Mariam is pretending very hard that she sees nothing unusual in any of this. She doesn't want to be uncomfortable around people who aren't operating on the same set of norms as her, so she won't, and eventually it'll be true.

They talk about relatively inconsequential subjects as they wander: what powers they'd want as eclipsed, a paper Daria had been reading. It's almost like home, except for the lingering surreality of the situation in the back of their minds.

Eventually they find a grocery store, manage to buy food without Daria offending anyone, and head back. 

Their conversation turns to the interactions of necromancy and eclipsed, and Daria pulls out her notebook and jots down questions and ideas for experiments - keep powers? mind or matter? psion telepathy and sprits(!), degradation effect y/k/n? healing?? PSION + MAGE + NEC - RESURRECTION? - she bumps into the occasional lamppost or other pedestrian in her excitement, but she barely notices. New magic!! 

"The implications of necromancy working across dimensions is itself fascinating, I wonder if could settle the omnipresence/imprint debate. And if we are reaching across dimensions, that's a possible avenue to getting us home, though I'd need to figure out how the hell we got here first - you think I should try a live pull? I don't have remains, it'd be a blank and dreadfully complicated - and if a psion can interact with spirits that would be  - if they count, I wonder if one could just shove a spirit into a body, if a mage fixes it or makes it or - I don't know enough about psions, I need to talk to my alt, maybe they already have a working resurrection, maybe this is bullshit in a thousands ways - I need a library, we should go find a library -"

"We don't actually need to solve all the world's problems today," laughs Mariam. "Wait until we've figured out money and we aren't burning scarce resources for anything complicated, and probably also until you have a workplace more convenient than the floor of our motel room. Then I can play battery all you like."

"The other one," says Daria, grinning, "is a precog."

" - oh, that's a good point. If she can help, anyway. In any case the really interesting stuff will need to wait until we're in the same room with them - is Mariam eclipsed, did she mention?"

"Statistically unlikely, but she works with Daria somehow, don't know if they tend to cluster - I can ask."

They get back to their room soon enough. Daria heads for the phone, dials Mariam's number -

- and the other Daria picks up before the first ring, and begins talking without waiting for a greeting.

"Mariam is taking care of the money, I think she's charming the motel people into converting some to cash for her. Your Mariam doesn't approve of us using Psion and Necromancer as distinguishing nicknames, I've picked Crescent, my Mariam is Sun. She'll have suggestions for you if you ask. She's a mage, you shouldn't be surprised by the coincidence, we met in virtuality.

I can do precog, an hour and twenty nine minutes; have an eidetic memory and can grant it to people, touch range only, sorry; single target communicative telepathy and single target illusions based off that, I'm working to expand those now; some work with psion tech you'd need to read a textbook before I can properly explain. Sun does mostly healing, she's trying to get deaging as quickly as possible, but she's picked up quite a lot of tricks with wind and fire, she thought it was cool when we were kids and now we're part of New York's firefighting response - and yeah, precogs are just as useful for that as you think they are, but we don't catch everything, she's gone in with search and rescue a few times, it's very safe for her between the precog and healing and elemental stuff; lately she's been trying to get something for ease of transportation, not sure what she's decided to try for yet. 

We don't have resurrection, or for that matter any way of communicating with the dead. If your thing works for us that'd be fascinating, I can't drop everything and fly over there because I'm precog on watch for the fire department and I need to have that covered first but I'm trying to find someone with a complimentary skill set until I can, at least some precog to make your experiments easier. The best way for you to get an idea of our limits is to just read about it, I think, it's not a good use of our time for me to explain. I don't know any introductory texts to recommend you, you should look that up or ask a librarian, but straight out of virtuality I read Mind Over Matter: An Overview of Magery and McErye's A History of Psionics. Unfortunately you can't recommend me books for the obvious reasons."

...Crescent is definitely her. If Mariam wasn't quietly miserable this would be the best thing that has ever happened to her. Daria's practically bouncing with excitement by the time Crescent is halfway through the description of her abilities.

"Necromancy is... hmm. Ritual based magic, drawing from an energy source almost everyone - in our world - has in varying amounts. There are theories that everyone has at least trace amounts, and that necromancy only works on someone with that energy; the other theory is just "living things", because there are people that don't register to a necromancer's senses if they're trying to check. Mariam is very powerful, I borrow from her - this requires an initial ritual and creates a bond between the two people proportion to how often you do it, we have a general location sense across the entire continental US, some awareness of strong emotions, a sense of the other person that's - hard to describe. I push that energy into a prepared focus, usually someone's remains - traditionally bone or hair or blood, but it can be anything that was part of them - and direct it through various diagrams and patterns."

And they talk like that for nearly an hour, trading information about each other's magic systems, until Crescent remembers she has somewhere to be and rushes off with a promise to put them in contact with someone either more local or more flexible.

"Thoughts on nicknames?" she asks Mariam after Crescent has hung up.

"Their magic has the obvious theme, ours is rather grim. Precious stones, maybe?" She looks at the rings and bracelet on Daria's left hand. "Gold Silver Copper Diamond Sapphire Amethyst Pearl Amber?"

"Amber fits you."

Mariam smiles. "I can be Amber, then. I like it. Hmm. Mythological references, maybe? I don't know much except the Greek myths, nothing's sticking out to me. Your middle name?"

"'Elizabeth' is a terrible name, I have no idea why my parents picked it."

"Yew, Cypress, Holly? Wood's a bit less twee than gemstones."

"Aspen." Often used for clarity in a casting, or when searching for something.

"Oh, that's nice. Aspen, okay. I'm going to go see what Sun figured out with the money and then I think I'll look around a bit, do you need me for anything?"

"I wanted to try a couple things Crescent suggested, but most of them I have the energy for and the ones I don't will wait."

"All right, I should be back in a couple hours at the latest."

After she leaves, Daria sets all the components she has with her in neat rows on the floor to see what she has to work with, and then pulls out her notebook and starts sketching designs for a diagram. She swears at it when she notices mistakes and taps her pencil with excitement when she thinks of something clever and generally enjoys herself quite thoroughly.

Elsewhere, the other Daria is as excited, if less capable of novel experiments. She precogs calls with various acquaintances, looking for someone who would be close by and willing to help the newcomers in exchange for getting to see new magic (!!), but most of the people she knows are on the east coast, or at least not anywhere near Billings and not willing to drop everything on short notice for such an implausible-sounding circumstance. Eventually, she remembers a psion she met during the last eclipse who had seemed like she'd be appropriately interested. Her pre-eidetic memory is pretty recent - she digs Isabella's phone number out of her old notes, and makes the call.

"Hello?"

"Hello, this is Daria Osfell, we worked the last eclipse together? I have some very weird news I thought you might be interested in and a favor to ask."

"Hit me."