"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—"

"...how does it do all that?"

"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."

"What exactly is a 'prime'?"

"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."

"There are only five people with magic?"

"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."

"—only people in your specific kingdom, really?"

"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."

"Do people who leave not do that on their own children?"

"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."

He nods. "Do you have any more questions? I think I'm almost getting everything I need."

"Can you try again explaining what this place is for?"

"Right! So, people with power exist everywhere, even if we're not super numerous. Some of them decide to—commit crimes and do various bad things that the government doesn't permit, and since their powers make them harder to fight if you're a normal person there are some others of them who fight the ones that do bad things. This is a building owned by the latter group."

"Huh, okay. Was I doing something illegal on the beach?"

"Not exactly, but you were an unknown person with powers with a ring of fire around you, people were alarmed and when alarming things involving powers happen the PRT and the Protectorate—respectively the people without and the people with powers who work here—are the ones you call."

"I guess that makes sense."

"And we have ways to deal with people in all kinds of situations. It's actually not too uncommon for someone with powers to appear somewhere with absolutely no memory of their previous life, and often having sometimes quite dramatic physical changes along with their powers, and we have the structure to accommodate them while they find their feet."

"Oh. Well, I guess I can make use of similar institutions even if I remember where I came from fine."

"Exactly! And we'll try to help you acclimatize and see if we can figure out a way to get you back to your universe. We'll have to figure out some translation solution for you, though."

"Yes, I suppose you can't just follow me around everywhere, I'm sure you're busy. I could write myself a phrasebook if you helped me, for basics, but I don't know what to expect to be basic..."