"...I am atypical. Most could not do that; the sorcerers all specialize differently and in things I know how to do I suspect I am the best of them. There are some hundreds of millions, and we are..." She investigates the assembled álfar or whatever they are. "Shorter than you on average, with round ears, but we vary in coloring and style considerably beyond that and might not be distinguishable from all other races easily on sight. Although you can tell us from Midgardians because we have no soul-animals following us around."

He blinks. "Hundreds of millions?"

"Why, how many are you?"

"There are six hundred thousand beings in the whole of creation, as far as I know."

"...Well. There are more than that in most other realms of my acquaintance. I know the Midgardians have a few hundred million themselves. The frost giants may be less populous, but it is harder to estimate."

"How does one get from Asgard to Midgard, or another realm known to you? Or make the reverse trip?"

"I was meant to appear on Midgard with a friend, not here. There is an item on Asgard, called the Bifrost, which can convey passengers between realms. Typically it does not send people astray."

"Are there events like this recorded in your history?" He hesitates. "How many Ages has your world seen? How old is the Bifrost?"

"I do not remember any tales of the Bifrost in particular causing this problem, which is why I entertained the possibility that someone misdirected it maliciously. But of course we have stories of lost travelers. The current version of the Bifrost is thirty thousand years old, approximately; I would need to look up the exact date and have no references on hand."

He nods slowly. "How would a person experience being healed by you? Does it alter the mind? Does it alter the soul? Does it grant you any kind of control over them, even temporarily?"

"...It does not alter the mind. It is, at least, not designed to alter the soul, although being no expert in souls I cannot guarantee that it doesn't; when I have healed Midgardians it did not seem to affect their soul-animals, but obviously you have no such things. And no."

She is either not lying, or lying extraordinarily well. Her thoughts are coalescing around her answers exactly the way they would be if she were telling the truth. "Do you have magic which can do any of those things?"

"I have illusions, which I suppose at a stretch could count. But no, I do not generally hold with mind control as a goal of the practice of sorcery and have accordingly invented none."

"Can we build a bifrost, or otherwise assist you, once we have more resources, in returning home?"

"I could probably construct something equivalent to a Bifrost eventually but it might well take hundreds or even thousands of years, and while I will miss my friend and my father and my sister I will not do so urgently and plainly enough for working on that to be my top priority in the next few decades, I expect, especially if in those decades none of them activate the Bifrost from their end to retrieve me of their own accord. I am uncertain whether local assistance could speed the attempt."

"Fair enough. We, ah, also have urgent priorities for the next hundred years, though I cannot imagine, one way or another, they won't be settled in a thousand. Your family can retrieve you at any time?"

"I don't know. It depends on why I am here in this unheard-of realm. I may be by some accident too far for the all-seeing to observe, in which case I should expect to be here until I construct my own way back; they may know exactly where I am and be squabbling about my fate; my mother may have deceived my sister and disposed of my friend; I have far too little information."

Raised eyebrows. "Is it appropriate for me to ask more about that?"

"My mother is currently very angry with me. Ostensibly I was to spend some five or ten years in Midgard accompanied by my friend, in comfortable temporary exile to give her space to think about how to deal with this emotion. Instead..." Gesture.

He smiles bitterly. "What happened to provoke her anger?"

"You know, I'm actually concerned you won't believe me. It sounds very ridiculous said aloud away from the culture of Asgard."

" My father abandoned me for a decade because my older brother threatened to kill me and he concluded that meant my brother needed him more."

"...My mother temporarily banished me and was openly considering doing so on a permanent basis because I healed my father when he was attacked by assassins."

He nods. "I - I can't imagine that, actually, but I can imagine the sort of political environment in which it could happen. Is your father all right? Did they catch the assassins?"

"My father is fine. My sister and I apprehended the assassins."