"Hey Ian, stop the car! I think I see chemoluminescence in that forest."

Ian obligingly finds a safe place to pull over. It's evening, and not tourist season; there are few travellers in the park at this time of night.

"Can't we get to the campsite first? Your chemoluminescence will be here after we finish setting up."

"We can't know that, it's a very rare phenomenon. There are a few peat bogs out here though, so it makes sense. Come on, it's a floating fireball! Don't you want to see it?"

"You had me at 'fireball'. But it is dark. We should make this a quick stop."

The car was parked on the shoulder, and indeed, there was a glow coming from the forest. The four piled out of the car, grabbing a few essential components: a water bottle, a first aid kit... and bear spray, just in case.

"Alright, just this way. Can't be far now."

The glow is always just out of sight, and no peat bog is to be found. They tramp around for a good fifteen minutes before Ronja capitulates.

"Well, we can't find the source in the dark here. I guess we'll go set up camp." She did her best to keep the disappointment out of her voice. "Still, it was a very cool glow!"

Ian freezes, gesturing everyone else to do the same. His finger slowly moved up, pointing at a red fox blithely walking half a dozen metres away. The group stayed quiet until the fox left.

"Well that was quite something. You don't get to see a fox up close every day." Though sincere, Ian's also trying to cheer Ronja up.

"That tree, with the bent branch. We did not see it before. I think we are taking the wrong way back to our car."

"Damn, you're right." Chloe takes a moment to breathe deeply. "Nobody move. Anybody have a compass handy?"

Nobody does.

"Okay, we're going to start marking our trail now." Chloe takes out a pocket knife and strips some bark off a nearby tree. "We can backtrack to find our original path. Keep your ears out for any sounds from the highway."

Moving with confidence to conceal her rising worry, Chloe leads the group back the way they came. The original path is nowhere to be found, and the light is also gone.

"I think I see a clearing that way." Ian points to the left of the path.

"Sure, let's go there. If we can see the stars, we'll know which way is north -- and which way the highway is." Chloe meticulously marks their path as they slowly leave the game-trail.

They emerge in a large clearing. The stars are entirely unfamiliar.

A fox laughs, somewhere just out of sight. A fast yipping sort of sound. It almost sounds mocking. It sounds more human than usual.

The moon is full. It wasn't, before. It seems very bright. Also it looks... Subtly different. The so called 'man in the moon' looks more like a woman.

Here's another fox, jumping up on a rock at the edge of the clearing and tilting its head quizzically at them.

"Those stars, that doesn't... this doesn't make sense." Ian turns to the multitude of foxes. "I feel as though we are not supposed to be here."

Niels inches closer to Ian and grabs his hand while looking around with abject confusion. "Ronja, is it possible that your peat bog was emitting something hallucinogenic?"

"I won't rule it out. If that's the case, we should probably keep moving if we can do so safely, to get away from it." Ronja frowns. "Something about this seems wrong, though. I did a little LSD in university. This isn't like that."

Chloe cautiously approaches the fox. It doesn't seem nearly as skittish as a normal fox would be. "These foxes seem odd too. Very odd." She turns to the fox, and cracks a smile at her own foolishness. "I don't suppose you know where we are? We're quite lost ourselves."

The fox's head tilts the other way and its ears wobble up and down a few times... 

It almost seems to shrug, then claws a drawing? into the moss covering the rock. The lines at least look like a road leading up to some kind of building. Then, it hops off the rock and heads off into the woods at an angle at a walk, poofy white tail scraping against things and leaving tufts of fur on the vegetation as it goes.

Chloe looks at the map and laughs quietly.

"Guys? Come and see this. Decide exactly what it is before I say what I see, that'll tell us whether we're hallucinating or not."

The three come over. They all see the same thing.

"The fox... drew this. I'm just as confused as you, but it at least gives us somewhere to go."

"Curiouser and curiouser." Niels shoots another look at the moon. "Staying put for rescue doesn't seem very likely to work out. Let's follow it, but keep up marking the trail, Chloe. It was a good idea."

They catch sight of a hint of a tail a couple of times, and then stop seeing it- Leaving only the trail of white tufts of fur, low to the ground. Bushes, tree trunks, bark, fallen logs are occasionally marked by the fur, each well within sight of each other.

But the woods do seem to be getting kind of... Spooky? The canopy overhead is thick and black, blotting out the moon and stars. If they deploy flashlights, the shadows they cast are all sharp and menacing. The ground grows alternately rockier and muddier. There's a distant echoey rasping sound, and the hooting of an owl, and a sudden rustle from a nearby treetop- That was not a squirrel, it had six legs-

And the trail grows windier and harder to follow. But still present. There's a flickering light ahead, visible through the trees once in a while as they walk.

Ian's flashlight cuts a slash through the murk, though the shadows do not seem pleasant.

"And we're following a mysterious light. Again. Seems like we should have learned our lesson."

"Well, there's no reason not to turn around. At least to make sure the trail is safe."

"Yeah, let's do that. I don't want to get even more lost."

The four follow Chloe's markings back to the clearing, which is still there. Then they turn around and go down the trail again. The light is waiting for them, somehow seeming amused. They keep walking.

Is there fog rolling in? It seems like there's fog rolling in. The woods continue to do their best to be low-key unnerving...

They breach a final treeline and all of a sudden everything seems normal again. There's a stone wall around a small garden with several decorations - monuments? Graves? Unclear. And a well and two buildings made of neat stonework, though the smaller one is more like a shed. The light is coming out from a window on the larger one. It's orange and flickering, as if coming from a fire. They see a figure walk past the window. Perhaps that was the source of the flickering?

There's no sign of the fox, and the fur trail stops right at the treeline.

The figure opens a wooden door and steps out of the building, headed for the well with a bucket, and then startles slightly and blinks owlishly at the group.

The four turn to approach the figure. "Keep your hands where they can see them" mutters Ian. "Don't want to look like bandits in the night." He takes the lead, stopping a respectful two metres away from the white-robed woman.

"Hello, we're so sorry to bother you, but we seem to be entirely lost."

The woman stares at them blankly.

"Um, do you speak English?"

No response. She clearly does not.

Niels is right behind Ian.

"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

No comprehension.

"Tallar du svenska?"

Nope.

"Parlez-vous Français?" Ronja had entirely mangled the pronunciation, but it didn't seem to matter.

She tries three languages too- One seeming almost Romance, one tonal and otherwise unfamiliar, and one really weird and jarring and over 60% vowels. Then, she shrugs widely and gestures as if to hand the bucket to Niels.

If he takes it she gestures to the well (the hook, rope, and pulley mechanism is pretty obvious) and then makes hand signs in the air and says something that seems like a prayer from the cadence, and raises her hands to the sky and waits a moment. Finally, she nods with a smile and gestures to the door.

Niels attaches the bucket to the hook, and attempts to draw water from the well.

There's a wooden crank. It locks if you press it in and it tries to spin downwards with the bucket's weight as soon as you unlock it. The pulley just above the hook means the rope wound around a shaft at the top unwinds twice as far and the load of the bucket is halved. The result is very smooth and light.

"This is strangely overbuilt for a well." Niels studies the mechanism. "Are they filling their buckets with rocks?" He chuckles. "Well, it should be easy enough to operate." He attaches the bucket, unlocks the handle, and watches it fill up with water before winding it back up. The mechanical advantage means very little force is required. "Maybe children use it sometimes" he muses.

Pulling the bucket out, Niels carries it with both hands towards the house. The other three have gone on ahead. He looks about for the mysterious white-robed woman, wondering where he should put the bucket.

The inside of this building looks like- A shrine. There's no other word for it. The space inside is one large open room, and is devoted to a series of - altars? Displays? Arranged along the walls. The central one, though no larger than the others, is of a fox. There's also the sun and moon, a bird, a cloud, and a comet, and three more that are a little harder to identify at a glance. There are painted carvings, and bowls before them. There is a fire in a brazier in the center. The woman takes the bucket and pours out a little water into each bowl.

Once this is done, she takes a clay slate with wax on one side from a small storage chest near the entrance and starts drawing on it with a brass stylus.

A sun and an empty shrine. Moon sun moon sun full moon, the fullness being emphasized as important somehow, shrine with person in it, holding a broom and sweeping. Then four more stick figures. Then another sun and moon and sun, and an empty shrine again.

She hands over the tablet to whoever seems to want it.

Ian scans around, taking in the interior. It certainly looks somehow religious in nature, but the art doesn't match up with any tradition he's aware of. Maybe Egyptian, if they were more astronomically inclined? Greek influence, perhaps? 

He takes the tablet and looks at it, the other three crowding over his shoulder. "Sun, emptiness, night and day... upon a full moon, somebody is here? I think she's telling us she only comes here during the full moon and for... two days following?"

"It looks like it. Should you tell her where we came from?"

"It's obvious we're not from here. I don't think there's any harm in saying what happened to us."

"Concealing information doesn't seem very wise at this point."

Ian takes the stylus and draws four stick figures on a road with a half moon in the sky, followed by four stick figures in a forest, then the four in a clearing with a crude drawing of a fox and a full moon. He then draws a fox leading them down a path (close enough to what happened, and easier to depict than a map). Finally, he draws the four of them next to the shrine.

She smiles broadly at the fox drawing and indicates the fox-altar. She mimes leaving something on it, next to the bowl.

...Then she draws something that's obviously intended to be a scary monster, lurking in the trees and looking at the four, and the fox seeing the monster and then leading them away.

"I think she's saying that the fox protected us?"

"Seems that way."

"Should we be providing thanks in some way?"

"Maybe she wants us to leave an offering at the bowl. Which seems reasonable, under the circumstances."

"Monster or no monster, we do need a place to stay the night."

Ian fishes through his pocket and produces a few coins. He doesn't know if they're worth anything here, but it should be clear enough that they're at least worth something to him. Mimicking the robed woman's movements, he places the coins next to the bowl in what he hopes is a respectful manner.

She seems slightly amused, if anything, but she nods in approval.

She heads out to the smaller building, which does seem to be just for storage. Among various other supplies and firewood, there are six packed wood-frame cots with some kind of waxy woven leaf for bedding. She points alternately at the cots and the shrine, then gathers up some jars and a sack and an iron pot and something made of long iron rods from the shed's shelves.

"We're to carry the cots over, I think."

They don't have much gear on them; it was all left in the car. Each of them picks up one cot, and they begin schlepping them towards the shrine.

The local follows behind them, and then sets up a tripod over the brazier and hangs the pot on it. The sack contains rice.

She starts cooking, just a big pot of boiled rice and veggies and a little of what is probably butter from a jar.

Once that's set, she'll draw - five eating and five sleeping and then sunrise and then five walking to three building-shapes drawn close together. "Wo Liua," is the name she repeats when tapping the presumable-village. (The wax tablet is getting kind of full. She smudges a spot near the top smooth to make room.)

"We will go to Wo Liua." Ian nods, having noted that their benefactor also used a head-motion to signify approval. He wants to contribute something to the meal, but he realizes that the group is now as poor as poor can be. They have, quite literally, nothing to give. Instead, he simply accepts the food with gratitude.

She sits on one of the cots and starts trying to give basic language lessons- In the second language she demonstrated earlier, the tonal one. Numbers and things that can be pointed to or easily drawn. Also, introductions. She introduces herself as "Megi".

After the food is ready, she fetches bowls and forks and lets everyone eat, and leaves the scraps by the fox bowl, too, and demonstrates the local hard soap to clean the dishes and packs them away and then everyone can sleep on the cots, the fire at the brazier helpfully burning lower and lower as it is not refilled.

Ronja studies the soap carefully: it's clearly not made using a modern industrial process. Animal fats, presumably.  She washes the dishes obligingly.

Everyone falls asleep exhausted -- except Ian. He keeps going over the buildings in his mind. He's coming to realize that they aren't only very lost: they're no longer on Earth. It takes a long time for him to get to sleep.

Megi sleeps in the same room, on one of the cots.

The food and coins by the fox altar are gone the next morning, and the water in the bowl is noticeably lower.

They can have a quick breakfast of leftover rice, and put everything away again, and Megi finishes tidying things up, and then she points out a dirt trail on the far end of the shrine and starts walking down it.

...The animals here are deeply weird. They see a bird with shimmery green plumage and four wings foraging the forest floor, just as a start.

On their way out, Chloe leaves what loose change she has at the altar as well. She's not sure what the rules here are, or who is taking the offerings, but she's read enough fairy tales to know it's a bad idea to be stingy with mysterious spirits. She then catches up with the others heading towards Wo Liua.

A fox laughs in the woods as she catches up.

The trip to Wo Liua takes about an hour. It's a village, cleared fields surrounding it, with a palisade wall. All the houses are inside the wall, and there's a militia with iron spears and fiber armor. Some people are currently working outside the wall, though. One of them is especially tall and beefy- A veritable giant by human standards. Is he human? He could be. Seven feet and a bit and a wall of muscle and fat, likely five hundred pounds or more. He's pushing a plow along without any visible difficulty. The locals seem to think highly of Megi- Waving and shouting hellos.

Niels looks carefully at the wall. Probably made with muscle power plus simple machines, maybe with a crane of some sort.

His eyes cross the man-mountain plowing the field. Or maybe a crane would be unnecessary.

The group followed Megi with some bit of nervousness. This village was clearly a safe place, but they also had no clue what would happen next.

Megi leads them to a slightly fancier than most house, and the door is answered by a tired-looking man. They have a brief conversation, then she tries to explain-

"Ceejay will do a thing and you will learn the language Atsosi."

"Ceejay. Hello." Ian spoke halting Atsosi, using the dozen or so words at his disposal. "We learn, yes."

Ceejay says something complicated to Megi, and they go back and forth a bit, then he welcomes everyone in. The place is cozily decorated with a lot of fabrics and cushions, and the first room is a large dining room with seats for up to twelve. He hands out bowls of stew from a massive cauldron at the back, then says a prayer at the head of the table- They can recognize 'thank you' and 'eat' and one of the gods's name (one of the three whose symbol was unclear).

And then something - shifts - and he sits and says, "Please be seated. So long as we are enjoying a meal together, you will understand every word that is spoken. If you rise, or disrupt the peace, or we stop eating or run out of food, it stops. This ritual helps immensely with learning. Don't worry about paying me back for it- Megi claims you're foreign, which is interesting enough to be worth it!"

Ian thought he had already come to terms with no longer being on Earth, but this -- real magic, used in their presence -- is the final nail in the coffin. "Thank you very much for the hospitality" he manages to get out. "We are foreign indeed: I have no idea where we are."

"Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating." Chloe smiles, intrigued. "If you don't mind me asking, Ceejay, how does this work? How are we able to understand each other?"

"We are no great scholars here, but I will try to explain. Some people, after meditating and attempting rituals many times through long practice, eventually find a ritual that calls to the spirits and convinces them to lend their aid. This is what I have done. It makes me a Spirit Touched, the lesser kind, who only ever touches one sort of spirit. There are more skilled people called Spirit Callers who learn to bring forward many different ones."

Chloe nods, confusion and a bit of fear evident on her face. "Thank you. It's a lot to take in. We don't have any spirits where we come from." After a moment, she amended herself. "Or at least, none which did anything to make themselves known."

Niels turns to Megi. "Thank you very much for helping us last night", he says warmly. "I suspect if you, or that fox, hadn't helped us, we would have done very poorly indeed." He, too, seems quite shaken at everything he thought he knew about the universe being wrong, or at least in doubt.

Ronja seems less perturbed, and eats some stew. "Ceejay -- or Megi -- could you please tell us where we are?"

"You are in the village of Wo Liua, in the province of Ginger Valleys, in the nation of Still Forests, which is one of the Stars of Atsol, the federation of the north. If these terms are unfamiliar to you... Visitors from other worlds are not wholly unknown, here."

"Entirely unfamiliar. I suppose that makes us visitors, then."

"Is there some sort of information packet for people who have accidentally stumbled into a different world?" asks Niels with dry humour.

"No, it may not be unknown, but it's still a rare thing. I will do my best to answer your questions."

"Most rifts list minutes to hours, very rarely days at a time. Then they close again, for a long time. The same rift can and sometimes does open in the same place later, however."

"So there's little chance of us getting home, then" Ian says quietly. "Well, if we are to stay in Wo Liua, or some other part of Ginger Valleys, we'll need both a place to live and a way to make ourselves useful." He paused for a moment. "Do you use money here?"

"Yes. There are coins made of metal used as money. Gold is the largest, then silver, then common copper or brass. The metal is valuable for its rarity and, to a few, uses in magic. You're all a bit old to be on your journeys, but there is, I suppose I would phrase it, a cultural infrastructure for wandering strangers? Most places will have odd jobs you can do while trying to find your spot."

"That would be very useful for us." Chloe was clearly relieved.

"Do you use precious metal in your world? What sorts of things does one do as a job where you're from? We're mostly farmers and foresters, as you can see."

"We used to use precious metals in coins, but over time we switched to paper notes, signed by the authority of a wealthy merchant or a king or queen." Ian considers that the best summary of a switch from the gold standard to fiat currency he can manage, especially until he learns what cultural referents this place has -- and lacks. "Now we only use them in jewellery, and I believe for certain very specific applications in toolmaking."

Taking Ian's lead, Niels decides that it would be best not to reveal the extent of Earth's technology, at least until they learn more about the society they find themselves in. "I'm a... craftsman. I designed and built wheeled contraptions, somewhat like carriages." And aircraft, for most of my career, but best not to mention that. "We also have farmers and foresters, but we developed tools to help them produce more food with fewer people. Most of our people live in cities, and we have a lot of merchants."

"Ian, Ronja, and I are... academics? Scientists? Natural philosophers?" Chloe's not sure exactly what the translation magic can do, especially if there are words that do not have an equivalent from one culture to the next. "Ian studied the past of our people, and Ronja studied chemistry." Will "chemistry" translate? If they don't have a scientific tradition, maybe as "alchemy"? Only one way to find out. "I studied a type of mathematics, but I ended up in a job where I managed other people who were using mathematics to organize things."

"I believe some places in Noten do such- They carry and trade promises of payment from a specific noble or merchant guild, rather than physical coin. I heard that many do not trust them, though, as the Duke Pharos infamously refused to acknowledge his late father's debts, and the King had to step in. Ah, a craftsman and three scholars. A noble pursuit, all. Of history, or something more than that? Of - salves and tinctures and acids? Medicines and poisons and esoteric liquids changing form, like lye and tannins and wood-varnishing? And of mathematics. I hesitate to ask more about the mathematics, lest I sound like a pig trying to speak! Were you from a great city, then, that there was opportunity to go to schools?"

"The King of Noten offered to those holding promises of payment to Duke Pharos the third, to purchase the papers at half of the shown value if they would swear before Erius that the claimed debt was legitimate. Half is not none, but half is also most certainly not all, and there's little to say that other nobles won't do the same thing, so people only trust the Royal promissory notes."

Ian makes a mental note to learn more about the economic system of this world. "Not all of us were born in large cities. Promising students in our world would move to the cities with the great schools -- we called the great schools 'universities'. Ronja was born in the city of Stockholm, and attended the university there. I was born in a small town, but moved to a city called Cambridge to study. Niels studied craftsmanship and the sciences there as well. He was born in a different city, Munich, but because of his intelligence and diligence, his accommodations and schooling in Cambridge were paid for." Ian spoke the last sentence with a clear note of pride; Niels looked slightly bashful.

Ronja thinks carefully about Ceejay's response. "Mostly, yes. I haven't done any work with medicines since I graduated, but I should remember some things." I'll have to look into what magic can do first, but perhaps I'll be able to make something useful. "Do you have any chemists in Wo Liua? A pharmacist or apothecary, perhaps?"

"We have an herbalist, who gathers and grows and prepares some natural remedies like willow bark, turmeric, or blue threaders."

"I'd like to meet them soon, if possible. I think I could learn a lot from them."

Chloe waits for a moment to interject. "What are our options for learning Atsosi? I'm sure the memory of understanding your words will help us a great deal, but are there any other ways you or someone else could help us? I think the language will be our greatest short-term barrier to integration here."

"You could look for a spirit caller who can grant a different boon than myself, perhaps one of insight or learning or a longer form of translation. You could seek a great city, with their numerous scholars and wizards, and learn there. You could simply experience life and come to learn it by necessity. Most people will be understanding! You're strangers! In truth, our humble village might not hold much opportunity for you- But you should journey where you wish. A person's first journey is a great thing."

"We might want to stay here for a little while at least, to get our bearings." Ronja speaks slowly, waiting for the nods of her fellows before continuing. "What season is it here? Is it possible to travel year-round? And what sort of odd jobs are there in this village suitable for someone on a journey?"

"Wandering scholars is an entirely different question than most young people- They tend to be eager to learn and vigorous of body, so one common arrangement is to help out with busywork or the strenuous parts of someone's job in exchange for lessons, the experience, and a bit of pay. Say, a day with a potter fetching and preparing clay, or with a woodsman cutting trees. Maybe if you have any clever ideas or foreign tricks and crafts someone could pick up? We don't have a Traveler's Guild here, too small, they would know better."

"I'm sure between us, we can find some good bits of knowledge to share." Niels smiles in relief: there's an existing framework for new ideas to be introduced. "Once we learn Atsosi better, or if we can find a spirit caller to help, we could probably also teach more abstract arts and sciences if there was anyone willing to pay or provide room and board in exchange."

"If we are to start travelling, where should we travel from here? What provisions would we need?"

"I think you should go to Five Wheels, it's two days' walk east of here and there's another village along the way. You would need food for those two days and perhaps a few coins to pay for rooms."

"I would like to accompany you and chronicle your journey, otherworlders. Tamamo was surely laughing at me when you met me yesterday- It's a thread I should keep following! I can even support you for a little while until you figure something out."

For the rest of the meal, the group answer questions as Ian and Chloe work on producing an Atsosi phrasebook. They end up with a decent amount of phrases, with the English next to the spoken Atsosi in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Learning whatever script existed can be done later -- for now, they need basic communication.

Eventually the meal finishes and the spell dissolves. Ian graciously thanks their hosts in accented but still correct Atsosi.

There is some time remaining before sunset, and Niels decides to walk around the village and take a closer look at the infrastructure. He's especially interested in the wall, the roads, and the construction of the houses, but he remains attentive for anything else interesting

The roads are packed dirt, aside from one heading east, which is packed gravel. A small square with a little keep including battlements has cobblestone paving. The village is laid out in an orderly, defensible manner, with an extra set of gates near the inner square. The outer wall is a palisade wall, rough logs stuck deep into the soil with outer spikes. There's no inner platform or battlements, just a watch tower near each gate. The houses are mostly rough wooden construction. There are several new ones going up, even, and the carpenters are using solid iron tools and lots of cross-bracing with the wood. There are a lot of logs around, so presumably the wood construction is making use of what is available locally, though some of the homes have stone foundations and a few feet of stone wall, with wood on top.

Niels observes the scene, wanting to ask questions but not wanting to waste a worker's time with playing charades. He realizes that what he's seeing isn't necessarily indicative of Atsol's technology: it's indicative of the technologies in use in a rural village. Nevertheless, he gets some useful information. The keep tells him that this is a village which expects to need to defend itself, and the keep's battlements tell him that cannon have not been invented. The roads speak to a central government that at least cares about infrastructure a little bit, and the stone walls speak to quarries. The tools indicate that at the very least they can smelt and work iron. Probably at least some forms of steel then, although Niels has no way of knowing what processes they use. Perhaps they use magic -- uh, spirit-calling -- for some of their industrial processes.