification he envisions, the hint-guide's suggestions for how to accomplish it, and the subtler, more elusive layer of hinting that shows him what the end result is actually going to be like. And there it is again: a flaw, an instability, an imbalance in the neatly pinned loop of power that performs the waterspout's function.

"Well that's unfortunate," he concludes. "Apparently I haven't quite solved artificing with pain magic - it looks good for now," he pours a little water out of the second spout, "but the magic's all wobbly, it's going to go haywire eventually." He tosses the second waterspout at the pyramid. It bounces off.

"Has anyone ever told you you're a crazy perfectionist?"

"It's a surprisingly uncommon complaint! Can you teach me how healing with pain magic works? What do you aim for?"

She giggles. She attempts to explain. She manages it well enough that he successfully heals his arm.

"It's fascinating how much - conscious manipulation of forces - is involved in this magic," he comments. "With wizardry you mostly just specify the result and let the power take care of itself. I think I might prefer this method. It feels more like I'm really doing something, you know?"

"Think so. Hey, d'you know anybody who might want to teach me witchcraft?"

"Not off the top of my head, but I could probably help you find someone. Will you get bored if I spend another angle here trying to make a stable waterspout?"

"Yeah probably. But like being on the bottom of the world by yourself playing with fire doesn't sound like the best plan ever."

"If I wreck this form too badly I can always take another one - that's what 'losing a form' is, if we're injured to the point of death while in a form other than our natural one we revert to natural and we're fine - and my natural form's fireproof."

"What is your natural form even?"

He shifts.

"...so you're a dragon."

"I'm a shren," he corrects.

"How, uh, do I tell the difference?"

"You're really unlikely to ever see a shren in natural form, because a shren in natural form being near a dragon in natural form is how the condition transmits. And my wings don't work." He flops them demonstratively.

"...and that's enough to make you a whole different species?"

"Sort of. It's complicated. Dragonishes speak a magic language called Draconic that has words for every possible thing with every possible shade of meaning that a person could want to say, except that it's really insistent on shrens not being dragons and not even being categorizable as the same sort of thing as dragons in any meaningful sense."

"...your magic language is broken."

"That's certainly the sort of opinion that someone who didn't speak Draconic would tend to have, yes. And it's one I agree with but damn few other people do." He shifts back. "Anyway. I think I'm safe to play with fire down here for a while longer as long as I'm not a complete idiot about it. I can teleport you to my living room and then come back."

"Sure, sounds good. Enjoy your self-injury."

"I will!" he says, giggling, and he takes her hand and brings her home.

"How'd it go?"

"Turns out Mial is scary good at pain magic!"

"I don't think it's that scary." He reclaims his defective waterspout. "I'd better take this with me when I go back, wouldn't want to leave it lying around."

"It's way scary," she says approvingly. "When you're ruling the world from your mountain lair, remember I told you so."

"You the mountain lair type, Mial?"

"I might like a nice mountain to climb around on. I would not describe it as a lair. Nor am I particularly interested in ruling the world."

"You do have those climby forms."

"I like climbing!"

"I assume that's why the climby forms."

"No, I just picked them out of a hat, the weeks and weeks of careful research were all a lie."

"Weeks and weeks of careful research?"

"I only get ten assumed forms total! Most dragonishes only get five! Of course I was going to do weeks and weeks of careful research, otherwise I might not end up with the best possible ones!"

Snort. "All I've got is this and the eagle."

"I'd suggest learning how to use pain magic to turn into things, but I dunno if you'd explode, I've never tried."

"I will do my very best not to explode!"

"If you exploded too much you might actually die."

"Having played with the stuff a bit, I'm confident I can stick to amounts where I'm not even in danger of losing a form until I'm much better at it and won't accidentally blow myself up. But I'm still going to do it on the bottom of the world because the fire does kind of get everywhere."

"Sensible."

"Sensible: a thing I occasionally am!"

"Occasionally."

Anlei giggles.

And Aurin can fly Aneli back to Paraasilan. And detour to the edge of the world.

Aurin is the best dragon!! The edge of the world is lots of fun.

It is! Especially if you are nausea-tolerant! If she wishes to float he will fetch her back when she's done.

She does wish to float! Wheeeeeee!

Whee!

So much fun!!!

Eventually she is done floating and can be returned home.

Back to school with her. Kiss goodbye?

Definitely!

"We should hang out again, will you be around much longer?"

"I live across the ocean but I visit Mial pretty often and he can teleport... D'you know how to send letters?"

"Nope! How do I send letters?"

"You write people's names on the outside of envelopes and drop 'em out the window. It can be fiddly if there's lots of people with the same name, but it works like turning on the lights, it figures out what you want." He finds a bit of paper in his pocket and writes his name for her; two complicated nests of lines.

"...it might take me a few tries to figure out how to write your name!"

"I think if you cross it out and try again that's okay and you don't need a new envelope."

"I'm sure I'll figure it out. —what would you need to send letters back?"

"I'd write your name. I guess maybe the school hasn't registered you with the postal system? They might have forgot since you're not a student."

"Well, guess we'll find out if it works. You wouldn't need to write, like, my full name, or anything?"

"Using your alphabet should narrow it down, considering - my full name is way longer than that - but it wouldn't hurt."

"Anleisin Ruzino - d'you need me to spell that or something, I have no idea how all this translation stuff works."

He guesses at a spelling.

"Yep!"

"I'm not using your translation spell, it doesn't work with dragons, we just speak all languages," he clarifies.

"I think that still comes under 'all this translation stuff', cause it's clearly magic and I have no idea how it works!"

"Yeah but random humans won't be able to spell your name is my point."

"'kay."

Smooch. "Have a good day!"

Smooch! "You too!"

And away flies shiny gold dragon.

And Anlei traipses up to her room. What a great world this is. She's so pleased.

Meanwhile, Mial starts spending rather a lot of time on the bottom of the world.

He accumulates a pile of wobbly waterspouts. They all outwardly seem to work just fine, but when he examines them with the elusive senses granted to him by his capacity for pain magic he can sense their flaws.

(He invents a wizardry analysis that detects the capacity for pain magic, and thereby verifies that it is an actual magical attribute he has and not just a matter of learning how to think a certain way or something.)

By experimentation he manages to come up with a much wobblier waterspout, which takes only a couple of degrees for its magic to start going haywire; the next time he opens it and turns it upside-down, flames shoot out. He tosses it on the pile and starts over. Ten more tries, twenty, thirty, fifty... he loses count around sixty-eight, and approximately a few dozen waterspouts later, he finally produces one without the flaw.

He eyes it, and eyes the heap of failures nearly as tall as his human form. "I hope I'm not going to need that many tries for every single spell."

So of course the next thing he tries to build is a scoot.

Several large explosions later, he has a scoot so unstable that it immediately starts ascending and refuses to stop. He sighs and tries again, this time aiming for a fully functional model scoot so that when they start to pile up he won't end up with an entire mountain of them.

It takes him a few more days, but the pile of rejects is at most a small hill when he finally manages to produce a model scoot without the troubling flaw in its structure.

...it occurs to him that he has just made a thing that flies.

He starts spending a lot more time on the bottom of the world.

He needs to be absolutely flawless at spellcrafting. And he'll probably need a source of power more reliable than self-injury, and easier to scale. Sure, he can hurt a lot of adult shrens for this, and while there are still babies in pain he can hang around the babies, but that's still ultimately not enough for projects of the scope he has in mind. Oh, and he should definitely figure out how to become immortal. Really truly completely no-takebacks immortal. He can't afford to die, not when he could be using this power to do good in the world. And if he gets really famous he will probably come to the attention of the unique green-group and he does not want to take the chance that she'll decide there ought not to be a shren with ultimate cosmic power.

(He could cure shrens. Probably. Maybe. He's sure not going to breathe a word of the possibility to anyone until he's got the theory worked out and is ready to test it. He's much surer that he could help the babies somehow.)

Okay, first things first...

He throws himself into the pursuit of magic. He stops signing up for scoot races. He eats conjured food and returns home only to sleep.

It takes almost a month for him to learn how to store power, and in the end the breakthrough is that he doesn't store the power; he builds it into an active self-reinforcing structure that eats everything he feeds it and turns it all into more magic. This is better for his purposes than power storage anyway. He builds it thirty-six times, each time detecting a flaw and dismantling the power structure and starting over again; several of those end up as blasts of flame scorching the dirt, but he's still working at a small enough scale that he never gets worryingly close to losing a form over it.

Once he's got that, he starts on immortality. This is going to be a little trickier, and he'll have more trouble undoing it since most of the point is that it should be impossible to undo. After some time spent contemplating the nonexistent overlap between 'people he would like to make very very immortal' and 'people he is willing to risk killing if he messes something up badly enough', he asks his mother for advice, and she volunteers as a test subject. He has a design sketched out in another few days, and spends most of the next month carefully refining it and constructing all the parts that aren't the final irrevocable emphasis. In between those, he visits the shren houses and hangs around outside them, picking up pain and stuffing it into his power amplifier. He isn't good enough yet to save the babies without risking blasting them to ash, so he doesn't go in to introduce himself. He also dismantles all the scoots and waterspouts and feeds the power from those into the amplifier, just to be tidy.

He is no longer working at a small enough scale to be sure he won't lose a form if he messes up. He takes a new form - elf, like his mother. Now at least if he loses his working form he won't have to reintroduce himself to everyone he knows. (He could work under a ward, but putting it on and taking it off every time he wanted to hurt himself for magical purposes would slow him down.)

In elf form, he finishes making his mother immortal, every piece of the spell except for the last. He paces around the bottom of the world and builds houses, mansions, palaces, cities, getting used to the rush of handling vast amounts of power. It's like flying thirty scoot races at once. It's terrifying and glorious and incredible.

He slips, once, and only barely manages to save the form afterward; the damage is so extensive that it's actually a little unpleasant. He immediately builds ten more cities, each bigger and more elaborate than the last, with indoor lighting and grassy parks and rudimentary wards and clever automatic food conjuration, practicing practicing practicing until he is sure.

Eventually, he is sure.

He brings his mother to the bottom of the world, and pulls a massive amount of power, and forms the intricate structure that will tie all the other parts of the spell together and make them self-renewing and self-reinforcing and self-correcting, resilient against hostile action, impossible to bend or break or recycle into raw power even if he tried. It takes him a continuous day and a half to build and comes out flawless on the first try. He gets a night's sleep, teaches her the basics of handling power, and then starts putting the pieces together for himself. It's a little harder, because he wants it to save him from form loss where possible; he also needs it to guard him against dragonish old age when he doesn't even know how that works, but in the end that's really just a subset of the problem 'guard him against literally anything that could possibly kill him even if he's never heard of it and has no way of studying it in advance', and that one he's confident he solved for his mother already.

Four months after he met Anlei, he becomes immortal.

Now he's ready to save the babies.

On the scale of the forces he's been playing with lately, constructing a spell to miracle a shren is almost trivial, easy enough that it's not even worth separately making the babies able to fly first. It still involves holding onto an amount of power that could obliterate an entire shren house and a significant chunk of the surrounding area if he let it loose, so he does them one at a time on the bottom of the world, starting with Finnah as proof of concept and because she's family. The shren houses want him to miracle the caretakers before the kids; he doesn't argue. It takes him three days and a call to the dragon council, but he miracles every single shren at every single registered location, and all the ones that any other dragonish knows how to find.

Except himself.

At first it's just because he's too busy to get around to it, but then he finishes all the rest and... well, really, what would be the point? Giving girls dragon rides? He's not Aurin. And he's hardly about to stop being a shren purely for its own sake. That would be tantamount to letting Draconic win.

He does make his shrenhood non-contagious. He's not cruel. And he doesn't exactly enjoy the way Draconic thinks of him, so he toys with the idea of building an alternative, but it turns out to be complex enough that other miracles take priority. He condenses the less aggressive parts of his immortality spell down into a simple, quick, manageable structure for making people effectively immune to illness, injury, and biological forms of old age; and then he advertises this service to the dragon council, because at half a degree per casting he's not going to cover the whole world by himself but he can at least do the loved ones of dragons while he works on a more broadly applicable solution.

Advertising it to the dragon council involves his father calling his grandfather for the first time since he was a baby. Piro answers, clearly expecting news about his grandson's miraculous return to dragonhood; instead, Mial cheerfully explains what he's actually up to, then adds that if anybody wants to immortalize their non-dragonish friends and relatives but doesn't want to have to interact with a shren to do it, he's happy to direct them to his mother for communication purposes and only show up for the actual spellcasting.

There is a long silence from the communication crystal.

Then Piro says, "...why?"

"Because Draconic doesn't get to tell me how to live my life."

"Don't be childish—"

"You haven't acknowledged my existence since I was less than a month old and you're telling me not to be childish? Ialsafei siaddaki, Grandfather," he says, using a Draconic genealogical term that is entirely neutral on the subject of familial bonds, and he deactivates the crystal and hands it to his father and teleports to the bottom of the world to work on scalable immortality.