"Okay," Matilda says agreeably. "Thank you. What are your names? I'm Matilda."
"The entire world doesn't have a name that I know of, but I'm from a town called Lyndonville in a country called America on a planet called Earth in a world that isn't this one."
"Some nice people in Linnip summoned me as part of a research project they're doing on kinds of magic in different worlds, and they found a witch to teach me witchcraft and a dragon to teach me Ertydon, and when I figured out how to give ialdae to more people I gave it to some people the researchers found and now I'm teaching them how to use it."
"...Do you know why he did that?" inquires Matilda, gazing after the fleeing bat.
"I can go home and tell Miss Honey what I'm up to if you want, but she can't travel between worlds by herself so when I'm in Elcenia it isn't especially imprtant to her to know which part of Elcenia exactly. Miss Honey is my adoptive mother," she adds.
She vanishes.
Several ticks later she reappears. "I said I was going to visit with a family I met in Esmaar and she said 'okay, have fun,'" she reports.
Matilda follows along cheerfully. She does mostly understand why grown-ups are so frequently concerned about parental permission, even if it is a very silly thing to be concerned about in her particular case. They don't know that and it is usually not worth the bother to explain to them.
"I'll let her look at me," pipes up Leekath.
Her father looks at her.
"So no one else will have to sit quiet for her."
"Very well."
Leekath pushes her hood back and sits on a couch in the living room. Her brother runs up the stairs, her sister out into the backyard; her father goes into another room on the same floor.
"Do you want me to explain the things my magic finds out, when it does?" she asks.
"Oh!" says Matilda, blinking. "You have a whole extra kind of magic that isn't anything to do with your lifespan at all. Do all vampires have that? The hearing thing?"