The human looks at her and meets her eyes before attempting a psychic scan. She frowns slightly. "I've never been here before in my life. I've never encountered magic like it before either."

The psionic read is rebuffed for a moment. The bird/dragon thing blinks and then allows contact.

You are a psion. Convenient. The mushy sounds of English are difficult without a tongue. 

Wariness, but confidence, is there. She has at least three weapons. She has no hostile intent. 

I do not think this place is dangerous. If someone wished to kill you or I a spatial anomaly like this is not the most efficient way to do so.

Usually people don't notice me. That's different.

These thoughts are accompanied with interest, excitement, and a note of confusion.

I don't expect anyone has reason to kill me. What species are you? I've never seen someone like you before?

I am of the [Travellers/Wanderers/Morrigi] If you have not heard of us you must be from a community of humans not connected with the ones I know. You seem like the humans I know, though I have never met a human psion. They are rare.

You've met humans before? I don't think anyone on my planet has met aliens, there are tales of such things but they don't tend to have evidence to back them up. I don't think any such story has described aliens who look like yourself either.

Here is an impression of the Humanity she knows.

SolForce marines in power armor fighting by her side, or against her. Spaceships with blocky construction, gigantic ring engines and long, thin forward sections. The United Nations of Earth building military outposts everywhere for 'national security'. Racial pride for 'blood simple monkeys' clawing their way up to a method of FTL that the other species do not really understand. Rowdy bars with pungent alcohol smell and a black market dealer, a human with cybernetics, across from her at an undersized table.

Of course, there seems to be something more complicated going on here. I suspect I am not on Karvaaia anymore.

My door to this place was on Earth, and probably pretty far in the past from your perspective 2005 if your humans are still using the same calendar. We don't have spaceships like that. We barely have spaceships at all.

Temporal anomaly?

The Hivers supposedly experimented with Time. And so did the- No. She shies away from that thought hard enough to break the mental link.

She shakes her head. "I will determine if I can return home when I wish to."

She goes and opens the door. Her base station reconnects immediately - and she breathes in the spices on the market street as other Morrigi wander by.

She leaves a quick message and closes it again. "Whatever this is, it may be a unique opportunity."

"It might at that, the door to the science building usually doesn't lead here."

"While I am highly skilled and very intelligent, my abilities are not ideal for contact with a technologically primitive civilization. You will not find a mercenary nearly so useful as an engineer."

"Maybe not, but you know much more about your technology than anyone where I come from. Are you sure you want to take the risk though? If my door starts leading to the science building again there's no guarantee you'll ever get home."

"I'm not egg-crazy like my clan-sisters. Nor favored by my clan. I must fulfill my desires with other things. It would be... Tolerable. Even if the spirits of my ancestors would shun me, exploring the Earth would be worth it. That is not necessarily the tradeoff, however. I would be willing to explain the science that I know and give you a pocket-library in exchange for some sort of rare human cultural artifact that would be prized back home."

"I'm not sure what sort of rare cultural artifact you mean."

"Treasures. Golden and silver things. Prized handmade art. Historical objects like an old Khan's sword. That sort of thing. We Morrigi like treasures a great deal."

"I really don't own anything like that. I'm pretty poor."

"Perhaps something mundane that I could convincingly create a story for, then? Oh well. I may wish to migrate to your world after all. I am sure there are many clan-leaders who would like to purchase textbooks from the future, or close enough to it."

"I'm sure there are. You would cause quite the commotion on campus."

She tilts her head. And re-establishes the link.

Kaiva is greedy and adventurous and self-interested and confident/vain. She recognizes this about herself. She is the very embodiment of the- (a twinge of pain) -male ideal for Morrigi, morally speaking.

However, I have no hostile designs on your planet. I sincerely think that if you opened your door and I followed through, neither of us would regret it.

I believe you. If that's what you want to do we can do that. I'd rather you not tell people I'm a psion. I don't know what people might do if they found out, so I avoid telling people I don't know very well.

There is a thrill as Kaiva learns she knows one of Sapphire's secrets. I will not tell them. Except for some very compelling reason to. Trustworthiness is a resource. Regarding going through to Earth, Perhaps. Though we have not exhausted our conversation. We should, perhaps, explore this place anyway instead of just talking.

She reaches into her backpack and pulls out a small - drone? - which floats in midair above her, spinning around. She also puts on a visor of some kind.

That's strange, usually I lose contact with people when they look away.

I am a psion as well. Perhaps- She deliberately drops the link. She tries to re-establish without eye contact. "...I am closer than I expected to performing mind-link, myself." Clicking noise that might be laughter. "It appears I was sustaining one even when you stopped." Eye contact again.

I wonder why our magics work differently. Do you know if human psions in your time work like you?

Humanity does not have psions, their government would have you believe. Everyone with a military background knows otherwise. Though not much is specifically known. The Black Swimmers- Dolphin aliens -Use psionics differently than the Morrigi, however.

One more reason not to let the government know I have powers. Can your powers do subjective time dilation, perfect memory, or dreamworlds?

...Those particularly skilled in the school of Mainfestation could, perhaps, enter dream-worlds. Subjective time dialation would be under Redaction, I believe?

I don't physically enter dreamworlds. I can just play in them while paying less attention to the outside world, and once or twice I've shared them.

That is not how Kaiva's psionics work. At all.

I wish to experience this, if you do not mind the effort.

Sure, I'll try to leave you able to split your attention but if it doesn't work just let me know and I'll stop.

In what might be a slightly dizzying transition, Kaiva is on a platform in a forest in addition to the strange bar. There's birds chirping in the background and an astonishing variety of flowers blooming in the trees around them. The air is warm and slightly humid.

This is exceedingly strange. It certainly feels like a powerful foreign psion's doing.

She spreads her wings and stretches out, intending to do so only in the mindscape but mirroring the motion in reality.

Interesting. Your forest has trees smaller than the ones I know.

It took me a lot of practice before I could move in the dreamworld without moving outside. Trees on Earth vary in size, some of them get pretty big.

Some of the trees vanish and in their place a giant redwood tree a full eight meters in diameter and eighty-five meters tall appears.

Is that more like the size you're used to?

Yes, these are excellent. Just like home.

She remembers glittering cities. Not built into the treetops, exactly, but certainly through and around them. Great towers that splay out at the top like the boughs of a Mother-Tree.

This sort of thing could perhaps be used for interrogation... Ah, but can Kaiva allow herself to simply enjoy for a moment?

It really is a fascinating ability.

If you want I can take a memory like that and display it this way, it's hard to do people inside this but locations are something I'm good at.

Not the temples. But... The spaceport at Cyfexi. More art installation than industrial area, though it served plenty well as the latter. Surrounded by the finest parks and the most swoopy and sleek, gaudiest architecture the Morrigi can produce, to impress visiting males.

The scene transforms, leaving them on a landing pad in the spaceport.

Like that?

Apart from the lack of traffic, it is very well reproduced. Again, impressive.

It's very pretty. I could maybe do the traffic but not while maintaining your awareness in the bar and you couldn't talk to anyone. I can't imagine up characters in real time like that.

You do not know enough about my people yet in any case. I am an outlier. This comes with a note of wry amusement/defiance/resignedment.

I've gotten that sense from some of the feelings you've had. Your society seems very segregated along gender lines. This comes with feelings of wistfulness, distaste and sadness. I grew up somewhere like that. It wasn't a good fit for me either. There's a bit of pain and also determination.

Our gender segregation is backed by ten thousand years of self-selective evolution. Females build nests, inhabit planets. Males fly the winds, and live on ships. Females are better at withstanding gravity, larger, slower to react, better at planning. As a Harpy, a female warrior, I am not very accepted by either side. Is your society so extreme?

The society I grew up in no longer exists. I destroyed it, indirectly, by telling the society I live in now about it. There's a sense of resolve, of a decision made long ago that time has affirmed. They found its practices distasteful, for good reason. The society I live in now is biased in favor of women having some jobs and men others but there are virtually no fields which are the exclusive domain of one or the other.

But there are not measurable, physical differences like we have? For example, I would easily outweigh any three average males?

There are, our military is largely staffed by men and men similarly predominate many other fields requiring brute strength. Women possess greater dexterity on average but for whatever reason there aren't many occupations which take advantage of this in a way that leads to women predominating. Women tend to predominate in many possessions associated with raising children and other caring or emotional fields, there's much debate about whether this is due to cultural biases or innate differences.

Gender matters quite a bit for all the species I know except the [dolphins].

I wonder why that is. It seems like it should become less relevant with better technology.

Undoing millennia of evolution is neither easy nor a particularly high priority for us.

What evolution do you think you'd need to undo? You exist, clearly there are females of your species that want to do the sorts of things males typically do and my impression is that you're capable.

I will almost certainly never have children.

That's... Not quite regret. Regret with a side of defiance?

There's sympathy. I'm sorry your society forces you to choose between your dreams and the chance to be a mother.

A note of confusion and regret. In my current society women who wish to have a child but lack a mate can do so with the aid of certain medical interventions. It's unfortunate that your society doesn't offer the same.

...Ancestors guard me, such a practice would shred our society to its roots. Children without a landing ceremony. How would they grow up without a proper set of ancestor spirits guarding them? Why would any wanderer fleets take the male children if they were not of their own flesh?

Apology and regret. I'm sorry for upsetting you.

I am already an abberation. A harpy. I have some hope my ancestors still watch over me despite this shameful work. We live in troubled times, there is precedent. But to break with tradition in a way that lasts is so much worse.

There's a feeling of conflict and pain. Not all traditions are good ones. I won't judge your people's though.

Kaiva gets stubborn. Indignant. Still slightly anxious.

The most venerated Mother Temples on my home planet are over forty thousand years old. They have survived countless wars and calamities that threatened the entire galaxy. The Morrigi have endured all of it because of our tradition and our ancestors' guidance. It is not my or your place to question them too much.

I don't intend to, tradition is a useful stabilizing force, a way of passing down wisdom. I only rejected those I was raised with after living for a time in a better more functional society. Even now I think there is some wisdom in those teachings, just not as much as my mother believed.

I don't know anything about your traditions. It could be that you are right to reject them, if they have not served your people well for dozens of millenia. Though it would seem that traditions have had a slightly similar effect on both of us.

So, staircase or one of the doors?

There are doors on either side of the staircase and another door opposite the one they came in through.

Doors. Perhaps we can use my squawker drone as a mapping tool.

Alright. Lacking a more specific direction she walks towards the door opposite the one they came in through.

As she passes the bar a Napkin appears. Written on it in small cursive script is the message: "Welcome to Milliways. I'm sure you have questions, but first, would you like something to drink? First one is on the house."

Sapphire conveys this to Kaiva. Then she hesitantly speaks aloud. "Hello. Can you hear me like this?"