"2159?! What?! I - how the hell did I even do that, it was supposed to be entirely based off of movement! There's - no form of discovered magic like this? But this is about the only magic we get! Do you just rely on - species specific things?!"

"Humans can summon daeva - with diagrams, just not diagrams like this - and get us to do things and there are some tiny parlor tricks that require no doodling on the floor, and that's it," says Cam. "So this is starting to sound like 'I have been pulled to an alternate multiverse' rather than 'time travel', although it is at least sort of also that, like, you're speaking English."

".... Holy shit I found a plane shift spell. Um. Okay, I can roll with this. Hi, I'm not actually human, I just happen to look like it right now. I'm a peryton, basically a magic deer with wings. You're a - daeva? Apparently?"

"Specifically I'm a demon. Daeva's a catchall for us and fairies and angels. In my multiverse, which doesn't have perytons."

Cam rolls his eyes. "You might if you'd gotten somebody other than me, but frankly anyone you'd have to run screaming from would not have let you talk this long, they'd have rendered you comatose to prevent dismissal as soon as they noticed that this isn't much of a diagram." He spreads his wingtips beyond the borders of the runes. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

"Eep," he squeaks. "... Okay, thank you for not rendering me comatose or - or possessing me or something, that would be bad, dad knows an angel but I doubt he could find one extremely quickly."

"...I can't possess you, and what would an angel do about it if I could?"

"Um. Hit you with a magic sword until you're banished back to Dis? I think that's how it goes?"

"...I'm not the relevant kind of demon. You can get rid of me by concentrating on doing it for about a minute, if you want, assuming the rules I'm used to are in play here as opposed to Crazy Peryton World Rules."

"Well if you're not the relevant kind of demon and not going to do terrible things, I don't have a problem with you sticking around as long as you like. Er. But my dad might, I should go tell him that I made a plane shift spell."

"Do you need me along for proof?"

"Nnnno he will believe me. Um. Do you want to go back to your home?"

"I'm not in a hurry. I'd like to make the next concordance with Limbo but that's not for years. And this assumes that you aren't going to wind up catapulting me into 1704 or 2378 or something by mistake, which I suppose I can't assume."

"... Yeah, I don't know that I won't do that by accident. That would be extremely bad. I am seriously very, very sorry about this! It was not what I was planning to do at all!"

"I get it. I will only be moderately inconvenienced if I can't go home, and only mildly so if I wind up in the wrong time - I guess showing up in the far future will mean I have catching up to do but I'd deal, no one expects demons to be up on recent history. But on the assumption that the relevant universes are proceeding forward through time at the same rate and I'll go back to the subjectively correct point in time where I came from, I will probably prefer to stay here for a few years."

"I'm getting the feeling that families are not a thing you need to worry about? Or aging? For you, anyway."

"Aging no, family a little bit but not as a daily life thing."

"Okay. I kind of want to keep saying sorry, but I think I'm starting to sound like a broken record."

"Just a touch. I get you didn't mean to. Where are we?"

"United States, Washington state, in a little town barely on the map called Forks. I can explain more while I head back to my house to explain things to my dad?"

"...Forks. Forks, Washington, are you kidding me?"

"... No? Why, is it important to you in some way? Is this the place that sprouts the volcano where the magic ring of evil can be destroyed, or something?"

"No. Nothing like that. And thank you for the hint that this universe still has Tolkien. I was born there."