Calling a prime to deal with a wandering monster is appropriate enough. She killed a bear that was menacing people, once.
The snake thing is just faster than she expects and before she's resolved to kill it it's on her.
Calling a prime to deal with a wandering monster is appropriate enough. She killed a bear that was menacing people, once.
The snake thing is just faster than she expects and before she's resolved to kill it it's on her.
"You appear out of nowhere not speaking language with powers. We are the people who take care of people with powers."
"Take care of? Why do people with powers need taking care of? I assume most of you speak the language."
"I guess that makes sense, although I don't know what vocabulary to supply you with to answer my question; if I did I'd be halfway to knowing the answer. Incidentally, is there a place for me to stay here? When I get tired?"
"I don't get just vocabulary you say. My power lets me—guess—other words. And yes, there are rooms."
"I don't think I understand the suggestion. Uh, let's see, what have I noticed - weirdly tall buildings, people with rectangles..."
"You can ask questions about here and then I will get more vocabulary to ask you questions, is what I mean."
"Yes, so what are the rectangles and why are all the buildings so tall? Do you use your - not magic - to do that?"
"—the buildings are tall due to technology, not magic, so that people can live more densely, but I'm not sure what rectangles you mean."
"People were - pointing them at me?" She makes a rectangle of about the right size in fire, holds it up illustratively.
"—oh! That's a—I don't have vocabulary for that, maybe you haven't invented it—it can record images and people can use it to talk to each other over very very long distances and they can look information up in it—"
"Technology. I don't know in detail how it works but it uses electricity and very small bits of metal and the—" He waves around his head vaguely. "Electricity in the air? To store and transmit information."
"Huh. I wonder if Patience could figure one out. - she's a prime like me, I'm the sweela prime, fire and mind, she's the torz prime, earth and flesh. There's some extent to which earth includes metal, I only have her predecessor's information to go on about that and her powers might be different, she hasn't had them long."
"We're members of five noble families in Welce who inherit the family-appropriate magic when our predecessors die. My great-aunt died and the primacy fell to me when I was eight."
"Everyone in Welce has very minor divinatory magic. I've never heard of people in other countries having any. Very seldom a future prime will manifest a little power early but usually not."
"We think it has to do with using that divinatory magic on someone when they're born; people who leave but have had that done can still use it."
"I guess not? It's customary to do it at a chapel and they don't have those abroad, it'd probably work with paper cutouts but maybe they don't bother. Or maybe there are plenty of small populations of the descendants of expats on whom it works fine, I wouldn't necessarily know about them."