"...No," says Holly. "Or, sort of, but, not really."

"I have a communication wish, it's giving me pieces of your language, but I've never heard of it before. Whatever wish-gone-wrong brought you here, I fear you may be very far from home."

"...Wish? We didn't make any wish. What are you talking about?"

"...Hold on, I don't have all of your language yet, I have to fish around for words. Um. We have wish-pools. You step into the pool and it magically gives you wishes. You wish on them by wanting the right way, and they come true."

"...That's weird."

"What's weird is you never having heard of wishpools, and then still appearing here somehow. Either you wished for a teleportation which you didn't because you don't have wishpools, or someone wished on you, or something completely foreign to me is going on."

"I mean, we were eaten by a demon, but usually that just makes you eaten, not..." She gestures. "And I don't know what the inside of a demon looks like but I don't think it's this."

"Demon... I don't think we have those. We? Who's we, I only see you."

"My cohabitor."

"You don't have a cohabitor? You're all alone in there?"

"Yes. And so is everyone I know."

"Doesn't that mean you have to sleep?"

"Yes? Well some people wish to not need to sleep, but normally if you go without sleep you go insane in three days tops, so it's kinda necessary when you don't have... Wait... What's troportation?"

"It's, um - you don't have it?"

"No. Just like you don't have wishes. All I can tell about it from just knowing the word is that it's some kind of magic that possibly helps with not sleeping."

"Oh. It's like -" She turns out the hem of her jacket. Sewn in are patches of various other colors. She pinches one and her jacket turns green and the patch turns red.

"Woah, nice. Can I learn to troport, you think? I'll spend a wish getting if it I have to, but I only have two left-" she gestures at two glowing dots on her arm "-so if I don't have to that'd be even better."

"I don't know. At home anyone can do it - I'm really good at it but anyone could do colors - so I don't know why you can't."

"What do you think when you do it? Is there a specific mental action?"

"Yeah? That's a swap, I take the color from the swatch and the color from the jacket and put them in each other's places. I could do colors when we were like three."

"I'm Holly and my cohabitor's Crystal. ...And we're not really standard cohabitors, we're sisters and we were born already together, and our brother too but he moved out."

"How does one tell which cohabiter is active, generally speaking?"

"We fade in and out a lot, so if you can't figure it out by talking to us, ask. Some people are on strict schedules or wear different clothes. It's been just me the entire time so far, Crystal's spooked."

"Would you like to visit the wishing pool yourselves? I am not sure at all how it will behave with respect to cohabitors, but I solemnly swear that it never hurts anyone the first time they visit, and you get free magic."

"...Unless it behaves weirdly about cohabitors."

"If you don't want to, that's your choice. But... Some believe that there is a god who operates through the pools. People who are kind, moral, loyal, honest, and so on, tend to get more wishes. Violent or disloyal or unstable people get fewer and are sometimes hurt if they ask for more wishes beyond their first set. I have literally never heard of someone being harmed the very first time they touch the pool. Cohabitors are strange to me, but the idea of the pool hurting someone on their first go is much stranger. I have a strong expectation that even if it behaves oddly, it will not hurt you. But again, it's always your choice and I'll shut up about it now unless you have questions."

"If Crystal's more of a sweetie than me should she be the one touching the pool?"

"Who gets better reactions is not always consistent, it's a trend not a law, but all else being equal that would be best."

"I guess I'll try it."

"I'll want to write your name and how many of what kind of wishes you get, for our records. Is that alright, Crystal?"

"Okay."

Crystal looks at her shoes - actually, everything she's wearing looks like it's had better days, including the mice in a cage at the bottom of their backpack, most of which are dead - and rather than fumble with the laces she bends down and puts her hand in, palm down - then picks it up again.

"What's the average?" asks Crystal, after switching back in; Holly came forward to see if she got anything.

"Nine 'points,' where a Favor is one point and a Gift is five. I'm not sure what method they used to decide a Gift is worth five Favors, though. Oh, and a Boon is fifteen. That's the three sizes: Favor, Gift, Boon, and each larger one can do bigger, more impressive wishes."

Holly touches the water curiously.

"Sure, what can they do?"

At that last suggestion, Holly snorts.

Erin looks confused for a moment, then giggles. "I'd imagine wishes would be good at finding someone you could happily cohabitate with, too. I've never tested such a thing, for obvious reasons."

"That wasn't why I laughed. But speaking of finding people, um, before we got eaten we were with our brother and his cohabitor. And we don't know what happened to them."

"Oh... Hm. Favors can usually do single teleportations of something or someone, but you have to know where it is and where it ought to go. I think a Favor might be able to tell you where they are, but wishing for information usually results in a sort of... Dream sequence. We have special rooms set aside for it, but you might not need them."

"And we're from really far away," Holly reminds her. "Would Favors get us home? Or them here?"

"It's unprecedented. You'd have to try it. If you make a wish that's too big, sometimes it does part of the wish, sometimes it does nothing, but the wish is used up any which way."

"...There's really no way Book and Lightning both would get zero Favors, though, right? So that's more wishes to go around, if we got them here."

"- But it would be bad if it partly brought them here. What if it just put Book back in with us, then what? He'd have to move out again, I don't know what would happen to Lightning!"

"I would like to state for the record that it may not be the best idea to teleport someone without their knowledge or permission, unless they're in danger or something. I'm older than I look, by the way, I've seen thousands of wishes and my intuition is saying that if a Favor couldn't do it completely, it would most likely do nothing."

"...We were all in the wilderness being chased by demons," says Crystal. "And low on mice. They may have been eaten too, maybe to someplace less safe than here."

"You should still wish to see where they are and what they're doing before wishing them here."

"In case they're, what, in another world with more convenient extra magic about to transport us there?"

"In case they're... Holding someone else who is about to fall into a demon's mouth if they let go, or some similar thing. I admit that sounds unlikely, and they're your wishes, I've said my bit."

"Hi. We have no demons, no cohabiting, no troportation. But we do have wishes from what may or may not be a god."

"Will nonmouse small animals do? We have frogs and fish, in the pond. I really want to troport. If I can't get it without, I'm going to burn one of my last two Favors on it."

"You could probably buy mice somewhere in the city if you were willing to troport things for people. Or catch squirrels in the forest or something. But the frogs are right here if you want them. You're Lightning and Book, correct? I'm Erin."

The frog attempts to evade. Not very well. It's just a frog, after all.

When Holly has it, she touches Lightning. He perks up. The frog droops. She lets it go.

"Not to bore you, Crystal, Lightning, but here I have interesting magic in front of me. Was that body-tiredness or mind-tiredness? What other kinds of things can be troported?"

"Body-tiredness. Frogs haven't got minds to put mind-tiredness into and I can't touch Lightning's mind without doing tricky fancy stuff. They handle mind-tiredness by switching. Not like me and Crystal, but still."

She makes a thoughtful face. "Can you troport injuries and disease? Real miracle-quality healing powers need a Boon, but I know people with good regeneration from a Gift, they might be able to troport ailments on themselves and be fine in twenty seconds."

"...Why would you put the injuries on a person?"

"Oh, right, animals. I like combining wishes in creative ways, so my first thoughts are always how to use more other magic. Sometimes it makes me miss the obvious."

"Anyway, yes, diseases and injuries just like physical tiredness go in mice."

"If it turns out people here can wish to be able to troport, I think I'm going to get a loan and start a mouse-breeding business."

"Most people aren't as good at it as me, but most everyone can at least drowse mice."

"Most people aren't good at it. I'm really, really good at it. I'm planning to be a pro, moving souls around and stuff."

"Hm. What else besides color and tiredness is relatively easy to troport? And are you guys planning to stay here? I'll have to get you signed up for public support, if so."

"Well, I think we may begin to bother some people if we keep talking right here. We should go give you a tour of the city. Lightning, do you want to try for wishes first?"

He gets five Favors. "That's... Way below average. Unfortunate, but there's no helping it."

"What are those moving things?"

"They're..." She searches for a good word in her language, finds none, and decides to just use a loanword. "Buses. They are machines used to go from place to place, they burn fuel and somehow turn the heat that produces into motion. I don't know the details. There are also trains, which are like longer buses that move on rails, and cars, which are like buses but owned by individuals instead of the city."

"Huh," says Crystal. "That sounds useful."

"They are useful! Something like two hundred years ago, some enterprising soul wished for a good way to move things from one factory to another, and then he know how to build a steam train, an early kind of train named that way because steam is what made it move. Buses and cars came later. It's apparently a bit of a problem getting enough fuel for them all, but they're more than useful enough for that to be worth the effort."

"What kind of fuel do they need?"

"In theory anything that burns will do, but most things will break if you try to use, like, wood. Most things use a liquid called gasoline, I think they mine for it? Oh, there's also a sort of liquified oil-alcohol mixture made from starchy crops that's not very popular because it's cheaper to have someone wish to refill all the mined-out gasoline."

"You might be good enough at troportation to do liquid quantities, now that you can."

"I'll definitely try it later, but right now I'm going to get you four on welfare. I'm unsure if they'll treat you as two people or four... Physically, you have the needs of two people, plus you need some mice. Well, exceptions can be made, I'm sure."

"We're not going to be here that long and we have troportable nonperishables, but non-troported food would be nice," sighs Crystal.

"What's the other thing?" asks Crystal.

"Troporting sizes mostly only works between things that are at least sort of the same shape," says Crystal. "I mean, Holly thinks she could do a necklace and a candlestick but I probably couldn't."

"Would squares or bars work better, then?" The bus moves forward, then turns left. Pretty quickly. Erin grabs a rail to avoid being tossed around.

The visitors were not expecting this and do get tossed. Lightning catches Crystal, who blushes. "Um," she says, "yes, if both things were squares or bars. So you don't just want a little candlestick or a big necklace?"

"Sorry, forgot to warn you about the jerking around. No, what I want is more gold and more silver."

"Well, then it would be easier just to swap the materials," says Crystal. "If you don't mind having your gold in candlestick shape."

"No, that won't matter." Now the bus is going over a very impressive-looking bridge, which is over a wide river containing several ships.

"What are you going to do with the gold?" asks Lightning.

"It's more valuable than iron, here. I'm going to sell it. This won't work forever, of course, once troporting is semi-common supply and demand will even it out. And if I don't cash in on magical arbitrage, someone will."

"Oh, I guess without troporting that kind of thing would happen," muses Crystal.

"Abusing economics with magic can be fun, as long as it doesn't break anything important."

"If you say so."

Erin hums a little tune under her breath. The bus turns again. "We're almost there, now."

Lightning murmurs something softly to Crystal, and she pats him on the arm and murmurs back.

"I might," Crystal says. "Lightning and Book won't be here more than a few days."

"What does welfare consist of here?" asks Crystal.

"A modest food budget, a place to live in, and accommodation of special needs, which your need for mice will qualify for since I can honestly say that you depend on them to continue having good health."

"Unless your food budget won't accommodate us being awake all the time we probably should count as two."

"We get apartments?" marvels Crystal.

"Most people need to sleep, remember. To us, not giving you a place to sleep is cruel. Even if you won't actually use it for sleeping."

Crystal signs Book's name.

"Yes," breathes Lightning. "Non-troported food, yes, I don't even care what it is."

"I know a very nice bakery on seventh street. On the other hand the cafeteria in this building is pretty good too, and it's closer. Holly, Crystal, what do you think?"

"We'd rather eat sooner than later, please."

"We have paper money," confirms Crystal. She and Lightning pocket their allotments. They figure out how they are meant to conduct themselves and get hefty servings of protein-heavy food insofar as they can recognize what's on offer. And then they eat like they've been choking down unvarying blandness for a week. "What do people on our budget normally eat?"

"Yeah, everyone has kitchens. There's pre-packaged food, too, it's just not as nice as cooked things. I suspect packaged things are still better than troported things, given how you've been describing them, though."

"Troported things are... are edible, and at first they're not that bad, and Holly's really good at it," says Crystal. "But they get very, very samey."

"You could probably get enough money to eat whatever you want by troporting things. Like gold."

"Really? That seems a little too easy."

"Troporting is unheard-of, here. If you're the only person who can do a thing, that thing becomes valuable. Econ 101."

"Book probably knows something about economics but we don't. Can't people just wish for gold, if they want it so much?"

"Yes, but you only get so many wishes, remember? So it's still rare-ish."

"I guess," says Crystal. "Holly wishes there was a way to go back and forth without spending wishes."

"Maybe a Gift will do that. Gifts are good at permanent versions of one-time Favors. They seem to fail less often if you explicitly wish for your new ability to have a recharge time. I've heard of someone who used a Gift to gain the ability to teleport anywhere in the world once every 54 hours. Teleporting between worlds burned two Favors, so I think it might just work out as 'has an extra long recharge time' and fit into the Gift."

"That would work. We could see Lightning and Book and our other family and still be ridiculously rich here off swapping materials. With an apartment and everything."

"But Holly is good at it, and could make a living at it even at home, so," says Crystal.

"True enough. Let me know when you're ready to leave?" She pulls out a book.

They eventually finish eating and are ready to leave.

"Thank you."

"Thank you very much!"

And she leaves. Back to work.