And now they've gone through the mirror and landed... somewhere. But at least it's both of them.

They've landed on the side of a hill.  Visible below them is a wide river, the near side bristling with docks.  Boats of various kinds are tethered to the docks, and more are on the water beyond.  Many are hauling wood and other building materials which are getting offloaded onto carts and sent up a nearby hill.

On that hill is a settlement of some kind, heavily damaged by fire.  From the lack of smoke-scent in the air and the way the plants have overtaken the area, it must have happened a few years ago and been abandoned until recently.

"Theo. That's not Mexico."

"What on God's earth? ...Get your scope. I'll see to the horses."

Both of them fell badly, and unlike humans they can't usually recover from that. This will involve gunshots.

"Might as well see what they do before we get their attention..."

She lifts a saddlebag off her horse and opens the rifle case, lifting the gun up so she can get a better look at the town.

(The revolver chambers are popped out and unloaded, so she's obviously not attacking, if you recognize her style of guns.)

A few people glance over at the unfamiliar noise, peering curiously at the figures on the hill.  Among them is a guard stationed at the near entrance of the settlement.  Two strangers in strange clothing and dead horses is something that needs investigating.  The guard ducks inside just long enough to report and call another guard over to take the post, then begins walking towards them.  The path between is long, on foot, as the road switchbacks down the hill then detours towards a bridge to cross a lake between the hills at its narrowest point.  She watches them as she walks, but it will take a while to get there if nothing urgent prompts her to take the shortcut of leaping over with cultivation.  Through the scope it is clear that the weapon hanging on her belt is a sword.

"Place looks... poor, but cleaner than I'd expect, at least where it's not still burned-down. Guard at the town wall is coming this way, long switchbacks. A woman, with a sword. She looks... Chinese, probably?"

(Tisha has not met anyone of Asian descent who wasn't Chinese, or if she did they had long since stopped bothering to try to make the distinction to Westerners in 1880s California.)

The horses are dead, and he's taking off the saddlebags and laying them on the ground.

"Well, we're not criminals here, as far as we know. Play nice? And no need to light any cigars."

"Yeah. ...Glad you're here with me, my Mister Grave."

"Likewise, Missus Grave."

One the guard is on their side of the lake she leaves the road and cuts through the grass, stopping as soon as she's close enough to talk without shouting. 

"Hello!  Do you need assistance?"

In English? That's promising. And surprising.

She'll lower the gun around the time the guard leaves the road.

"Sure seems like it! We just fell here, our horses both broke legs, and we're completely lost. Where are we?"

The guard is likewise relieved they speak Mandarin, and continues to not recognize what a gun is.

"You are near Lotus Pier, home of the Yunmeng Jiang cultivation sect.  Do you mean that you fell from the top of the hill, or was there some form of teleportation involved?"

"Probably the second thing, if that's something possible enough for you to guess it. There was a mirror-faced snake monster and then instead of in northern Mexico we were here."

"I haven't heard of Mexico, or of monster snakes with mirror faces.  It's possible that the library might have records of them.  This empire is called China."

"...I have heard of a country called China, across the ocean from North America, where Mexico and our homeland are. Many of its people have taken steamships and immigrated to California, the western coast of America." But she really isn't sure if it's the same place.

"Neither steamships nor America sound familiar either."  She tries to determine whether its more likely that she missed the existence of these things, or that there are multiple places called China.  Her education stopped at the empire's borders, so not knowing what foreign places call themselves makes sense, but anything called a 'steamship' sounds interesting enough to be memorable.

"Either way, would you be interested in coming into town?  Proper rooms are hard to come by - many of us are still in tents - but it's better than camping out here and possibly someone will know more than I do."

"Please and thank you. Give us a moment to pack our saddlebags for carrying ourselves, though."

"Also, if you don't mind, what is a 'cultivation sect'?"

"I can help carry the bags, if you'd like.  The town is just on the other side of Lotus Pier."

"Cultivation sects are communities of cultivators."  The guard is vaguely aware that there are distant lands where cultivation is unknown, so elaborates, "Who are people who have cultivated the ability to manipulate spiritual energy.  Sects make their living fighting monsters, exorcising ghosts, and solving other supernatural problems, mostly."

"...And those are otherwise common problems?"

Shrug.  "Common enough?  I don't know how effective our usual burial rites are compared to yours."

"Are any of these cultivation sects near the ocean's shore? Southern or eastern?"

Why? - Oh. Yeah, that would confirm it.

"Gusu Lan and Lanling Jin are both reasonably near the ocean, but neither is right next to it.

"You mentioned you heard of many people leaving for California.  Was that prompted by some kind of disaster?  The cultivation world has been fighting, but the mundane people have been as safe as ever.  Well, in the east near the shore they are - some towns in the west were caught up in the fighting."