Xolkensa thinks about how to explain, while leading the way down the street and around the block to the Emergency Services staging area.

"Computers are ... a kind of thing that can manipulate numbers very fast. At first, they were useful for keeping track of money, but it turns out lots of things can be modeled with numbers. Now, they form a Network that lets anyone on the world talk to anyone else instantly, access all of our books, play games, write, and things like that," she explains.

She holds up her phone and shows the screen to them.

"See? Here is my message that I sent to dispatch about you three arriving."

She flips to her reader app.

"Here is the book I am reading."

She flips to her pattern book.

"Here is the pattern for the socks I am making. Computers are very useful."

"Trust me, computers are amazing. I want to learn a computer language..."

"The Network... Like the postal system they have in the north? But automated?"

She is putting the headband on, frowning thoughtfully. 

"Machines speaking to each other very quickly with low-colored light, Weiss tried to explain... They seem quite useful, but I think the first things I would import personally would be the cloth machines and farming machines."

Xolkensa nods.

"Yes, of course," she agrees. "But the cloth machines actually were the thing that led to inventing computers. The first computer-like things were for controlling cloth machines to make different patterns. Modern computers are made of parts, and the same kind of parts go into modern cloth machines."

She leads them to a tent, and holds open the flap for them to come inside. Inside, there's a long table that a young worker in a purple tunic over green pants is uncovering and tidying up containing a large number of baked goods.

"Actually the most important machine to share is the machine that turns air into fertilizer. About half of our food is grown with fertilizer from it."

"...I'd like to learn more about that. There is a lot that goes into farming, magic and labor and technique, it gets quite complicated. Ooh, these look lovely."

"Warm buttery bread! Sugar! Chocolate! I told you it'd be worth it, right? And can you smell it-"

Megi takes a deep breath. "I can! Made with care."

"I figure a few of these are roughly... What do you think, half?"

"We'll just have to experiment and see how much energy we get out of it."

They can literally smell how much care went into things?

... that is very cool, and probably has applications to quality assurance.

"Please let us know which ones are best — the people are looking forward to knowing who won."

They sample things! Clearly having a great time about it. Weiss diligently gives everything a first impression score. And then goes back and gives them a second impression score and sometimes a short review- "I think the almonds were kind of a last minute addition?" "It's so simple, but there was so much love put into it, that's what makes it good" "The crunchy fried texture is the best part of this one, I don't mind the mess"

"Ragni smiles upon this hour!"

Another person dutifully writes down the baked good reviews.

Xolkensa gets out her knitting and watches, but Megi's comment drives her to ask:

"Like ... metaphorically? Or do you have some way to actually tell that this makes Ragni happy?"

"Hmm... Mostly metaphorically? The usual understanding is that priestesses, though they can feel emotional feedback when praying sometimes, are most of the time tapping into a sort of impression or nature of the God they channel- A remembered personality, like using your mental model of someone else for empathy. Ragni likes it when people enjoy things and show mindful appreciation, and this is such a moment. I feel the reflection of appreciation just a bit more viscerally than, for example, I know a certain friend would hate feeling pressured to make a fast decision. I'm not in communication with Ragni at this time."

This is ... fairly awkward. Because that sounds a lot like ancestor-echos, hero-channeling, or the fair ones.

Or rather, in modern terms, multiple cohabiting identities, with the exact identities people pick up being partially culturally mediated.

But they have indisputable evidence that magic is real, and that it interacts with people's brains at least well enough that whether someone is watching an illusion affects how it is recorded by cameras. So the idea that there are entities made of magic that communicate on a mental level is ... not nearly as implausible as it was before Weiss came here.

Luckily, one does not become a mediator without a tolerance for occasional awkwardness — nor without the ability to avoid insulting people's deeply-held beliefs to their face.

"I see. Is there any way to tell actual priestesses apart from people who just form impressions of people strongly? Or is there not a difference?"

"Priestesses can do rituals that call upon the essence of the gods they are connected to. It may not be as dramatic as Sinnah's spells, but it is quite real. Most of them are subtle, they affect the mind, or grant information, or do something with monsters which are not here, or do things that are hard to see immediately like prevent wounds from growing infected or help crops grow."