"Sharabel Swanpennon. Where am I?"

"The Wild Marches, approaching the East. Don't worry, you won't mutate into some horrible beast. If you were worried about that. Or perhaps you're a very well-disguised horrible beast already; I try not to make assumptions."

"I've never heard of the place and wouldn't have known to worry," she remarks.

"Well, you needn't anyway. And... well, I guess I shouldn't apply my expectations to strange sky-women. Are you from another world? If so, is it Autochthon, and have you read the latest issue of Automania, because Syl is dying to find out if Gerrel is Kenso's long-lost twin."

"That it most certainly is. Creation in general much less so, though. Are you using Sorcerer's Sight, or something?"

"If that's what you call it when people detect magic."

"Generally, yes. Some people have ever-burning demonic eyes and the like for that, but that's a bit more... noticeable. The ever-burning demonic eye on their forehead, for instance, is usually a clue."

"I don't have one of those. Not even illusioned away."

"That's good."

Ari flips a coin and starts off in an apparently random direction. "So, what's your not-sorcery like? Do you just see things?"

"I'm a metaraveler. I can't do any magic starting from nothing, but I can see and interact with magic that other people do."

"Neat! What do you get off of me, anyway? Most of my stuff isn't even magic, just Exaltation junk. Unless that's magic for you?"

"Well, it's all very unfamiliar, not ravelry at all - I'm a little surprised I can see non-ravelry, but here we are - you've got some kind of illusion on, and you have some kind of - I'm tempted to say intoxicating? Mind-altering in a way I could see people seeking out, anyway - somethingness about you. I'll get more detail with more exposure, probably."

"...Ah."

"I'm opposed to both madness and death. I'd really like to get home, eventually - my traveling companion will be frantic and in the longer term so will my parents."

"Ooh, yeah, parents. Very unhappy there, yes. Well, the bad news, I guess, is that I don't know of any way to, like, get you back to your home world. The somewhat better news is that Syl and I are actually working on that same problem to get her home! So, that's... better than nobody having even thought of it before, I'd think. And hey, that magic-magic you have could turn out to be really useful. So, you know, as hope goes, we're in a pretty good place for it. Metaphorically speaking."

"Yeah, if you have - things that go to other worlds in general, and they last long enough for me to get a really good look at them... and, possibly, if you have really good stimulants here... then I might be able to direct it where I want to go. Maybe."

"We totally have stuff that goes to other worlds! The problem is... figuring out where those worlds are, sort of? And calculating precisely enough to get there. We have to use shortcuts like Calibration to get it to work, and that was just a month ago and we got nowhere with the repurposed un-summon. But, you know, another year older another year wiser, and that kind of thing. And the Gates last for a day and night. And we've got really good stimulants."

"Using raveling magic makes ravelers tired. And metaravelry - doing things with it, not just seeing them - always takes more energy than doing the thing in the first place. But coffee and similar help, as does getting plenty of sleep."

"I can punch someone's exhaustion out of their body. Would that help?"

"Oh, no, it's not a regular punch. Feels like getting tapped with a fist made of paper, or something. And... hm. I wonder if I could fit you with a Hearthstone socket? Syl can do the surgery easy, and it's certainly an energy boost... maybe Earth-element? Wish I'd learned to lend Essence..."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"...Well, I can sort of appreciate that philosophy, but I don't have a sun handy to spare."

She squints at him. "Ah-huh."

"You realize I mostly just don't know what you're talking about when you say things."

"Fair enough. Befuddlement is close enough to awe, as far as I'm concerned. Though, um, what exactly are you confused by, here? Do you not have a sun back home?"

"There's a sun. It stays in the sky, producing light and warmth, during the day, and during the night we can't see it, and that's all it does."

"Ah! See, we also have a Sun. He's a handsome man made of gold and fire, he has four arms, and he rules over the heavens. He imbues some of us with fantastic cosmic power - the Solar Exalted, that's us - and encourages us to watch over the rest of humanity. There's also a bright thing in the sky that does what you said. That's called the sun, but usually it's just an undersecretary of something or other who gets to drive the solar chariot. The Unconquered Sun himself has somewhat more important things to do."

"Okay. We don't have one of him, we just have the bright thing in the sky, so you can see why I would have been confused."

"Quite, yes. Very sorry."

Shara blinks at her.

"Oh! Hi, Syl. This is Sharabel. She's yet another beautiful woman who fell out of the sky and landed on me."

"I couldn't see you at first until I'd properly noticed that there was more magic around, but then it dissolved; I didn't even do anything to it."

"Shara. Sharabel Swanpennon." Handshake.

"I fell out of the sky. I was investigating something bizarre in my own world and I think I tripped."

Syl winces. "Oh dear. I'd been chasing down a gremlin when I fell down a chimney, and the chimney led... very far away, as it turned out. And so I fell out of the sky. As well. Are you also going to want to go home?"

"Ideally. I mean, it seems like it might be really productive to have some kind of stable transit between worlds for trade and so on, but I haven't seen anything here that overrides my desire to live at home and reassure my loved ones if I do have to pick one place to stay full-time."

"Well, if we can get you there once we can likely get you back and forth again, even if it's only on Calibration, or something. Which is still easily enough to trade some things - what kind of resources does your world have?"

"Ravelers. Um, I'm not sure we'll have anything else unique. What is Calibration?"

"I'll trade you definitions, then! Calibration's the day when the walls between worlds get thinner, and it's easier to summon and banish and that sort of thing. Very useful for testing out magic. What's a raveler?"

"A small percentage of people, in our teens, get 'options' - a shortlist of the possible magical specialties we can choose. Raveling takes energy to do, sort of like going on a hike or playing chess might, but it takes it all at once, not over a long period. I'm a metaraveler; with very little energy expenditure I automatically see and understand magic around me - 'understand' is less automatic than 'see', I don't have much practice with local kinds yet - and I can also edit or destroy it, although this is more expensive for me than it is for whoever made it in the first place."

"Hm. Fascinating! Depending on what the other ravelers do you might find demand for them here, but it'd have to be a long-term thing if we couldn't set up a permanent gate... That's a question for another day, though. Are you hungry? I know Aril is."

"Not very, but I could eat."

With a gesture, Syl is abruptly surrounded by dozens of pots made out of golden light. She begins pulling various ingredients out of thin air and turning them into presumably delicious food, all at an obviously inhuman rate.

"Well, that's her gone."

"...What?"

"What exactly are charms? I mean, I can see them, but a verbal explanation will be faster than waiting for me to be able to disentangle their effects by looking."

"They're... well, as Exalted we've got the power of the Unconquered Sun, as I mentioned. Charms are a way of exerting that power on the world around us and overruling the laws of nature. They can do practically anything. I tend to use them for things like dancing so beautifully that grown men weep, or decimating armies; Syl uses them for stuff like making enchanted swords for a thousand men in a day, or cooking things very quickly."

"...How versatile. And Exalted are...?"

"How does one get imbued?"

"Mmm... acts of great heroism, for Solars, and in particular committing such heroic acts shortly after another Solar kicks the bucket, since her divine spark will still be floating around ready to imbue you. Believe that for Lunars it's an act of impossible survival, and for the rest who the hell knows? Probably for Sidereals it's whoever's already fated to Exalt, that's sort of how they operate. Why d'you ask?"

"Just curious. I was actually on a quest to acquire adventure-based approval when the portal thing ate me."

"Huh! Would you like to tag along on a few of Syl's and my quests? We do rather a lot of glorious adventure, and all. Hard work, but it's nothing if not heroic. And I'll bet you she'd make you a million little magic widgets if you came along, she loves gifting people."

"I would love magic widgets, and it's entirely possible that your quests could serve the purpose I was after with my own too."

"Isn't it nice when fate works out like that instead of arbitrarily fucking you over?"

"Yes. ...Although unless you give me really good magic widgets or it turns out I can handle local magic with amazing efficiency it might well not work however heroic we're being; I'm supposed to complete my heroic adventures with peers or inferiors in general competence."

"Does present a bit of a problem, yes; I'm constitutionally incapable of being inferior to anyone. How about if we hear about some Sidereal cursing a town or something, we send you off to handle it all by your lonesome? Quite heroic, very low probability of death."

"That would probably work. Of course, whether I obey my original parameters is moot if I never get home..."

"Oh, come on, if anybody has a chance of working it out then we do. No need to dwell. Solar tactics 101: Don't plan for failure, because you're not going to fail."

"And how consistently does that work?"

He shrugs. "Haven't died yet."

"For followers of this philosophy in general, I mean."

"Oh. The ones who aren't me die sometimes, yes. I was just trying to be reassuring, really, feel free to plan competently."

"I do like competent planning. Although 'tripped into a portal' wasn't my finest moment. I'm supposed to be less susceptible to tripping than I once was, but evidently not immune."

"No one is immune to tripping," Aril comments sagely. "Some are less immune than others."

"Yeah. I don't know what Kayam thought happened to me but I'm sure she's beating herself up for not catching me."

"Your girlfriend?"

"We're not together; I'm tragically straight."

"Tragic indeed. No one should be denied the panoply of sex the world has to offer. Would you like me to fix that?"

"Suit yourself, then. Seems a shame, but it's your heart. And hers, I suppose."

"Just as a general rule I don't want anything in my head 'fixed' or edited or looked at or changed or added to or removed or anything."

"Well, that's... fair enough. I'll bear it in mind. If you accidentally see me dancing or hear me singing, close your eyes or ears and resist very hard."

"Well, it's not a guarantee, if you're strong-willed you can resist it, but mortals who see me perform tend to fall in love with me. It's only temporary, and I can take it back entirely with some work, but I can't control it, and I get the feeling you wouldn't be a fan of the whole experience."

"Do you do this in front of people on purpose?"

He laughs. "Well, yes. It's fun."

He carries on. "Anybody who really hates it resists, and they get a headache for a while but they haven't done anything they regret. And the rest of them have the best time of their lives - and I'm not exaggerating, you understand. There's nothing that can't be enhanced with Solar radiance. And I bless their crops, and they have healthy and fertile children... It works out for everyone."

"You look unhappy," he notes. "Are you hungry? Syl will be done in a few minutes."

"I'm sure whatever she's making will be delicious."

Well, now she's hungry, which is nicely distracting.

Aril eats an absolutely terrifying amount of food, surprising no one. His manners, at least, are decent. His chopsticks move with force and precision, carting food to his mouth like coal to a furnace.

Syl has a small bowl of rice and an unidentified spiky fruit, and seems satisfied.

"So... what kind of fruit is that?"

"Oh, it's a dragonsfruit! Very, hmm... Not too sweet, but quite nice, and they're so pretty on a table it never hurts to put them out. There's one for each elemental dragon, but that only affects the color. Not like firemelons and airmelons and those. Would you like a taste?"

"Sure, I'll try a little."

Cut. Scoop. Taste.

Tastes alright. It sure is a fruit.

"I've never had anything like it, except in the trivial sense that I've eaten fruit before."

"Well, I'm glad I could introduce you to it! Feel free to ask what the rest is; I know it was hard for me to adjust to all the different fruits and vegetables and animals in this place."

So Shara asks what more things are - that spice, that vegetable, that meat, this gigantic egg's source animal, this dessert that she mistook at first for a piece of bread.

Her questions are answered enthusiastically, with occasional tangents about how the vegetable tastes completely different if you chop lengthwise, or the difficulty of getting the eggs away from the giant spiders in the first place, but it's so worth it, isn't it.

Spider eggs. ...Okay then.

"Sure, as long as you can also do the preventing-the-forest-from-mutating-me thing."

Shara follows her. "Thank you for dinner."

"...While you were cooking Aril mentioned some disconcerting things about local magic. I described myself as 'tragically straight' and he wanted to know if I wanted that fixed... he seemed to believe me when I said 'no'. But then he warned me that I shouldn't watch him singing or dancing. Which apparently other people do on a routine basis and get some unclear amount of decisionmaking power between altered judgment and headaches."

"Yes."

"It was not comforting. About the safety of the world in general and him as a traveling companion. I don't even know yet if I can interact with local magic without colossal energy expenditure, let alone well enough to get home with an unmolested mind, let alone well enough to protect anyone else."

"Well, he's certainly not going to do it to you. You wouldn't even like it. And if he tried, which he wouldn't, because it'd be weird for everyone involved, you could just push through it. You're perfectly safe around Aril, don't worry."

"I'm sorry. We're working from very different cultures, and I- I'm not always up-to-date on how humans think under the best circumstances. Is it- Are you worried about compensation? I'm sure he mentioned that he blesses them afterwards, and he even protects the towns from Imperial meddling..."

"No. That is not the problem. I object to alterations to people's minds which they have to bother to resist at all if they do not want them. ...It's also not helpful that resisting invites headaches, although I will tentatively believe that he is not deliberately causing a dilemma between agreeing to be influenced and physical pain for anyone who happens across him singing a song and therefore can't quite fold that into the entire coercive package."

She frowns. "Well... I'm not completely sure what to do about that whole... issue. That's kind of how being a Solar works; when your soul can crush gods, bending the will of mortals becomes like breathing. Leaving in the option for mortals to resist at all is an effort that most wouldn't bother to make. And they really do like it."

"He could not sing or dance except when people who've said in advance they'd like to try the entire business are the only witnesses. Perhaps that's in fact what he does and I just misunderstood?"

She lets out a startled little laugh. "Oh, there's a concept. No, no, it's everyone."

"So he goes around indiscriminately mind-controlling and/or headaching people who have offered no permission implicit or explicit, when the alternative is not even never singing again but rather holding private concerts advertised as 'intoxicated orgy to follow'. And you think the idea of him doing something other than that, possibly the idea of respecting the autonomy of mortals in general, is funny. And you have some reason which may or may not be entirely wishful thinking to believe that they 'like it', because why would anyone ever seem misleadingly happy while mind-controlled, or falsely claim goodwill after the fact to someone who could easily squash them like a grape, that would be nonsensical."

"Let's get back to camp. Perhaps you'll feel better if you sleep on it; if not, we can always just drop you in a metropolis with a forged identity and a purse full of cash, or something like that. I'll keep watch in case the Wild Hunt or someone shows up."

"Thank you. I do appreciate the escort and information. I can keep my mouth shut about the singing thing."

"It doesn't matter that much if you do or don't. Aril has more legends about him than Mirien the Carp Princess, and they almost all mention the 'devil's dance'. Sometimes with erotic woodcuts." She considers. "Usually with erotic woodcuts, actually."

"I just meant I don't need to belabor the point with the two of you."

"Oh. Well, you can do as you like, really. You won't change our minds, but I wouldn't want you to feel stifled."

...She's not going to dignify that with a response.

"Three hundred and forty-six days. Then we will have five days to work with. We will spend the time until then searching for occult texts which we believe may help us. We are currently searching for such a scroll located in the tomb of a Solar from centuries ago, who was buried in this area before it became Wyld."

"Okay. What does Wyld mean exactly?"

"I'm unharmed. Things I don't like and can't do anything about happen all the time." She just doesn't usually have to socially associate with the perpetrators.

Syl nods. "As good a way of thinking as any."

"Not always, but it is best not to neglect it for too long. We try to get at least a full night per week; I slept a few hours yesterday, and need not do so for a few more days."

"I need to sleep every night. But if I don't need to match your schedule because you don't have one, I might as well try doing metaravelry to local magic whenever it would be convenient for me to spend the next few hours sleeping it off."

"It would not be an imposition to carry you with us while you slept," Syl notes. "We could place you in a dimensional pocket and remove you once you regained consciousness. Or simply leave you in and provide you with food and books, if you would rather. Thus, we can help you test your magic at any time that would be convenient."

"Can people normally leave those pockets on their own?"

"No. They're meant for prisoner transport. I suggest it because it makes little practical difference to your situation whether you can't voluntarily leave the dimensional pocket because you can't manipulate the Elsewhere, or if you simply can't get more than fifty feet away from either of us because you'd start growing extra limbs." She pauses. "That may have been insensitive of me. I apologize."

"No, I thoroughly understand that this is what I'm looking at if I wander off, saying it doesn't make it worse. I didn't have a specific experiment in mind for experimenting with metaravelry, so now I'm curious if I could get out of a dimensional pocket on my own. If I can do it at all it'll take me less than a minute, but I might pass out in so doing."

"Yes please. But just for a few minutes, if I can't do anything I won't be tired enough to sleep right then."