This is not Idaia's closet.
It's something weird.
That could be either a really good thing or a really bad thing.
She probably wasn't going to succeed at what she needed to succeed at anyway; worth the gamble.
She steps inside.
Oh, he works for the government and has a information-processer that takes in really absurd volumes of data and searches it for content that might be relevant to us, and he will, given the information that Idaia's alive, be able to find all of the information that has been put in the right format and that is about her, and this will include where she's currently living.
"Ha. I should never have doubted him. I do have currency but then Canadian currency is different--why Canada, I wonder--anyway yes."
"I mean, he doesn't have to, we could just tell them where we are."
All of science, but I can't explain it all remotely. I suppose I could do the most central bits of that? All matter is made up of these small particles called atoms; atoms are themselves made up of smaller particles, and all the regularities in physical chemistry stem from these. The simplest element is hydrogen; it is made up of one smaller-than-an-atom particle that's called a proton - scientists picked a word for a form of regularity where there's a binary option for flavors things come in and two of different flavors tend to pair, called charge, so protons are said to have positive charge, and one electron, which is a probability distribution around the outlying area - he sends the concept - and, as you can see, there's a symmetric location for a probability distribution around the outlying area, which means that hydrogen will tend to bond with exactly one other atom. Here's hydrogen bonded with hydrogen. Here's helium, two protons, two neutrons - no charge - two electrons, which looks like this, see how it's symmetric, can you guess what'll result?
Right. Lithium. Sends the image. Now you've actually got more possible symmetries for the probability distributions than the obvious one, imagine a distribution space here - he sends it - and here, and lithium's actually got seven spaces missing, which means it'll usually try to give away the one it's got, rather than try acquiring seven more. By try to give away I mean it'll bond in a way where the electron's probability distribution skews heavily towards the other involved atom -
And so on.
"Should I assume there is not anything we need to know right now?"
"He's explaining all of science. So nothing more urgent than all of science."
"Hi, Carnistir. No, this is Imliss, I grabbed Idaia's phone before she could."
"Okay. Uh. How the fuck are you alive and how can I most conveniently send you a lot of money so we can all meet up in our castle?"
"We have legitimately no fucking clue how we're alive, unless 'reincarnation' counts. Uh, Idaia and I both have bank accounts? Mine's in Boston, hers is in this California college town where we currently are, but since we both have, like, debit cards it matters less where each one's technically located..."
"Yeah, just need an account number and the bank it's with. Congratulations. On being alive."
"Likewise. Saves us a lot of trouble rescuing you." She names the bank and digs up the number and rattles it off.
"We thought you were stuck in Mandos before even more universes than this one and the one Idaia and I were born in came into it."
"Well, after Bella showed up, the answer was 'her magic system,' and not a lot more defined than that. Before that it was 'try to figure out a cure for aging and a way to do it with dreamshaping, which. We didn't have nearly as much confidence at succeeding at."