And then she's somewhere else altogether.

It's—probably a road, there are vehicles unlike anything she's seen and they're quite definitely being driven by people. She's not in the middle of the actual street, though; she's off to one side, on a walk made of wood where there are lots of people walking around, up and down and about. The walk is slightly raised over a beach, and there are small buildings on it showcasing a variety of things that are presumably for sale—clothes, paintings, food, handcrafted this and thats, contraptions unlike anything she's ever laid eyes on before. Across the road from her there are more buildings, most of them stone, most of them very tall—some over two dozen stories tall, if the windows are anything to go by—and she can see even more of those stretching out into the distance.

She might have fallen over even if not for the people. As it is she pitches over the boardwalk onto the beach trying to get out of range.

There are people on the beach also but definitely less, and with the way she's moving they're definitely giving her an over-five-feet wide berth by the time she lands on the sand.

Okay, with nobody in range she can work on calming down.

Aaaaaaaaa.

Someone's walking towards her coming from where there are a few people sunning themselves nearer the beach, saying something in an unfamiliar language. His body language and tone seem friendly, at least.

- she has no way to communicate with these people. She makes a circle of fire, five feet in radius, around herself.

Well that stops him. He says something again in that same language, raising both hands in a placating gesture. More people are paying attention, now, and some of them have small rectangles they're pointing in her direction or bringing up to the side of their faces.

She does her best to look calm and nonthreatening and doesn't add any more fire. She says, "I don't speak this language."

The man pauses and tries to say something in what's probably a different language. The way he's clipped about it suggests he may not be completely fluent.

"I only speak Welchin and Soechin. I'd recognize Malinquan or Berringese or some others but that wasn't them."

The man definitely doesn't understand a word of it. He raises one finger then looks over his shoulder and calls something to a woman sitting up on a towel. The woman raises a rectangle to her face too and starts speaking into it.

She has no idea what the rectangles are for but it would be a bad idea to invade people's privacy without informed consent to find out. She waits.

People mill around. Some more point rectangles at her, and some of the rectangles emit short-duration flashes of light when they do.

Weird.

Eventually she gets up and takes a step, fire circle moving with her, to see if people clear the way to let her wander.

They do, and also get a little bit freaked out by it and look much warier. Some of the people who were enjoying the beach start packing up in a hurry.

That's awkward. She opens her mouth, remembers they won't understand her, sighs, sits back down.

When it becomes obvious she won't take more steps people calm down, and after a couple more minutes start steadily losing interest in her.

She tries to guess the time of day by the sun.

It's not too high in the sky but its movement suggests it doesn't get that high. Probably around 2PM ish?

Well, she doesn't really want to sit here getting hungrier till people go home for the night, but she'll take at least a couple hours to get bored enough to terrorize people.

It doesn't take that long for something to happen. It doesn't actually even take ten minutes: a vehicle sort of like the other ones regularly passing by the street but bulkier arrives, and a couple of people in full-body armor of a very weird kind walk out of it. A one-person vehicle—large and blue, with two wheels, but way quieter than all the other vehicles—comes with that one, a man in blue metal armor with a halberd attached to his back riding it. He parks and dismounts and makes his way to her.

...okay.

"Hello."

He says something that might be a greeting, then gestures at her fire and makes inquisitive noises.

She'll turn it off then on again.

He asks a question. The man from before, who stuck around, tells him something, then he looks at the her again and scratches his visible chin.

"I still don't speak this language."

He raises his wrist to the level of his eyes, is quiet for a second, then nods, as if confirming something. He asks another question but that one's accompanied by beckoning gestures.

She gets up again.

He asks another question, pointing at the fire then gesturing around him and making as if to indicate a shrinking circle.

She shrinks it illustratively, then puts it back.

He points at the vehicle that came before him (the two fully-armored people are there, in positions that suggest they are ready to attack if they need to) then makes the shrinking gesture again while pointing at the back of it, where there are two open doors showing an empty interior that is very much not large enough to contain a five-foot-radius sphere.

She'd wind up near the armored people. Ugh. She can't communicate - "It's not like the radius is for my benefit -"

He tilts his head then presses a button on his wrist, which repeats her voice back to her: "It's not like the radius is for my benefit—" He says some more things, pointing at himself, his head (which he then shakes), his arm, and then at a building behind him in the distance with what looks like a spherical forcefield. He then presses another button on his wrist and repeats her sentence, and then a sentence in his language.

"...yeah that didn't help communicate anything. I assume I didn't manage to communicate anything either. Perhaps I could travel alone in the vehicle if you're so keen on getting me into it -" She motions shooing the people there away.

He pauses, then says something to the two people, and they dutifully leave the vicinity of the vehicle.

She cuts off the fire and steps in.

There's someone in the driver's seat.

- if she hangs back towards the very rear of the vehicle is that too close -

No that's actually far enough.

Then she will sit there.

Vehicle starts moving. It's quick.

She waits, parked in the back corner, processing with little letters of flame in the air.

The vehicle takes a few minutes but eventually stops. Someone starts opening the doors.

She scrambles back once there's a gap.

If the man is confused about why she's so far back, he doesn't show it. He asks something and gestures for her to walk out, then gets out of the way.

When he's given her enough space she steps out.

They're in an underground space where there are several vehicles. The guards are all suitably far away, and the man in blue starts leading the way to a door.

Follow follow.

Door opens to a wide corridor that ends in a glass door. The man leads the way again, and the glass door opens to admit him into a glass-walled cylindrical room. It's large enough to accommodate both of them with Kiri's safety radius, but just barely, and it doesn't seem to have—anything else in it.

...she gives him space in the room and looks at him quizzically.

The doors close when she enters and the room starts moving upwards.

Well that's mildly alarming. She'd fall over but she's against a wall, which she catches.

The man starts gesturing as if to catch her but then aborts it to stay far enough away.

The dark shaft where the glass tube through which this room is rising is inserted gives way to a much more open area. It has chairs and people and glass screens with moving pictures and a full quarter of the area is dedicated to something that's probably a store of some kind, selling all sorts of colorful thematic stuff like mugs, detailed-looking dolls, life-sized pictures of people in costumes, various contraptions that are probably toys given the way children are handling them...

Huh. She looks around curiously.

The moving room continues to move and eventually she can't see that room anymore and it gives way to a corridor. The door opens again, and the man strides out into it.

She follows him at a lag of five feet, plus a little in case she trips forward.

There are many doors, but the corridor is wide and pleasant enough. He picks one door, seemingly at random, and walks into it. There's enough space in it for her to choose a corner and stay rather comfortably far from anyone else. There's a long table with several chairs, a glass screen on one wall, a window that looks out into the ocean on the opposite wall, and various snacks and drinks on the actual table. He walks in and gives her enough space to do the same without getting too close.

She finds a place to sit. Reinstates her ring of fire.

He gestures at the food and says something inviting, then hikes a thumb in the direction of the door and points at himself.

"Thanks." She goes and inspects the food; the ring of fire disappears whenever it would touch something.

What a well-behaved ring of fire. The man leaves and closes the door.

Food includes: various breads and pastries, a few different types of fruit, and some sweet things. Drinks include: juice, water, coffee, and milk.

She takes some pastry and fruit and milk. Her pastry steams gently after she picks it up. Some of the fruit goes icy.

After a few minutes the armored man returns and looks... like he's thinking how to communicate something complicated.

Well, good luck with that, armor man. She proceeds through her pastry.

He eventually decides to make a ticking clock appear on the screen. Is she familiar with that?

Ones in Welce look a little different; she produces one in fire midair. Tick tick tick.

Okay good so she'll understand when he indicates a half-hour passing in his clock?

She has to do a little math in fire-numbers to figure out how long a time he's indicating, but yes.

Good. He indicates sitting and the clock and points at Kiri.

...he wants her to stay put for half an hour? Sure. She shrugs.

Awesome. He says some more stuff with confusing gestures then grabs a pen and a notebook from a drawer under the table. He points at himself. "Armsmaster." Then points at the screen. "Television." Then points at the table. "Table." Then he writes those nouns on the notebook and offers it to her.

He'll have to put it down so she can take it, but she accepts the notebook!

He mimics writing and points at more things.

"I don't know your alphabet," she points out, but she puts down transliterations and Welchin (where she has Welchin; not all these objects are familiar).

He nods as she does that, then points at his head and then makes an expansive gesture above it while looking at the ceiling.

"I have no idea what that means."

He scratches his chin then says, "House." Then he makes a picture of a house appear on the TV, and takes the notebook back to write it down. "Rainbow." Same. "Bridge. Street. River. Beach." Then he offers her the notebook again and gestures as if to indicate she should continue.

"...you want to learn Welchin? All right." She can't manipulate the TV but she can make fire pictures, at low resolution. She starts with shapes and then does numbers up to ten and then colors.

He shakes his head then waves at the fire dismissively, points at the notebook, and mimics writing again.

...she turns a page and starts writing. It's really very difficult to communicate by mime! My great aunt would presumably have made more progress by now if she could read minds, but I still don't know if she could or not. My name is Kiribel Ardelay. I have no idea where I am but I got here by snake monster, which isn't usual. I'm the sweela prime of Welce.

He nods and does the "please continue" gesture again then makes as if to leave.

Sure, fine. The five foot radius of personal space is because I'm a highly ethical involuntary mind reader! Anyone who wishes to be mindread can enter, it won't harm me or them. Sufficiently thorough barriers block me but they have to cover all parts of the body and do heat insulation; a paper screen or a coat that leaves the face exposed won't do it. I have two brothers. I would like to go home; this isn't a good time for a prime to go missing.

He leaves, and stays away for a while.

She writes. Nothing sensitive.

After thirty-two minutes the man returns with a different man wearing a suit.

"Hello!" the different man says in Welchin.

"Hello."

Armsmaster stands near the door but the other man chooses to take a seat.

"Harold," he says, pointing at himself, then he gestures at the notebook.

She slides it across the table to him.

He smiles at her then looks down at it.

"Hmm... Welce? Is name of... language?" he tries, in Welchin.

"- Welce is the name of my country. Welchin is the name of the language spoken there."

"Welchin is the name of—my?" He points at her when he asks that. "—language."

"The word you want is 'your'. Welchin is my language, it's not your language."

"Welchin is the name of your language, English is the name of my language," he nods. "Your country is Welce, you are from Welce. You have—" He points at the fire.

"I have fire? I have magic involving fire?" she suggests.

"—magic? You have fire magic? We not have magic."

"...what did you think it was?"

"—no words."

"Well, the fire's magic. So's the mindreading."

"—mindreading?"

"That's why I don't want anyone to get close to me! I can't turn it off, so if you get in range you'd better know what'll happen."

"Oh. But in the—" He tries to think of words then grabs a piece of paper and another pencil and starts drawing the van on it.

"In that thing? The thing was all around me, enough stuff in the way does it. But it has to be all over the place, the fellow in the suit with his beard sticking out wouldn't be covered up enough."

"And suit that covered beard?"

"Yeah, that ought to do it if it's heat insulating enough."

He nods.

"So you understand what happens here?"

"No."

"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."

"It is a little more complicated than that... I need to talk to you more to get vocabulary."

"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."

"Okay, good. Is there anything you'd like me to talk about in particular?"

"Not really. I have questions but not enough vocabulary, you could ask so I can ask?"

"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—"

"...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..."

"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."

"Your predecessors didn't play more with it, leave notes?"

"We don't all work the same way. My great-aunt said she could detect lies, but at greater range. I don't know if she was lying about it only being detecting lies but the range part seems to have been true. I don't have any notes from her father."

"How exactly does it pass down the generations?"

"In Welce people identify with one of five elemental personality clusters, and can detect them in each other from a ways off better than chance, though I don't know how much of that is people conforming to cosmetic stereotypes after the fact and how much if any is magic. To inherit the primacy, you have to be related to the prime, but not in any specific way, and you have to be the correct elemental personality type - so I was a candidate, because I was the previous prime's grand-niece, and I'm sweela, while my brothers are torz and elay so they couldn't have been prime. It's also a clue that the random blessings I got as a baby," she has a hair clip; she unclips it to point them out, "include two sweela blessings and power, which is categorized as hunti but a suitable blessing for any prime."

"Huh. Interesting." He nods. "I think I got enough vocab from you, now, so is there anything you want or need?"

"I don't think I need anything you wouldn't expect - place to sleep, change of clothes, three meals a day. A way home if you can get me that."

"Way home should be possible, we have someone we arrested a few years ago who created a portal to another Earth—that's the name of this planet—he might be able to do that for you. Will you need any specific accommodations in your place due to the mindreading or is a door sufficient isolation?"

"Door should do it if it doesn't have a gap under it and isn't made of paper."

"Can do. Let me, ah, tell people about all of this so they can arrange you a room and stuff."

"Thank you."

He talks in his language to the armored man, who asks a few questions. After a bit of this the armored man nods and leaves. "Just a few minutes."

"I appreciate that." Sigh.

"Something wrong?"

"Nothing besides being stranded on the wrong planet."

"...right. I'm sorry that happened."

"It's not your fault," she sighs.

He nods.

Wait wait wait and then there's a knock and the armored man is back. He says something and Harold says, "Okay, we have a place for you! And they'll see what they can do about translation, but while we don't have anything sorted out I can hang around if you'd like."

"I'd appreciate that."

"Okay! Let's go see your room, then," he says, standing up to follow the armored man.

Kiri follows at a safe distance.

They take the elevator again, and armored man says something to Harold before they board then stalks off.

"What'd he say?"

"Told me which number was your room, and that if I needed him I could get the comm."

"Comm?"

"It's a technological device that lets people communicate at a distance that's more specialized than mobile phones." He gestures at his phone to indicate what he means.

"Specialized how?"

"It can only communicate to other devices of its type, or to specific computers. Phones can talk to any other phones or to any other computers or interact with anything computers can, as well as have games and books in them or other interesting applications, and record images and sound and take notes..."

"Why would you want the kind that can do fewer things?"

"It's smaller and cheaper, for one. And also it's more secure—people can retrieve information and remotely access your phone without your permission, if they know how, whereas the comm is much harder to intercept like that."

"Oh, huh, okay."

And at a narratively appropriate moment, the elevator arrives, and he leads her to her room. It's not particularly big, but it contains a bed and a desk with a computer and its own bathroom and a wardrobe and a bedside table and a telephone and pens and pencils and paper.

All useful commodities. "Thank you. What's that and that?" The computer and the phone, which isn't a rectangle.

"That's a phone, but a less sophisticated one, it only makes and receive calls. It can make calls to the rectangle phones or any other phones connected to the same network. That is a computer, which is more like the rectangle phone except it can do more things, has a bigger screen, and is generally better. I can show you how to use it but it won't have menus in Welchin."

"If there's no immediate prospect of getting me home I should learn the local language anyway."

"That would be a good idea, probably. I could try to help!"

"I'd appreciate it."

"Okay! Is there anything you want to do right now? They're going to see if they can figure out the technological solution I mentioned earlier so they'll tell you when that happens."

"Can I get a starting phrasebook of the language?"

"Sure. Lemme see if I can get one here..." He walks over to the phone, taps some keys, and says something into it.

"Thank you."

A couple of minutes later there's a knock and he gets an English phrasebook from the person on the other side.

She sits ready to take down Welchin translations.

He starts reading the phrasebook in Welchin then pronouncing the sentences in English.

She translates and transliterates each one as he goes in neat little handwriting.

The book is fairly short and it doesn't take long for them to be done.

She tries pronouncing things. "Good morning," she attempts.

"Good morning!" he chirps right back. "How are you?" he asks, slowly.

She looks that up, then recites: "I am fine!"

"Where are you from?"

"Welce," she says. "Where are you from?"

"I'm from Nevada!"

"Nevada?"

He switches to Welchin. "Does Welce have political subdivisions beyond just the country and presumably cities?"

"Nothing formal. There's regions."

"The United States—this country—has 'states' that are much larger than cities but still smaller than the country." Switches to English. "Nevada is the state where I was born."

Her phrasebook doesn't have 'born', and she hasn't been practicing long enough to separate out 'was' either: "Wasborn?"

"Nevada is the state where I was born," he says in Welchin. "'Was' is English for was, 'born' is English for born."

"Ooh -" She writes this down. Language practice may continue in this way for some time.

Does she want to try to use a computer now?

She's game, though it will be hard to give the lesson while constantly remaining at least five feet apart and their common language having no computer-specific vocabulary.

Is it much of a problem if she can read his mind? It might help with learning.

"If you want to it's not a problem on my end but I prefer to be very careful about asking so people won't feel pressured, no matter how convenient it'd be."

"I don't mind, I don't really have secrets, I don't even have a cape identity."

"It's not really about secrets, just privacy."

He shrugs. "Don't mind that either."

"If you're sure you can step closer."

He does step closer, and goes over to the computer.

"Okay, so this button turns it on—" And his thoughts are mostly occupied with muscle memory of how to use a computer and background assumptions related to it, and he's had the idea of trying to think in Welchin while speaking English to see if this helps her. He doesn't think of much else while doing that.

It's very helpful! She learns the computer and English much more quickly.

"If you learn this fast enough, we may not need the translator gizmo at all."

"I'm leaning on you a lot, I won't retain all of it when you've gone."

"Yeah but if I hang around you for a few days you might? With the telepathy."

"I've never tried learning a language that way, but it certainly won't hurt."

"It's helping, right?"

"Yes, a lot." She's taking notes very fast.

He smiles. "Good, then! So I'll tell them not to worry about the translation gizmo and follow you around while you do stuff."

"I appreciate that."

"So is there anything you want to do in particular next?"

Well, is he conveniently thinking about any options that seem interesting?

He's thinking the things she's most likely to want—or the things he'd be most likely to want if he were in her place—would be to check books out or differences in technology or walk around to get to know the place and understand the culture better.

"I'm curious about the technology," she confirms. "I won't know where to start, obviously."

"Oh, well—what did you see here that's very new and different? Computers and electronics in general seems to be a pattern..."

"Yes, we don't have those. Or the thing I rode in, or the kind of pavement it went on, or anything the fellow with the beard has, or the thing that took us between floors."

"Okay... things you do have? Might be too general, but I'm trying to see how far I should try to explain and show stuff..."

"We get around with horses, alone or hitched to carriages. We have - hm, we have glass but not in such large panes. I can't figure out what all the materials here are."

"Why not in such large panes?"

"I don't know, I've just never seen a plate of glass larger than about -" She gestures.

"Huh. How is glass mostly made where you're from, do you know?"

"I'm afraid I've never looked closely into glass manufacture. Conventional glass manufacture, anyway, I've tried sculpting it with my bare hands for fun."

He nods. "Yeah, makes sense. There's—probably a way to fit that into a history of glassmaking so I can figure out how far back you are..." He goes to Wikipedia and starts looking stuff up.

Large-paned glass was a relatively recent invention on Earth too. Kiri doesn't have to read over his shoulder to "read over his shoulder".

"Okay, hmm... Gunpowder? Is that a thing?" He's speaking English for the word but the concept is clear enough in his head.

"For fireworks - we don't use them the way you're thinking."

"How are wars conducted? No explosive weapons?"

"Welce doesn't usually get into wars. There are, I believe... ships? Swords?"

"Yeah, okay, I think I might be able to work with that. Do you prefer to go out and see tech or read books or the internet?"

"Going out would be fun but usually I have my brother along to make sure I don't trip into range of anybody and it took him a while to get the hang of it so I'm not sure I could reasonably expect you to manage with that today."

"What's the hard part about it?"

"You need a good intuitive sense of my range and how easily I trip and you need to be able to catch me and shoo people at the same time."

"I see. And the fire could burn people if you stumbled. How about a wheelchair?"

"I wouldn't burn people! I have perfectly good control over that, it's my actual body I'm not good with. Wheelchair seems like it'd work fine if people'd give me enough space, that's a clever invention - I'm sure we have chairs with wheels but not quite that nice so I've never had the tradeoff make sense."

"Wheelchairs are easy enough to get for you, then," he says, smiling.

"Great."

He gets the phone and requisitions a wheelchair, and after a couple of minutes someone knocks at the door with it.

And when they've stood back enough she gets into it and rolls a bit experimentally.

It rolls very smoothly! And is actually pretty comfortable.

"This is great. How will people know to stay far enough back, can you handle that -?"

"I probably can but—can you keep that fire circle without much trouble? They might just ignore me, or the sidewalk might be too densely packed with people."

"Yeah, I can do that - it won't freak people out?"

"A little bit at first but when you're just okay and followed by me they'll be fine."

"Okay." The ring flares into place.

And then they can go down the elevator and out, walk down the large bridge connecting the forcefielded HQ to the Boardwalk, and onto the actual Boardwalk! People gawk.

Kiri looks around, keeping her heat sense attuned to anyone getting too close to her fire ring apart from her helper, who can be within the ring.

"I don't suppose you have steam engines yet?"

"No."

"So, when you heat water up it becomes vapor and expands, right? So the principle behind that is that you heat a lot of water, usually with coal, to make it expand a lot and push into a piston which is connected to something else that's connected to yet another thing, and so on so forth, to create machines that move without having to be pulled by horses or people or anything like that. These vehicles," he says, pointing at a car, "work by a similar principle except it involves explosive fuels instead of water."

"Gosh. I can sort of feel some of it in motion but couldn't have figured out how it worked just from that."

"I don't remember, were you able to feel electricity inside the computer or the lamps or the phone? The cars should have some, too."

"No, not really, just temperature."

He nods. "So, electricity is—wait, I didn't ask, do you have the atomic model? Uh, like, the model of what matter is made of?"

"No, we don't have that."

"Alright, so electricity is—sort of like stored lightning. That's a bit simplified, really—all matter is made of very very small things, and some of those small things have positive charge and are many many times bigger than the even smaller things that have negative charge. The small things with negative charge are electrons, and the slightly less small things with positive charge are protons, and there are neutrons, which have no charge, and are the same size as protons. Electrons fly around a nucleus made of protons and neutrons, but they never hit the protons—I'm not sure why, I'm not a physicist—and all matter is composed of trillions upon trillions of those tiny things in different quantities. A single group of electrons and protons and neutrons is called an atom.

"So, lightning, like electricity, happens when the electrons stop just roaming around the atom's nucleus and go in a direction. And when they do that they generate energy that can be used to do bunches of things. Make sense so far?"

"Only because you're in range, but sure."

"That's helpful! So electricity was sort of an insight that really changed everything. If a lot of it goes through wire really fast, the wire gets very hot and starts emitting light, so we made electrical lamps. And we learned how to make lots of other things out of electricity, including sending data through long distances—a burst of electricity is a one, a space without electricity is a zero, and you can send lots of zeros and ones in sequence if they all last the same time and transmit information that way. That's how the computer and telephones and lots of things in cars work."

"That's cool!"

"It is! I think most recent technological advancements have involved electricity in one way or another, but since your world's approximate tech level there were other things that were very useful, like some materials science or the production line."

"Production line.... huh."

"Yeah. I think as far as major technological advances, those might be it? There were some advances in physics that permitted things like miniaturization of computers, and tinkers are a bit uncategorizable in that trajectory. Is there anything you see around that you're curious about?"

"How are the lights that direct the cars scheduled?"

"I'm not sure about the details, but I think their internal clocks are calculated so that the overall flow of the city works, more or less? But as far as I know they're not connected to each other."

"Huh. That must be interesting to figure out."

"I guess. It must involve a lot of math that I have no idea how to do."

Kiri nods. "This place is so rich."

"...I guess it is, isn't it? I hadn't thought of it that way."

"There are a lot of -" She points to elicit the word. "Trash cans. People must have a lot to throw out that much."

"Huh. I wouldn't have thought of that. Do you not throw food away a lot?"

"No, we eat it. And usually from things we can use again." She's speaking a little slowly, often relying on him to think the right vocabulary.

"But like... fruit peels and other such stuff? I suppose you don't have a lot of packaging... Huh..." He is very much finding it very curious to look at the world through a lens of someone from—whatever time Kiri is from.

"Sure, we throw out peels - compost or animal feed."

"Right. I think people might do that? I don't know whether garbage collection separates organic materials from other things."

"But like - that -" She points. "A glass bottle like that we'd wash. And we don't have -" She points around, elicits words, "foil, plastic..."

He nods. "A bottle like that is cheap enough that it can be cheaper to throw it out than wash it."

"Like I said, rich."

He laughs and continues to roll her along the street.

She asks for words for things as they go, takes notes.

He provides words! And sometimes he speaks in her language to get her vocabulary for it.

...and when he does that, there's... something new. In his brain. It must be his power?

"Huh," she says.

"What's up?"

"I think I can see you use your - language power."

"Oh, interesting. I suppose that would make sense."

"It's pretty."

"—is it? I'd never thought something like that would be—well, pretty, or ugly, or anything like that." He seems to find this idea oddly pleasant, though.

"It's a whole sense, I have aesthetics in it. Minds can be pretty, or do pretty things, the way music can."

"Can minds be unpretty, or dissonant, or different kinds of pretty?"

"I suppose they could be unpretty, but I don't have much of a sample size. They're all different kinds, no two are the same."

"Can your powers be used projectively? To... show other people this other sense?"

"I... could in principle but it'd carry the same risks as any other active use of the power."

"Which are... that you don't know whether you could be messing anything up accidentally?"

"Yeah. I'm almost certain my passive use doesn't do anything besides what I've described, I don't have nearly that confidence with anything I can actively do. I haven't detectably screwed anyone up yet but I've only worked on desperate addicts and crazy people and stuff."

"Have other people with your powers screwed up before?"

"Primes don't always have the exact same powers as other primes of the same element. My great-aunt said she could detect lies at range greater than mine but didn't claim to be able to read minds outright even close up, for instance. Her grandfather I know even less about. Records aren't what they should be on the subject. I'd like to fix that for future generations but I seem to have been stranded in this alternate universe."

"Wouldn't you have heard if someone had, like, completely messed someone up?"

"No, because it would have been at least a hundred years ago and embarrassing to boot."

"Ah. Must be frustrating."

"Yup. The other primes are in similar boats, I've actually been a prime longer than anyone else alive because I was eight when my great-aunt died and then there was a lot of turnover very quickly."

"Are primes usually picked that young?"

"No, I was unusual, teens or twenties is more typical."

He nods. "Must have been hard on you."

"It was a rough transition but I came out okay on the other end of it."

He nods thoughtfully, and thinks about how when he was that small all he wanted was to be a superhero.

Kinda worked.

Aww. "I woke up with my bed on fire. I was fine, but it was pretty scary. And then nobody could hug me till they were comfortable with mindreading."

"Is everyone? In your family."

"My twin brother is better about it than my little brother or my parents but yes."

"Huh. What do they mostly object to?"

"Varies. Mostly they feel like they have to police their thoughts, but different aspects of that bother them."

"Huh," he repeats. He wonders what kinds of thought policing have to happen. He doesn't think he thinks very interesting thoughts, or anything he'd want to hide.

"Well, for instance, my twin brother still has a little bit of a hangup about thinking about sex around me, since I'm his sister."

Oh, right, that.

He really has no interest in that and finds most people's thoughts about this baffling.

Snort.

He supposes people who have thoughts about this kind of stuff might find it awkward to have a mind reader around? He had mostly been thinking about stuff like state secrets and whatnot, other capes and PRT members must worry about that.

"I can't read the king of Welce," she mentions. "There's a ritual all five primes can do to protect kings against our powers so the structure of politics isn't casually subject to threats. If I'm not there it's going to complicate the succession."

"Can the other four not protect kings from their powers?"

"It's not something we can do alone. It might work with a subset but I don't know."

"...huh. I'm pretty sure no one has powers that work together like that, here."

"No? Well, primacy is five things but it's sort of also one thing - it's a thing that happens in Welce and nowhere else, for instance."

"People have powers all over the world, here. They affected the places differently though. But that's politics, not powers themselves."

"Makes sense, primes affect politics too."

"I would've expected if just one place had powers it'd conquer all other places," he muses.

"Welce isn't particularly warlike? And primes do vary - I could make a heck of a dent in an army but I'm not sure my great-aunt could have. And that's if I were convinced to participate in a war of aggression."

"It's not warlike now, but—how long's it had magic?"

"I'm not aware of a time at which we definitely didn't have any."

"...huh. I guess that must make things really different." Except it makes about zero sense that they didn't just conquer the entire world in the past? Maybe their powers are just not powerful enough and they conquered as much as they could have...

"Primes vary in power. The current batch are pretty strong but I think it's plausible that there's just never been a conquest-minded monarch and a strong batch of primes willing to support one at the same time."