This is a desert. There's some less deserty area, over there, an oasis or maybe just sheltered by the rocks it's up against at the right angle to catch some moisture; and in it there are houses, tents, people.

Great. She's pretty sure none of the languages she knows are likely to be spoken by people who live in deserts, except maybe Hebrew. ...And Odette's not here. Fuck. Okay, let's see if we get lucky and there's maybe a Shemeshite she can talk to over there.

The people here appear to be talking some language she doesn't even recognize. They look at her in suspicious puzzlement. "Haan," says one woman tentatively.

What does Haan mean is it a greeting or a name or what. "Hebrew?" she tries, in that language.

Frowns. No recognition. Incomprehensible muttering.

Great. Great. What now? If she had landed somewhere habitable she could just sit tight until someone found her--they'd look, she knows she would. But--well. She's a mage. She's not going to die in the desert. But it's not likely to be pleasant. "Illia," she says tentatively, pointing to herself.

"Ylal," the same woman who said "haan" attempts. And she points at herself and says, "Kaaderid."

"...Haan, Kaaderid," she attempts. She's assuming that haan means hello.

"Haan, Ylal. Ochar Makas?"

She spreads her hands apologetically; she really doesn't speak the language.

Frowning. Muttering. An older man addresses Kaaderid. Kaaderid waves Illia to follow her and the man. (Everyone else is still muttering.)

She follows. Might as well.

"Tozef," Kaaderid says, pointing at the man. "Tozef Raabek." At herself, "Kaaderid us Tozef."

"Illia Zavier," she says, pointing to herself.

"Us Zaavyr? Tis Zaavyr? - en, daamrek," says Kaaderid, shaking her head after realizing these questions will make no sense.

They really don't! "I, Illia Zavier," she tries. "You, Kaaderid us Tozef," she points to Kaaderid, "him, Tozef Raabek."

"Mm! Rak, Kaaderid us Tozef, das, Ylal Zaavyr, mik, Tozef Raabek." Nod nod. "Mm... Tozef gan Ylal gan Kaaderid, akridik. Akrid, akrid, akrid," she adds, pointing at random people they pass. A little boy laughs.

"Person, people," she guesses. "Woman," she points to herself and Kaaderid, "Man." She points to Tozef.

"Mirat, daat."

"Child, child, child," she points, "children."

"Arnar, arnarik."

"Sky, ground," she says, pointing up and down. "Sand." She scoops up a handful and lets it trail through her fingers. "Desert." She sweeps her arm around.

And she gets words for these things, too, and also "house", which she is invited into. Kaaderid continues to provide vocabulary.

Okay, sure. Illia is not actually a linguistic genius and frequently has to be reminded of words for things.

Kaaderid continues patiently teaching her the language (it is called "Leraal") until she has enough vocabulary to suggest that Illia could come help farm beans while they continue this conversation.

Um. Okay, sure. "I can--help, better--with--" Kaaderid hasn't mentioned magic yet, she doesn't know that word in Leraal. She snaps her fingers and makes a spark.

There are more people with swords chasing her by the time she's haring off into the desert, and they're all yelling.

Well they're not mages she can run faster than them. ...Can she understand any of their yelling?

It's some of the same words that appeared after she made the spark; otherwise, no, Kaaderid did not teach her the angry mob dialect.

Lots of desert. Medium sized amount of mob. Desert-related landscape features including cacti. Way over there is another town! She could run to it if she wanted and see if they also produce an angry mob.

Well, she was doing alright before she did magic. She memorizes its location, lets her vision go back to normal, and heads in that direction. When she gets within normal vision distance of it, she slows to a normal run, and then a walk. She drinks from her impromptu waterskin, then lets her skirt assume its normal properties and shoos the remaining moisture from it.

This town seems more suspicious of her and nobody spontaneously volunteers language lessons, but nobody actually points a sword at her.

Will this continue if she uses her halting vocabulary to ask which way out of the desert?

...they seem confused. They've got a well and everything. Is she looking for the [word she doesn't know]?

Possibly! She doesn't know that word.

Lots of water all in a (squiggly gesture)?

...Sure, let's go with that.

Well, the water in a squiggly gesture is a long way that way.

Great. She will go that way.

She does not see any water in a squiggly gesture for quite some time.

Well, once she's out of sight of the town, she starts running magically again.

If she travels a hundred and fifty miles she will reach a river!

Great. Is there anyone else there?

There's settlements along the river, but she can go between them if she likes, they're not that close together.

Well, what she does is walk upriver, based on the principle that it probably has a source somewhere that is not a desert. When she's in sight of settlements she makes sure not to be going fast enough to suggest magic.

People look at her but don't bother her except the one person who stomps out to ask her if she's [insert angry mob words], huh?

"I don't know those words," she manages in Leraal.

He wants to know where she's from.

"Genosha," she says dryly.

And is Genosha (he adds an N sound at the end of it) [angry mob words]?

"I still don't know those words."

Somebody from back in his town yells and he yells back and they have a brief shouted conversation and he glares at her and brandishes his sword but goes back to his town.

She keeps walking. And running, when out of sight of towns. Also when out of sight of towns, she frequently cleans some water and drinks it. Because running. In a desert.

...Lion people. What the hell. Lion people don't exist. That's--she would have heard of that. Unless someone's been mucking around with unethical bloodworking? ...She's not going to accuse someone of being the result of unethical bloodworking to their face.

They talk to each other in a language that sounds completely different from the one the humans spoke. They don't attempt to talk to her. They do prowl around her and attempt to encircle.

If they don't attempt to talk to her, she's going to keep walking, and if one attempts to get in her way, she's going to stop, fold her arms and give them a very pointed look.

The lioness-person smiles. Toothily. She doesn't get out of the way.

Illia attempts to go around her.

She steps into her path. Claws come out. The lioness-person makes a noise that might mean "tut tut".

Illia bodily picks her up, takes a few steps forward, puts her down behind her, and keeps walking. Claws become relevant partway through this sequence of events. She heals the first scratch and does not permit further ones.

The lioness person yells when she sees that and now the lion people are really interested in her and all following her.

They can follow her all they like, as long as they don't attempt to physically interfere with her.

One of them croaks out a few words that sound like the humans' language, but they are not words she has learned.

If they appear to be talking to her, she turns around and makes an apologetic gesture of incomprehension.

The lion-person (he's got half a mane in and a lot of scars) continues trying human language words.

If he says a word of Leraal she remembers she will totally understand it. Otherwise she is willing to play the pointing-and-naming-things game.

His accent's not very good; some of those might be words she remembers and some might not. When the conversation lapses into pointing and naming they use their own language instead of the humans' one.

She expected that! Well, she can hardly fault his accent; hers isn't great either.

Once the very basics (affirmative and negative, "to be") are established: They are sheha, they say. She's a kyis. Kyis don't do - they mime the face scratching thing and the healing. ??? (This last is not verbal.)

She's not from around here. She was very surprised when the person she was talking to screamed when she--she repeats the action, snapping her fingers and making a spark.

The lion people are very impressed with the spark.

What, really?

Yep! They're trying to figure out how to ask her something about it.

She's probably not going to be much help. While they're trying to figure it out she mends the rips the claws left in her dress.

Whoa! The lion people are so impressed!

...This is really trivial. Are they seriously more impressed by a spark and some repair work than the healing and claw-denial?

It's sort of hard to tell exactly where the comparison falls because she can't understand them, but they definitely find her really impressive. They watch her in fascination.

...Okay then. "Do any of you know how far into the desert we are?"

They do not have enough vocabulary in common to handle this question.

Annoying. They can keep vocabulary-building for a while, then.

Yup. They are debating what she is besides a kyis (they still think she's a kyis, but think she must also be something else).

Kyis means human, right?

If she wants to know whether those people over there are kyis the answer is yes. The lion-people are not kyis.

Just checking. What exactly do they think she is besides human?

They're not sure. She might be this word or that word but that word can't do the one thing and this word can't do the other thing and nobody can do the third thing...

She has no idea what any of those things are. She's a mage.

They transliterate this as a stopgap but do not seem to find it a satisfying explanation.

Well clearly she can do all the things she can do, so if those other things can't then she's not them, right?

They don't seem to have known there were other things who did stuff!

Well, she's still not clear on what the things they're aware of are, so.

Eventually they decide she's probably an "ehis", but, like, a really fancy ehis.

Okay so what is an ehis.

An ehis is somebody who does things with waving their hands around and saying things, but she must have a way around that or she made an ehis-thing to do it without the waving-and-saying steps.

She has never heard of a mage saying things and waving their hands because they needed to instead of for purposes of drama.

Is any of them an ehis? Maybe all the ones they've met were just dramatic.

No, they don't have an ehis, but this one has met ehis before! They all have to do the waving and speaking thing! She's sure!

Well, Illia's never heard of anything but a mage.

What, really? None of these other kinds of things?

...Well, she still isn't fully clear on what these other kinds of things are.

They eventually manage to communicate that there is a fire thing and a water thing and an air thing and an earth thing, and there's ehis, and there's a moving stuff around thing, and there's a light and healing thing but they can't heal themselves.

She has never heard of any of these things.

A flying island-city called Genosha. But they're not totally cut off, they get news from all kinds of other countries.

Hooray, they have something in common.

The lion people imagine that a sufficiently fancy ehis could make a city fly, that's not the problem, and it is not so impossible that there could be kinds of magic they don't know about because the kyis don't do them and they don't talk to people far away very much; the problem is that they are really sure that all these kinds of magic exist and she hasn't heard of any of them.

It's very puzzling. ...She'd never heard of lion-people before, either.

They are pretty sure there are lion people in other parts of the world.

This is very very weird and potentially worrying.

They're just as puzzled as she is. Maybe she should go to an ehis place.

Sensible. Do they know where one of those is?

There's several ehis-places around this no-ehis place. Well, no kyis ehis; there are some lion person ehis. They think the closest one from here is that way but it's quite a long way. Maybe she should do some not-ehis things for these nice lion people first, huh?

Like what? She's not totally unwilling but she does remember that they were threatening her before she exhibited magic and would not like to enable them to be more effective at threatening people in the future.

Well, kyis usually try to kill them, doesn't she know that?

She does not know that. It's not terribly surprising in retrospect, mind.

But then she was a not-ehis and the kyis would not have tolerated that so then they knew she was okay. This is definitely the whole story and they were not in the least intimidated or opportunistic about it no ma'am.

...Do any of their people have injuries? She's good at healing.

That one's got a bum knee and this one has a pain in her tail and this kid has something wrong with his eyes!

Illia can fix all these things.

Hurray!

And once she is done with that she continues walking hopefully-out-of-the-desert towards the kyis ehis.

She'll have to go farther than a hundred fifty miles. There's some variation in terrain but it's all variations on "desert".

It's a really, really good thing she's a mage.

...She's going to have to sleep at some point. She keeps an eye out for somewhere she's not likely to be killed in her sleep.

How about this anonymous patch of desert? Or that one? Or that cave?

Anonymous patches of desert may begin to contain lion-people at random times. She checks out the cave.

The cave contains lion-people.

She keeps walking.

...She can pull an all-nighter, at least, if she has to.