Kenneth is talking to anyone who'll talk back and doesn't seem to secretly hate him for being annoyingly very very slow at Hari and not having a huge vocabulary. Currently, that's an agerah with a hat on their head, about the different kinds of academic wear and the subtle messages therein, for example, wearing a neatly trimmed leather-elbowed tweed coat (elbows are demonstrated via mime), versus a fully leather coat. And then there's the colors...

"...It's not a law, but wearing a cap or color you didn't earn will make everyone laugh at you. Oh, hello, Mahan."

"Let me know when you two are done? There's the notes to give the Order of Mercy and I don't share a language with them..."

"Oh! Yes. Yes. That is important. I was just trying to learn... Uh. It was nice talking to you. Do you mind if I go now?" He asks the agerah.

"Find me if you're ever in the area again," she says.

"Trying to learn what?" Mahan asks.

"Learn Hari! I am bad. Talk to all people in Hari, no English, is good way to learn. Is called in English, total immersion. But we can go to New Dover, I translate."

"You're not too bad, you just started. Anyway, I've already talked to Siviar, we can fly there now if you're ready."

"Siviar is a force mage? And, sure."

"Yeah, one of the ones that work for Valanda. Come on."

Siviar is waiting near one of the half-finished buildings.

He follows. "You know... I always felt guilty about my study a little bit. Learn languages? Not be a doctor? Or a chemist?"

"They have some kind of law about studying where you're from?"

"No. Er... No law that you must study. But some skills help other people and some do not."

"It helps people to be able to communicate."

He shrugs. "We and the Americans cooperated. We shared a language already. I tried to get help to the Scandianavian states. I could speak their languages. My state did not want to help them. They did not want to help us. I was useless."

Sigh.

"Hello, Siviar."

Mahan shrugs.

"Hello, ready to fly?" asks Siviar.

"Yes. Also some people at New Dover might want to hire you."

"I can stay there long enough to ask them about that," says Siviar.

And then they are airborne.

It's kind of thrilling. And nauseating. And he can't distract himself talking and learning and talking and learning up here.

...None of this seems real from up here. Just one year ago he was learning German, doing an analysis on linguistic drift, so keenly concerned with words and patterns and the smell of old paper...

And then the frost, and the certain knowledge in his gut that he was doomed. Damned.

And then another wrenching shift. A new world. One where he... Might not have to hide his desires. Magic. 

He has been saved, whether or not it's a miracle, and called to make a new home in foreign lands. He has his life back from the cold. 

So why is he crying?

Who knows. Mahan gives him a worried look. A very brief one, and then looks back down at the trees.

"Have you ever thought you were going to die, Mahan?"

"No, never."

"I knew I was going to. And then I didn't."

Mahan doesn't have anything useful to say to that. He watches trees sadly.

Sad seems to be the order of the hour, yes. Kenneth is quiet the rest of the way there.

"Point me to who I'm supposed to give the notes to?" Mahan asks when they land.

"...Over here, see the tent with the red cross symbol, like this?" He gestures. "That means 'doctors' to us." He starts walking.

(Someone asks the force mage, in significantly more broken Hari, if he can dig square holes for buildings.)