"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..."

"I can use a local phrasebook as template. And I think I can probably enlist the help of a—I'm not sure if this will work in your language—a tinker to give you some sort of interface that will translate things for you."

"Cool. If there's an emergency I'll be able to understand anyone who gets in my range, but that doesn't let me communicate back, alas."

"The interface might give you something to translate what you're saying, too? I'm not sure. I'd have to work with them, since I'm currently the only person alive who knows English and Welchin"—he sounds inordinately pleased about that—"but they can probably figure something out, yeah.—also yeah you said you could read minds, I can understand you better now, how does that go, exactly?"

"If someone gets within five feet of me and we aren't very well insulated from each other, I can't help but detect their surface thoughts. At home my - my twin brother usually follows me around if I'm going out in public, because I trip and fall a lot and that could bring me in range even if I were making sure I had a wide berth, and he keeps people well back and catches me if I stumble. I have been asked to do other mind things before, and I super don't know what I'm doing with them and I'm very timid about it but I've done it for people with really intractable problems that they wanted to risk me solving and so far I haven't detectably screwed anyone up in the head trying to cure their gambling addiction so they don't ruin their family's finances for the second time, or what have you."

"—that last thing would be useful. But scary."

"Yup! So I like to be really scrupulous about informed consent there."

"What are the limits to that? Can you detect—you won't have them." He grabs his phone and slides it over to her. "Does this count as a mind?"

"No. Or a very well insulated one, I guess."

"Right, the insulation. Maybe we can find an exposed computer. Anyway, what other limits are there?"

"To the mind stuff? Just the range and my timidity, that I know of, I don't play with it."