how not to do interworld contact | Glowfic Constellation

"Doctors, cops, teachers, tailors, journalists, working mages, farmers, fishers, hurricane tamers... people do all sorts of things. Does any of that sound like fun?"

Might she know if there something that people would particularly want from her, that they 'invited' her?

"The thing is I don't know. No one here knows exactly what the best use of your abilities would be. I just imagined telling my clan head there was a thirteenth kind of mage and I let the northerners take her and I could just about hear her chewing me out. So you'd know better than I would what you're good at."

...Might she have a few days to orient? Maybe walk around and see what things are like here? That would probably help her have a better understanding.

"Of course. ...You know, if you want I can get you a meeting with someone high up in the Varoran clan, now or after you've had a few days to get oriented."

Orienting first, please, if that is alright.

"Might I know what that is?"

"The Varoran clan? We're one of the caralendar clans that rule Anavel Sani."

"Thank you." The cop probably wouldn't ask if she didn't want it to happen, and she'd mentioned earlier the clan head was interested in Elvira. So likely that is something she ought to do.

Their flight lands. Elvira gets her rings, a promise that she can come to the Varoran clan if she needs anything, and an invitation to visit for lunch tomorrow.

Does she get a way to carry the rings? She is in her mage uniform and it doesn't have pockets. Does she get told where that would be, and when lunch is, and how she'd be able to know when that time happens?

The rings come on a string. The invitation includes all those details.

That is useful.

Where is she? Does the woman leave after that?

They're at the Anavel Sani City airport.

The woman gives her directions to the two cheapest places to stay the night nearby and then asks if Elvira needs anything else.

Is there anything important she might need to know and might not have thought of or been told already, that the woman can think of? Also what would be the cheapest way to get food.

Also, might she know how long it's been since they took her away from here before?

She definitely knows how long it's been and can answer that question. "...and anything I could think of I would have told you already. ...Food, uh, what do you eat, I've been assuming you can eat what I do but maybe that's wrong..."

If humans can eat it she can also eat it (if humans can't eat it she might be able to). She can also rattle off various things she's eaten. Rice, noodles, potatoes, bread, meat, chicken, beans, vegetables, fruits, nuts...

"If you can eat fish and you're a force mage - if whatever you are is close enough - you don't have to pay anyone anything if you fish, as long as you don't sell the fish or transport any too far inland. That's your cheapest option, other than that just buy things at the market, I guess."

She thanks the woman. Waits to see if there's anything else. And if there isn't -

It seems like what she is supposed to do is go off into - 'Anavel Sani'. So she does that.

(Once she's far away enough, she pauses for a moment. They didn't say anything about field cover, but they might not really know how it works, and if she's supposed to be wandering around town -. She's in her mage uniform, which is unideal but she can manage it, and it's not like anyone here should recognize it as such. Her body language, the way she carries herself, change. The way she's set to move, the way she's set to talk.

(No collar, now, rather than the invisible kind. She's not used to it, not at all, but from outside they won't be able to tell.))

And she goes.

The city is fairly small for a city. She's not all that far from the apartment she teleported into, which looks as if nothing happened to it. By now there's no sign of the man she came with.

It's not a very friendly city. No one tries to talk to her. People avoid looking straight at each other. But if she watches people closely enough then besides making them angry she'll notice an awful lot of pointy ears and she might notice that people's faces look a little different. It's hard to say that any one face couldn't belong to any ordinary human, and maybe it's just normal for whatever ethnicity these people are, but in the aggregate they look different from any group of humans she's ever seen before.

That and there are all the people who are clearly not human at all.

Well, it would be odd if they just stood there with him this whole time.

She isn't going to go staring at anyone. She notices that no one else is doing it ('observing cultural behavior to blend it' is in field cover lessons) and it's not really a good idea in most places and she definitely doesn't want to make anyone angry if she can help it. But she has other senses available (using them, collarless and on her own, will be pushing around fear, but 'use default-collar-permitted amount of senses that could make a serious difference at succeeding in this job' currently seems a better risk than 'mess something up in a way senses might have helped her avoid').

People around looking somewhat different from humans is the sort of thing that happens when you're on another planet, she thinks.

The better she can manage the 'be in this city' part of what they apparently want from her, the more chance that she can maybe deflect them on doing magic until the four days are up. (She thinks she can probably hold out that long under torture if they insist on magic anyway, knowing what'll happen if she doesn't, but maybe they have something creative or maybe she's overestimating herself and maybe they won't stop at that point once the days are past and she can obey about magic, and anyway she doesn't at all want to do that.)

She mentally divides up the money among the days she has left, with some left for after that because 'may do magic' doesn't actually mean 'will have more money'. She goes to look at the places the woman recommended, to see if she can afford to sleep there, and to find and look at a/the market, to see if she can afford to eat.

She keeps an eye out for things like 'jobs' and 'local power-havers and what's going on with them'.

She can stay somewhere. She can eat, but the selection isn't very appetizing. There's a lot of fresh produce available, though.

The want ads are publicly available, but they're all written in Ilan. There's someone flying over the ocean but it's not clear why, might just be going for a joyride.

She pays for whatever the somewhere entails (What does it entail?)

She may have different standards for 'appetizing'. She's confused by literally all the fish/meat being raw, and also by their lack of bread or anything resembling it. Or rice. Or noodles. Or anything else of the sort. Wonders if they have something against grains. No, there's something that looks like a grain. She thinks. Maybe it's the wrong kind of grain? And this planet doesn't have other kinds? Or they didn't - invent them? Or invent the making things out of them? (She's pretty sure that's something that's invented.)

'You eat what you're given' can't exactly apply since she's wandering in field cover and not in a mages' hall being given anything, but it applies close enough. She buys nuts and produce, eats. (She's guessing the cheap place to stay doesn't come with cooking facilities.)

Does she need to buy water, or do they get water some other way?

The cheap place sure doesn't come with cooking facilities. It does come with faucet access and climate-controlled dry private space with a one-way window looking out on the water.

She wanders the city, goes back to where she's staying, sleeps. Wakes, wanders the city some more. Spends allocated money on further food and eats it at appropriate times and intervals.

She's been in small private spaces alone in field cover before. For hours at a time and overnight, even - it doesn't come up often, but it does ever.

She can't say she likes it very much. She's taking it for granted that she's being watched - by scrying or something, probably, unless they watched to see what room she got and had someone put in a camera while she was out. But she doesn't get any feedback off that like she might of a minder or a handler in the room. Even wandering around the city, which was weird enough for that long a time period in a row, she could presume that people might react somehow if she started doing something at least they knew she wasn't supposed to.

And given what circumstances are usually involved in being in small private spaces alone out of field cover (not that this place resembles a punishment cell much, at least), the associations are really not helping matters.

But this is what she has, so that's what it is.

There's some kind of matt on the floor, which she does appreciate. She's a field mage, and she's trained in and used to sleeping in beds in field cover as needed, just as she's used to sleeping unanchored, no waking up panicking from the lack of the chain from her wrist to the floor. Given everything she's managing at the moment, it's still rather nice not to have one more thing.

She sleeps. She wakes. She goes out.