Dimensional cracks are not the kind of thing one might expect to find in þereminia. It is an ordinary world, as these things go: no magic, and only ordinary amounts of science. But there is a place where the borders of the world are ever so slightly weaker.

Weiss appears just inside the double glass doors of Central River City Bank. An orderly queue of customers lines up across the lobby, mostly wearing green or brown ordinary day robes. Two tellers sit behind the high counter on the far end of the room, wearing formal purple robes. The room is decorated with a few plants. In the center of the lobby is a circular table with various paper forms in little metal holders.

A giant fox- Closer to a Great Dane than a Corgi in size, and maybe even larger than that- Lands on the floor, paws squishing softly against whatever surface makes up the floor. She lets out a 'yip!' of surprise.

And then, after about one second, is invisible.

The floor of the bank is covered in thin carpet — perfectly comfortable on paws, and unlikely to give her away from the indentations her feet make.

One of the people waiting in line turns to their neighbor and asks "Did you see that?" in the tone of voice of someone who very much hopes the answer is yes.

"I did," someone else agrees. A brief discussion ensues, before the customers eventually agree that some of them saw a large dog or possibly a fox appear, fall to the ground, and then disappear.

"This is really weird," a person in a robe with a raindrop design opines. "Do you think we should ... search around for it?"

   "It didn't go anywhere, though, it just vanished."

One of the people in line leaves their spot to start walking in her direction, carefully swinging their walking stick through the space in front of them.

WELP.

She doesn't know this language. Is it... Well, it's not what she vaguely remembers it should be...

If she's somehow back home most people will probably be pretty alarmed about it and she went ahead and was a giant fox in front of God and everyone... She thinks that's how it goes, anyway?

(She moves out of the way of the investigating person smoothly, leaving tiny micro illusions to cover carpet depression.)

Maybe she can play it off somehow...? An illusion of a racoon, that will run away? 'An animal must have gotten into the vents, it only looked big because we were surprised'...? Oh, gods. That sounds a little funny but also its been three or four seconds of invisibility now and every additional moment makes it worse.

The person with the walking stick reaches the doors and turns around.

"Well, we all saw something, but there's nothing here, so I'm not sure what it makes sense to do. I would call someone, but 'a group of people saw a momentary dog' doesn't sound ... actionable," they remark.

One of the tellers finishes up her transaction, and motions for her next customer to wait.

"I can check the security tapes, if that would make everyone feel better?" she offers.

There's a general agreement from the customers, and she steps away into the back. Nobody else seems inclined to hunt around for invisible animals.

...She's being stupid and panicking slightly.

She goes over to the automatic door. It doesn't open, she's invisible. Are these thermal?? She illuses a little burst of infrared warmth at about chest height to see if that gets it to open. If not? She then tries a brief ripple of a vague human form, 'angled' so it'd only be visible from outward. That should work. If it doesn't she'll literally nose the door open herself and peek around outside, bracing herself for the stench of cars.

The doors are indeed using a cheap IR sensor. So she can open them with ease. The doors aren't invisible, though, so this gets a certain amount of attention from the people inside the bank.

Outside, there is no stench of cars — or, barely any. There have been cars here, but they're clearly not being used nearly as much as she might expect. There is a faint mechanical whining, audible to her sensitive ears, however.

The street outside is cobbled, and covered in a light dusting of snow. People walk up and down it, occasionally stopping to greet one another. The street is lined with three or four story buildings, which all seem to have shops of different kinds built into them. Directly across the street is a clothing store that seems to mostly be offering robes and dresses in various simple colors.

Inside the building, where Weiss cannot see her, Tsanek is having a very confusing time with the security tapes.

She places a call to Emergency Services.

There's nothing to be done about confusing people at least a little bit, at this point. Alas. Maybe they'll get over it.

Her ears and whiskers twitch, trying to follow the noise... Oh, do they have electric cars here? She was gone for a while. Technology!!!

Gosh, it's so nostalgic to see places like this... She peers into the windows of the clothes store, still alert to avoid anyone walking into her, then looks for a cafe or something.

...She'll have no money. Well, there's some gold and gems and other possible-saleable things, but...

The screech of steel on steel echos from down the street, and makes it clear that, while they may or may not have electric cars, they definitely have trains.

Through the windows of the clothes store, she can see a few more varieties. The clothes seem to be divided into three different sections, although what characteristic they're divided by is probably not obvious on casual inspection. Today's fashions seem to lean toward pleats and overlapping strips of stiffer fabric, although there's plenty of more comfortable clothing as well.

A café is not too hard to find — two doors down, there's a shop with a set of tables set outside, shielded from the snow with cloth umbrellas. Inside, there's a wall full of drink-making machinery and two probable-baristas making drinks from it. She doesn't smell coffee, though. The strongest scent she can get from the outside, other than the general smells of humanity, is probably the ginger.

She also doesn't see people obviously using money. People will walk in, grab their drink, and walk out. Or walk in, study the menu, talk with a server, tap a rectangle on a lanyard to a large square with a symbol on it, and get their drink a moment later. If she waits long enough, she might see someone walk in, hand the barista a piece of paper about the size of a business card, and then take a drink, but this is much rarer.

Gosh, this place is like, idyllic... She can't remember the names, but... Anyway, no fucking parking lots everywhere. And yep, credit cards rule the day. Pawn shop hunting time. They tend to be in sleazy neighborhoods, she'll be walking around for a while looking for one probably? Or rather, running along the street where people aren't in the way. Also, she can't afford to stay invisible forever... Hmm... Well, it feels like some kind of nice spy mission, so she'll keep doing it for now~

The streets have an odd layout. This one, and the ones nearest it, are built on a square grid. She can walk through alleys over to a parallel street with different storefronts. But if she goes far enough, the streets will switch to a hexagonal layout — zigzagging back and forth, leaving plenty of room for little courtyards and parks in the odd gaps between buildings. That direction also has taller and taller buildings, though, so if she's looking for a sleazy neighborhood, she might choose to turn and skirt around the hexagonal area.

Eventually, after enough searching, she can find a shop with bars on the windows that smells like antiques, which seems promising. It's squeezed in between a shop that sells items made of leather, and an unmarked building that smells mostly of paper and dust.

She still has no idea what language this is... Well, she's picked up what are probably 'hello' and 'goodbye'. and hanging out invisibly trying to learn the language sounds... Boring.

Leather goods? Interesting. The other one seems like a bookstore, probably.

Before going in she transforms- Ugh, yeah, she's starting to expend noticeable amounts of energy- And pulls out from her tail gold coins with a square in the middle, strung on a long string, and a smaller pouch of silver and copper ones aaaaand... Hmm, not any of the wands or scrolls, not her jars of spices... The weapons and furniture she carries in her pocket space she mostly keeps for sentimental reasons... Yeah, probably best to stick with the coins.

She's now wearing a (partially illusory; she's adding extras to her usual tunic and skirt-type outfit) outfit that is sort of aping that stiff-fabric style, complete with a hood that should effectively hide her ears if they don't twitch too much in surprise, and a big coat to stick her tail into. Mostly tans and browns.

-Ugh, the curse has settled on making her eyes strange today. Deep amber and with odd pupils. Well, she can't do anything about that.

Into the pawn shop (if it's open)! Cheerful innocent shopper demeanor! Peering at the shelves! Polite hello once addressed!

She doesn't know the word for 'selling' so she'll just present several of the coppers and silvers. The coppers have a motif of a sun over grain field on one side and a crescent moon over a forest on the other, and a few words in the Northern Federation's language. The silver ones have an image of what might be aurora borealis on one side and clouds surrounding a comet on the other, and another few unfamiliar words.

þasatova finds working in his aunt's shop pretty boring. He's flopped over the counter reading a book on his phone, but perks up when she walks in.

"Hello, welcome to Tava's Trades," he greets. "What can I help you with?"

When she responds in a language he doesn't speak, he frowns. He peers at her eyes, noticing the weird contacts. She is definitely a dedicated cosplayer. Which is a shame, because that's not really his scene. He's never had a head for languages.

"Do you want to sell these?" he says, reaching out a hand toward the coins. "Are they real metal?"

He peers at the coins, and sighs. He doesn't recognize the language on them either, which probably means that she forged these at home. Which is cool and impressive, but that means that she's probably dedicated enough to whatever this is not to have used standard weights, and possibly not a standard alloy mixture, so he's definitely going to have to mark them down. He sets them on the counter and goes to fetch a scale and a hardness tester.

Yep, she unfortunately doesn't understand this language! Oh well! Yes she would like to sell them, she holds up her fingers in the shape of one of the paper-slips.

(The coppers are 4.07-4.12 grams and about 5% zinc, the silvers are 3.45-3.47 grams and are Sterling silver. Not that she can explain this. Here's a gold one too, with a square hole in the middle. It's bigger and more elaborate and octagonal and has a total of eight drawn symbols on one side, and eight ideograms on the opposite. 35ish grams. It's at maybe 80% purity.)

He returns with a scale, and carefully measures each coin. Then he tries to scratch one of each with several different materials, eventually concluding that they really are probably mostly silver and copper, based on the hardness.

He does some multiplication on his phone.

"If these were pure silver and I could be sure of that, I could give you 3 marks per coin," he tells her. Even if she's too proud of her conlang to admit that she speaks Smaller Continent Official Language, at least this way she won't be able to claim he defrauded her. "But since I don't know the purity or the provenance, and you can't make any guarantees about it, I'll offer you one mark per."

It is, in his mind, a pretty fair deal, given that there are plenty of ways to adulterate silver. Although these might be worth more than one mark each to a collector if whatever her thing is gets popular. He makes a note to tell his aunt about the whole transaction in as much detail as he can, just in case.

"For the copper ones — 0.012 marks per if they were pure, so I'll round up and give you 0.003, how's about that?" he asks. "So for the whole bunch ..."

He writes her up a bill of sale for the piles of copper and silver coins, filling in the appropriate values for the weight, quantity, and price. Then he turns the paper to face her and hands her a pen. The remaining spaces on the paper are a long line next to a short label, three short lines separated by colons with three dots, and a series of thirty-six boxes, where each box is split into two triangles. There's a similar box just above it, into which are neatly printed an apparently random string of digits.

Oh shoot. The papers might have been coupons. Is this place totally cashless?

Also it seems that silver is worth more here, compared to copper? So she'll remove most of the coppers to buy herself time to think.

Signature, date, and....... Card number?

"Yeah, I don't have one of these, sorry." She's pointing to the third line and sounds genuinely contrite.

5 coppers and 12 silvers are left.

... so her character doesn't even have a bank account? What does she expect him to do here.

He briefly considers calling his aunt to see if they have a store policy, but honestly this probably falls under 'humor weird and obstructive customers unless they're interrupting another customer, one of your mandatory tasks, or being a danger'.

He taps a finger on his chin.

"I guess I can cut you a check, and then you can go make a bank account and deposit it?" he muses.

He reaches under the counter and pulls out a different sheet of paper, only about a third as large. He draws an X across the bill of sale, and then fills out the different sheet of paper instead. He fills out all the boxes, not leaving any for her to fill in, tears off a slip from the end of it, and then holds it out to her with raised eyebrows.

....Probably the best she's gonna get. Twelve silver isn't nothing but it's also not a lot.

Thumbs up, and she puts the pouch of silver and copper that's not being sold and the string of gold coins into a 'pocket' and slowly reaches for the ?check?

She'll have to take it back to the bank and be a weird glitch in the Bureaucracy. If cops hassle her she can deal with some cops.

Maybe she will choose a different bank branch, though.

He lets her have the check without protest.

"Good luck with your ... thing," he says.

Outside, a small electric golf cart goes by at four or five miles an hour. One of the people riding in it hops out when it passes the leather shop and walks inside.

Perfectly normal citizen gawking a perfectly normal amount and acting like she's in a hurry and doesn't wanna talk.

She'll start going back to the square part of town that seemed denser.

Well, the people on the cart don't really seem to be paying attention to her. They're mostly focused on their phones. And all wearing purple pants, for some reason.

It's pretty easy to retrace her steps back to the square part of town. The people there are still milling around, doing their various daily activities. Her clothing doesn't seem to warrant comment, and nobody gets close enough to see her eyes.

Has she seen any bank branches other than the original one? Also, local fashion seems weird. The colors are meaningful? She's been struck by odd color choices multiple times now. Hopefully tan/brown is nice and neutral. 

There has not been anything that is definitely a bank, but she did happen to notice another building that has a counter, lines of queuing people, and no obvious merchandise, which seems like a promising candidate.

The colors are definitely meaningful. If she watches the crowds for long enough, she'll notice that nobody speaks to or looks at anyone wearing red — or with a red shining light clipped into their hair. The people wearing red generally have a flatter aspect, and rarely speak. People working at businesses usually have purple worked into their clothing, and people on the street don't. Most people have either a blue light in their hair, or blue somewhere on their clothing, even if they're otherwise wearing brown. Brown, tan, and green all seem to have no effect that she can discern. There are also some people with orange lights, although it seems like an unpopular clothing color, and she spots one person with a red-and-blue blinking light sitting on the balcony of an apartment and shouting down to someone on the street with a blue light.

Meanwhile, the Central River City Emergency Services Unprecedented Situations Rapid Response Team — which is so much of a mouthful that they usually just call themselves the Weird Shit Team — is brainstorming.

"... we can try to get a helicopter in?" Veramat suggests. "And watch through cameras?"

    "We can't possibly cover the full city. What I want to know is why the fox disappeared from the cameras at a different time. And how it was still apparent to the door sensor," their coworker replies.

"Okay, hear me out. What if we make a city-wide announcement that ..."

    "No way! One group of people saw one invisible fox. We can't just disturb the whole city like that."

Þummil pokes her head in from the call center. She's still speaking on the phone, so she signs to them.

Hey guys, we have an invisible fox turning into a non-invisible person of indeterminate gender on camera outside an antiques store, she signs.

    "... okay, maybe we can do a city wide announcement. What would you want it to say?"

She... Doesn't want to put on red, having observed its possible use for evading notice.

It feels like faking a disability. The internet would hate her for it!

...This line of thought is kind of distracting? Hmm. Also maybe nobody will take her 'check' for all that she wants a nice croissant and tea right now. Hmmmmmm. (Her tail lashes slightly as she thinks. It makes her back look weird.)

...More wandering, really. Maybe back to the park-ish zones to sit and listen and think.

There's plenty of little green spaces (or, white spaces, with the light dusting of snow) for her to sit and think. The city almost seems designed to encourage that kind of thing, and there are several groups of friends sitting around in the parks she passes.

Soon, she reaches an emptier park that has a nice little café, or something along the same lines, tucked into the back corner and selling pastries. The scent of fresh-baked bread wafts out in a curtain every time someone opens the door.

Just as she reaches it, all of the phones within earshot give the same little three-tone chirp, and many people stop where they are in the street and fish a phone out to look at it.

.....Uh-oh?

If she spoke the language, she might have a better idea of what just happened. As it is, a lot of people turn to start walking in a different direction than they had been going, or speak in excited or dismissive tones to their friends, or begin looking around at the other passers by.

A man emerges from the café with a thermos of something and then pauses in the doorway to look her up and down.

It's always men who

Wrongthought.

Ugh. Ugh ugh. Why did the rift have to drop her IN THE MIDDLE OF A BANK. She can't even be mad at the cops. Invisible giant foxes are pretty alarming.

Nonchalantly enjoying the park here, alert but not concerned. She stands and starts walking in a people-less direction.

The man calls out after her, but doesn't seem inclined to pursue. It's easy enough to slip away between the buildings, and find an unoccupied corner. This one is not a park, but a little loading dock area for a group of stores. There's nothing currently being unloaded, though — just some elevated doors and suggestive tire tracks in the snow. 

She (invisibly) clambers up to a roof and peers over the streets.

It's a shame she came up the back side, since the street-facing side of this roof has some ropes for self-belay and a set of handholds. The roof itself just has some sparse chairs and a big solar panel.

As for the people on the streets ...

It's clear that something is happening. Not everyone is reacting in the same way, but there's a sense of some unexpected disruption to routine. Where before, people were going about their business or sitting and chatting, now people are mostly walking with a determined stride, or discussing in large groups. During the first few minutes, a number of people put red lights in their hair, or change their lights from blue to red. A few minutes after that, the people with red lights have almost completely vanished from the street, although they left in different directions.

The smell of bread from the café is still apparent to her sensitive nose, even from the roof, tempting her.

Another golf cart is visible in the distance, a pair of people stopping people on the street and speaking to them before moving on.

In the distance, she can still hear the normal sounds of the city. Whatever they think is happening, the trains are still running, and people are still working and living.

"... so then we get some spotlights in, to make the right building really obvious," Veramat pitches.

Their colleagues nod thoughtfully. "So we can start with SCOL and LCTL, partially so everyone knows what's happening, and then what? Fox calls?"

    "Now that Smaller Continent Dispatch has confirmed it, I think we can probably get an expert on foxes pretty easily. Þummil, would you make the request?"

"What do we do if they don't show?"

    "We'll need to give them some time, certainly. But it's early in the day — we won't be doing anything that will need an impact payment until the evening. And then we can try again the next day."

"Are foxes nocturnal?"

    "I think they're crepuscular, actually, like wolves. I think it's worth the impact payment, personally. See if Dispatch will authorize the expense."

"Okay, what do we do if they do show?"

    "Senior Diplomat Tatenika and her team are already being flown in, just in case. Their plane should touch down in about four hours."

"I have a biologist specializing in dogs and foxes on the line," Þummil announces.

   "Put them on speaker — Specialist, what have you heard about the situation?"

Uuuuuugh. She probably can't avoid it forever. Also, piecing together more than greetings in a completely new language is a frustrating task.

And now it's a big fucking deal and they're freaking out. Probably tons of screaming behind the scenes.

Uuuuugh. 

Ugh.

She should just cut to the heart of it.

She stops being invisible, stops manifesting her extra clothes that hide her ears and tail, and walks straight down the middle of the street.

Of course, she's actually twenty feet back from where it looks like she is.

That will immediately get people's attention. There's a suserration as people notice and turn and say things to their neighbors.

The people in purple pants hurry up the street, just shy of running. One of them hangs back with the cart, and the other walks toward Weiss's image with her hands empty, and held out palm-outward at waist level. She stops about ten feet away, and speaks in a quiet, calm voice that Weiss might have trouble hearing from thirty feet away.

"Hello. I'm pretty sure you can't understand me, but nod if you can."

Then she slowly places one hand on her chest and says "Kyaris".

A lot of people have their phones out, and are recording the interaction. Back with the cart, the other purple pants person is speaking into their phone and rummaging through a bag in the back.

Illusion which only purple people can see: Weiss cringing away from a blank faced crowd. Then Weiss in a private room with two people in purple, looking tense but not upset.

Kyaris looks at (the illusion of) Weiss, and then over at the crowd.

She turns away and cups her hands to her mouth.

"By the power vested in me by Central River City Emergency Services, I am establishing a minimum perimeter around the alien," she calls. "The alien may possibly be tushot. Nobody not currently working with Emergency Services is permitted to intentionally approach more closely than a hundred paces. Please back away."

There is some grumbling, but people back away from Weiss and Kyaris, giving them plenty of space.

Kyaris starts to slowly walk back toward the golf cart, beckoning to Weiss.

Ugg ugh ugh ughhgggggghhhgh there are millions of at least a couple thousand people paying attention to her and Important People are going to want Answers and ugh.

(The illusion of) Weiss will get in the golf cart, bearing defensive body language. Actual Weiss will run along behind it.

Kyaris and her coworker are both scrupulously careful not to touch the illusion of Weiss. They murmur quietly to each other as they travel.

The golf cart moves slowly, and the crowds melt away in front of it, leaving the street empty and the shop windows full of curious faces. But it doesn't have to travel far, before they pull up to a small building with a solar panel on the roof and a charging spot for the golf cart.

Kyaris opens the door and steps in, holding it open to show Weiss that the room contains nothing but a table, and a large number of labeled boxes on wire shelves. Her coworker plugs in the cart, and then sits back in it, apparently not going to join her in the building.

Yeah alright the actual Weiss will go inside with the illusion. She leans against a wall in the corner even as the illusion hops up onto the table (making it shift a realistic amount) and sits cross-legged, though.

She predicted this would suck and her prediction was correct.

"I'm Weiss. You're- Kyaris?"

The politeness agreement is incorrect, and Kyaris privately doubts that the alien is gendering themselves correctly — but that's a very promising utterance, she thinks! At least the alien is trying, which is something she knows the folks at dispatch were worried about.

Kyaris is totally and utterly not trained for this. But, she's the one who's here, so she'll just have to do her best. She has a personal dispatcher sitting on her earbud, ready to give her updates from the experts as she needs them.

"I'm Kyaris," she confirms, nodding. "You're Weiss?"

She uses a different interrogative pronoun than Weiss used.

Her patience for this started at 'low' and is already going down. But it's not going to go away just because she wants it to.

How about she repeats all the different versions of "I'm" and "you're" she's overheard rapid-fire and then gives a helpless shrug? This shit is like the tones in Atsosi: Completely incomprehensible from the outside.

Kyaris winces. Yeah, that's valid. Probably they should have done what Larger Continent did, honestly. She murmurs a question to the experts in her ear.

She makes a 'wait' gesture, and wanders off into the shelves. She returns a moment later with a whiteboard and a set of colored markers. She props it up against one wall, and draws a picture of a leaf, a muffin, a bird, and a rock.

She points to the leaf. "I eat this. I eat a leaf."

Then she points to the bird. "I eat this. I eat a bird."

Then she points to the muffin. "I eat this. I eat a muffin."

She points to the rock. "I don't eat this. I don't eat rocks."

"What does Weiss eat?" 

"...It's kinda hard to explain..."

Wait, are they doing language learning or interrogation, here? (She thinks of an old meme: Both? Both. Both is good.)

"I eat," she changes languages to Noten, whose numbers make the most sense in her opinion, and counts off fingers, "One, two, three, four, five, kinds of thing."

From left to right: A blank spot. Ordinary food, bread, meat, fruit, etc. Obvious confectionary- Candy, sweet pastries, donuts, cake. Another blank spot. And then, a crescent moon sending down a visible white moonbeam shining on a mini-Weiss.

"Leaf... Bird... Muffin... Rocks... Hmm..."

...She'll take notes in phonetic Noten floating in air for now.

... uhhhh.

Okay, this is normal, actually. Of course the alien eats something weird. The scientists were probably already worrying about whether they would have to synthesize right-handed meals in a lab. Would Weiss have ended up with a nutrient deficiency if þereminia didn't have a moon?

Kyaris thinks for a moment, and then nods and erases her whiteboard. She makes another 'wait' gesture, and goes off into the shelves. When she returns, she has an unfolded space blanket, an uncapped gallon glass jug of water, a rolled up self-inflating inflatable air mattress, and a flashlight.

She sets these things on the floor in front of the table, and then walks to the door.

She grasps the door and opens it. "I open the door."

She closes it again. "I close the door. I can close the door."

She mimes biting her knuckle. "I can eat myself. I cannot eat Weiss."

She opens the door again and steps through it to stand on the step. Behind her, the street is deserted, other than a group of people standing off to one side down the block. "Weiss can open the door. Weiss can close the door. I can close the door. I cannot open the door."

Wait, is "can", can, or may? Does she even have 'eat' right???

She feels her energy ebbing away. Her invisible-self hops up onto the table and joins where her illusion-self is sitting, and then the illusion-self expires without anything seeming to change, reclaiming a bit of energy. They don't seem to have sent in the cops immediately, and she doesn't feel a SWAT team breathing right outside the door with her whiskers, at least...

...She whips up the Noten alphabet in midair and starts pointing to letters and assigning them sounds.

Okay, sure. Kyaris can repeat sounds (and make sure to stand enough to the side that her colleague with the camera in the backup group can stream it to the linguists at the university).

She is not really a languages person, but it's not actually difficult to learn a phonetic alphabet; everybody knows a handful of ciphers, anyway.

She remains standing on the step, in case Weiss decides to close the door in her face.

About half-way into the alphabet, another golf cart arrives, and one of Kyaris's colleagues comes to the door with a selection platter of sandwiches and pastries. He sets it just inside the door, and then slides it into the room, before retreating back to the group of people hanging back down the street.

-Uuuuuuuugh. Frustration!

Illusion: One person talking to her.

Half a dozen rooms with a dozen people each staring at a screen that shows her!

And she herself kind of waves in vague frustration about it. Gods, there was supposed to be a masquerade or something, this is just... It's way too much of a thing, a huge, impersonal system trying to make sense of her and UGH.

Facepalm. Deep breath.

"This is alphabet of Noten. You," vague wave to indicate it's a general you, "have a alphabet?"

Kyaris winces. She ... probably cannot get the entirety of Smaller Continent Emergency Services and all of the linguists, xenobiologists, biologists, and diplomats they've contacted to stop paying attention to the tushot alien. Let alone the people from the First Contact Rehearsal Festival, who are probably losing their minds and also trying to learn this alphabet right along with her.

As the one person who the alien is talking to, she has plenty of leeway on how to handle this. But probably not that much.

Also — she made a tactical mistake, leaving the whiteboard inside. Oh, well. She steps back inside, moving slowly over to the whiteboard in case Weiss interrupts her, and writes out Smaller Continent Official Language's syllabary on it.

"I have an alphabet," she agrees, because if the alien is fed up with their pronouns, she doesn't even want to try getting into alphabet versus syllabary versus abjad versus abugida.

She thinks for a moment, and then writes in the Noten letters she's learned next to the corresponding syllables. There isn't a perfect overlap in the phonological inventories of the languages, but there is a reasonably typical overlap. She points and makes sounds for the rest.

Yay. Alphabet... Sort of.

...This will go faster if they learn Noten. And they certainly seem freakin' eager enough. She pulls a few books from her tail.

One: Parables of the Light Gods, compiled by Lineaus chosen of Erius. Cover art is the eight symbols that were on the gold coin she didn't sell earlier, plus a fox head at the top of the 'wheel'.

Two: Cuisines of the World, by 'General Gourmand', an obvious penname. Cover art is line art of a steaming bowl of ramen.

Three: The Essential Field Guide for your Journey. Foraging, Campcraft, Monsters, Navigation, Foreign Manners, and More. No listed author, the Guild comes out with one every five years or so. No cover art, very rugged and worn softcover copy.

The pages of each seem to be woodblock-printed.

She offers them when she stands to grab the sandwich tray, along with an illusion of a sunset-sunrise-books return and people taking photos of the pages with a phone.

Can Weiss just ... produce books using her weird collective-hallucination-inducing magic? That is so cool.

She takes the books with a nod, backs out of the room, and closes the door. Maybe she will get reprimanded for closing it instead of drawing out the conversation, but ... Weiss was clearly pretty done with this whole thing, and now they have actual books to work with.

She walks over to the congregated group of experts, carefully hands the book over to a runner who will take them back to the library to be scanned, and then catches up on what the various scientists noticed during her conversation and what the plan is now.

The local branch of the Archive has a high-resolution document scanner, for approximately the same reason a church has a baptismal font, even if it's not often called for. The books are carefully scanned and saved to the Archive within two hours. A coalition of cities from across the planet all agree that these books need to be in the public domain, and promise to pay as much money as it takes to make that happen, once they've managed to figure out authorship and copyright information.

Shortly after that, the books go up on the Network. And shortly after that, a noticeable percentage of the population starts trying to learn Noten.

The thing is — þereminia is prepared for this. þereminians are already a little weird about language; it's not uncommon for life-partners to invent a naturalistic language from whole cloth that nobody else knows, and speak it to each other exclusively. It's sometimes problematic to go through someone's effects after death, and learn that they have labeled everything in a completely unknown language. It's not even completely out of the Overton window for someone to invent a conlang to speak while cosplaying and stick to it to the exclusion of any existing language.

þereminia is the kind of world where ... well ...

Every hexade, þereminia has a First Contact Rehersal Festival. On other planets, a celebration like that might involve something like emergency preparedness drills or simulating a disaster. On þereminia, it goes like this:

Six years in advance, just after the last one wraps up, volunteer linguists, anthropologists, and xenobiologists begin collaborating on designing a new alien species and culture, complete with a dominant language. Four years in advance, they publish all of the materials behind a 'spoiler seal'. Everyone on the planet gets the chance to sign up for the next festival, on either the human side or the alien side — although tickets are usually sufficiently expensive that only a limited number of people will be able to attend physically. The people who sign up for the alien side get access to all the spoilered materials, including official language learning materials — they have a limited amount of time to reach fluency before the festival.

Over the next three and a half years, people produce language learning materials, fiction, poetry, personal diaries, etc. all written in the new language. They're all kept behind spoiler seal, to avoid giving anything away. If someone on the 'human' side accidentally sees any of the alien language, they have to withdraw from the event.

Half a year before the festival, everyone on the alien side has the chance to pass an aptitude test: a combined linguistic fluency and cultural knowledge test, to find who will be able to play the most authentic aliens. The top winners are flown to the festival free of charge. On the first day, they simulate a crash landing, or a transporter failure, or a completely successful radio link — and the festival is begun.

All of this to say? Deciphering a completely unknown language from three random books? That's actually a pretty hard challenge, even for the best linguists.

But it's a challenge þereminia is completely prepared for.

By the time the sun rises again in Central River City, a surprising number of people will speak limited Noten. With a stilted vocabulary and a strange accent, for sure, but capable of discussing the basic concrete things mentioned in Weiss's books.

It probably doesn't hurt that she'll also tell a few parables out loud to the camera, with accompanying illusion shows depicting the described events. Some just random ones she remembers, some ones she likes. And Noten labels for characters and objects.

She relaxes some doing this.

They're parables; The stories are simplistic and flat at best, but...

Two clans have a feud over something from the past; It rarely escalates to violence, but it certainly includes suspicion. There is a crop blight, and one of the villages had unwisely planted mostly the same plant. Nobody wants to share, citing their own needs, citing that the others are obviously evil, asking why should their hard work go to another's mouth, but one young man says they ought to, that it is the right thing to do, and stands stubbornly even when everyone is shouting at him, and over time convinces folks, and both villages have a very lean but not starving-lean year, and next year the second village gives gifts to the first - furniture, and stones for repairs - and people, having met each other and done kindness to each other, are reluctant to go back to the old feud again. All it took to save a village was one brave man calling out for what is right.

A group of masons are all building sections of a wall. Two of them just want to get it done and get paid, and go through as quickly as possible, using cheap materials and not digging enough of a foundation. The third repeatedly warns them that they need to be diligent; This wall ought to stand for a century if it's well-made. One of the two masons is shamed but the third just laughs. The two diligent masons then tear down the lazy one's work and re-do it themselves, leaving the third mason to collect some of the reward for doing nothing. But the people hear this story, and nobody wants to hire the third mason, and he has trouble getting work for years. And when the monsters come, the walls held beautifully. It was because of hard work done properly that all was well in the end, and of course, those who did good work were paid fairly and those who did poor work were paid fairly, and less, in the end.

There once was a sorceress who had magical control over water. She could command the rain to start or stop, if there was any water in the clouds above. She could hold back a river, at least for a short time. She could turn water into a stream so thin and powerful it was like a sharp blade. She lived in a tower on a hill, and would fly out on wings made of mist to help the people. She stopped rains from falling where they were not wanted, and guided them elsewhere instead. She used the might of water to carve canals and irrigation channels. She drowned and cut the monsters of the woods who had hungry, evil designs on the people. She was beloved by most, and utterly miserable. Rarely was she in her tower home, her comfort-place... And one day, when she returned home, a group from a nearby town, angry over imagined slights, and fearful, and jealous, murdered her in her sleep. The fox goddess, Tamamo, laughed at the sorceress's misfortune and lamentations, and offered her the chance to become a fox-spirit instead of returning to the great wheel of reincarnation. The sorceress accepted, and became a fox, and spent a long time healing from her mental wounds, and eventually was happier than before now that she did not have guilt and duty weighing on her.

"...I'm not this person," she makes sure to clarify. "This person might not be a person and is just words. All of these people are just words."

Well, the fact that the illusion-illustration of the sorceress doesn't look like her makes it pretty clear, probably.

The gathered people follow along with her parables as best they can. For some of them, (including Kyaris, who is currently playing the role of sitting within polite conversation distance and looking attentive) this is not very well. Others do a bit better, and start piecing together enough words to have guesses at what she's saying.

There's a lot of quiet coordination in the background. The linguists providing best-guess translations, the diplomats talking about why she's here, and the Emergency Services personnel — whose job it is to suspect the worst.

"Look, let me just lay the facts out," one of them back at dispatch says. "She comes here and doesn't make contact with us — she sneaks away and tries to go unnoticed. When we insist on tracking her down, she shows a vision only to Emergency Services personnel implying that she doesn't want to deal with crowds but that she will deal with us. Several of her stories mention monsters, but they're not about monsters; the monsters are just sort of a background fact of the stories. And then her last story is about a powerful fox-magic-user who protected a group of people from monsters, even though they didn't know she was protecting them, and even though doing so made her miserable. Then those people interfered, and she went away, and presumably they got eaten by monsters."

They spread their hands to emphasize the implicit point.

"And she says that she isn't the woman from the story, the linguists think, but then why tell that story specifically? I think she's trying to talk around something dangerous. Either a literal monster, or a metaphorical 'monster' that we don't know we need protecting from and that she's here to fix."

There's general nodding around the table.

    "When you put it like that, it does make a certain amount of sense. We should see if we can get Kyaris to confirm — see about having the linguists put a set of questions together."

    "And halt nonessential movement into and out of the city. She appeared here, and we don't have the manpower to establish a perimeter around the whole city — she had to go looking for whatever it was, she didn't encounter it immediately, so it might have gotten out of the immediate area. But we can at least establish a city-level quarantine, just in case."

"I think the Disease Eradication Coalition actually already set up a medical quarantine, but we can add to it, for sure."

    "Okay — so let's think about what to ask specifically ..."

And when Weiss reaches a stopping point between stories, Kyaris gestures for attention, and phonetically repeats the prompt from her earpiece.

"Do follow a monster you?" she asks. "The people in this village do pay what is fair of finding a monster."

"...Eh? No, no monsters here. They..."

She stands and leans out the door for a moment, focusing her senses and taking a deep breath, ears pivoting around.

"No monsters," she says confidently. "No monsters in... How fast a person can walk for two hours. The stories about monsters because there's kind of a lot of monsters on Tirra. The gods... Uhh... I hate how ten thousand people are going to over-interpret everything I say but whatever, ugh... Also this is a city, not a village. I am here by accident - accident is: Oops, I dropped that! - I thought it would be fun so I let the accident happen. If I go back to that bank I can try to poke at the rift more and see what it's up to. Eh... Rift is... A tunnel between worlds. They just happen sometimes, kitsunes can go through them the best. Monsters are really bad though, so good idea to worry."

She's using illusions to help with this probably nonsensical string of Noten words; Including two different green-blue-white marbles, and the sun inching across the sky to demonstrate 'hours', and so on.

... yeah, Kyaris got none of that. She really hopes the linguists are doing better.

She feels kind of useless, honestly. She signed up to be a community mediator, not play first-contact face with an alien. She is using exactly none of her job skills except having nonthreatening body language. Well, at least the actual diplomat is getting here in an hour or so.

There's a brief pause, and then they give her another utterance to relay.

"Is a kitsune you?"

It really sucks that she's not having fun either. Sheesh...

Nodnod. "Yeah. I'm sorry, none of this is very fun, is it?"

Weiss is really extraordinarily expressive. She thinks it's the ears. Kyaris has an easier time reading body language than a lot of people do — and an easier time projecting it, for that matter — and she is pretty sure that Weiss doesn't want to be doing this. Which seems like a pretty serious problem, honestly.

She engages in a whispered conversation via her earpiece, and a moment later the linguists have a new utterance constructed for her.

"The third mason: he is reward for now and poor for years. Our language: shortsighted. Village with all the same crops: shortsighted. Miserabling you is shortsighted," she explains.

"You are kitsune. We are human. A human is miserable —"

She flips her social status light to red and mimes cringing away.

"— they tell the humans, the humans return away. The human lives alone."

She flips her social status light to blue and straightens up again.

"The human stops is miserabling, the humans return. You are kitsune. Is stops miserabling you a human stopping? Is stops miserabling you a different stopping?"

"Yes, no... Don't know how to say."

You know what? Fine. They're using it as a legible symbol, that people switch in and out of, not as some kind of disability marker, so. With a dramatic stamp of her pawfoot, her clothes sprout streamers and highlights of red all over.

She goes and drinks some water and paces the shelves, tail lashing in agitation.

Kyaris closes the door on her and walks away.

Ten minutes later, she is on the phone with the someone from the central office quietly yelling at them.

"I told you she looked uncomfortable. What is the very first guess about the situation I made? What was the first thing I said? You hear that there's an invisible alien and the idea that they might be tushot doesn't make it into your top three guesses? Yes, I know that she — That doesn't mean — No, don't hand me off!"

"Mediator Kyaris. I think that you have had a very stressful day, and predict that you will regret speaking like that to Coordinator Varmin when you've had time to reflect. But — you have done a good job. Speaking to someone with no shared cultural context is hard, and you've managed to get our guest to tell us about several of their needs that we would otherwise struggle to accommodate."

Tatenika's voice is simple, elegant, and compelling.

"Diplomat Tatenika! Ma'am!" Kyaris exclaims. "... yes, you're probably right. You're not going to try intruding on Weiss until she opens the door, right? It's just —"

"Don't tell your oragami instructor how to fold bedsheets," Tatenika jokes. "No, we'll set up in the area, but I have no intention of damaging the rapport you've been able to build so far. Go report to your local coordinator and see what they want you to be doing. I suspect they'll tell you to go home and rest, but that's not my call to make."

"Yes, ma'am," Kyaris agrees. "And ma'am ... good luck."

"Thank you, Kyaris," Tatenika says — and whether it is genuine sincerity or thousands of hours of practice Kyaris can't tell, but she feels reassured. Tatenika hangs up the phone, and then turns back to her assistant with a hastily constructed set of Noten flash cards.

"Okay, Mevet, I think we have time for one more pass before landing —"

And so they leave her alone with the sandwiches and the shelves full of supplies. If her ears are sensitive enough, they might be able to hear the sound of people going to work outside, but otherwise nothing will disturb her.

Are they building a fucking facility around her? This she has to check out. Invisibly. Taking the time to cover the door with an illusion of a door that's not doing anything.

It pricks her paranoia.

They are constructing a series of the kind of white multipurpose tents that you often see set up as mobile shelter for unexpected or temporary operations. The tents are opaque, but she can see things being brought on carts and unloaded, including:

• Tables
• Computer equipment
• Big boxes with a purple circle surrounded by some writing stamped into it
• Several beds
• Several large fans
• A larger collection of sandwiches
• Sunlamps

Notably the tents are not blocking off the street, or even her door — although she can see some people in white, puffy, all-concealing clothing setting up some kind of barricade at the far end of the street. Someone is also up on the roof of a building a few doors down installing a very big spotlight pointed down at the street, with a bunch of different fabric screens that can be swung around under it.

...Ugh. What the hell is up with the spotlights, did they misinterpret 'moonlight' as something completely different?

She spends a few minutes sniffing around for gunpowder. Or, she guesses, laser guns?? Anyone acting cop-ish and not FEMA-ish, really.

Nope, no gunpowder. There are two people sitting up on the roof of a building with the potential ability to cover the whole area, though. They have megaphones, and what Weiss may or may not recognize as paintball guns.

They're also wearing fancy purple hats and seem pretty at-ease.

The attitude of people on the ground varies, of course, but there's nobody whose attitude shouts cop. There is one person dressed in a bodysuit with very thin black, purple, and gold pinstripes who carries a clipboard and watches everything happening closely. But they're unarmed, and nobody seems to defer to them, even if they don't stop them from walking around and inspecting whatever they wish.

...She's shutting down a whole fuckin' section of a city with her presence.

Back into the random storeroom, open-shut the door, try to take a nap, fail, eat sandwiches with some chili powder from her tail of holding's held spice jars on top.

Then she'll 'peer out of the door curiously' for real, clothes no longer en-reddened.

Outside, the street has finished its transformation. The tents are mostly quiet and closed, although she can hear that there are people inside them. The spotlight is on, and bathing a random section of the street in bright sunlight-spectrum light. A handful of people are trying different cloths in front of it, tinting the light in different ways and making measurements with a hand-held instrument of some kind.

And directly in front of her door, sitting at a table with a tablet, a notepad, a whiteboard, and a smoothie is a beautiful woman in a floor-length sparkly purple dress. She has laugh lines around her eyes, and somehow manages to give the impression that even though she's just sipping a smoothie and taking some notes, that she is someone to listen to.

When Weiss opens the door, she looks up and smiles warmly.

"I'm Tatenika," she says. Her accent is noticeably better than Kyaris's. "It is fun that I am here and you are here, Weiss."

Ahh, a CHA-build person. Figures.

"Hey, I don't know how much your ridiculous eagerness has translated yet. If you're trying to make artificial moonlight over there it's not going to work, it has to be the real moon. Actually, it might have to be Tirra's moon. I dunno. But any of the five, technically six, things is ... sufficient, is good enough, I'm not going to get moon scurvy or whatever. Kyaris okay? Oh shit I just threw a lot of words at you all at once, pausing now."

She shakes her head and takes a deep breath.

Tatenika listens closely. She takes a moment to respond (someone is confirming her translation through her earpiece), but she makes it look natural.

"There is a moon here. It might be good for you, it might not be good for you," she replies. "We have food to share, so that is good."

"Kyaris is good — she is a ..."

Tatenika pauses and considers how to phrase it.

"Kyaris is good. She is in her tower. Kyaris is a: humans are fighting, suspicious. Kyaris talks to them. Humans stop fighting. Goodest in city. I am a: humans are suspicious, don't share, don't be fair. I talk to them. Humans share, be fair. Goodest in world. I hope I am a talk to kitsune, kitsune and humans share, kitsune and humans be fair and good."

So probably about as fine as can be. "...Okay. Tell her I'm sorry? You want 'best', not 'goodest'. I kind of wish I wasn't such a big deal. This was supposed to be fun, go to new places, see new things, not... Be important. I'm not the water sorceress but I am a little like her, 'there are people I could help a lot by doing hard things' is... Bad."

"I talked to Kyaris. I told her she did a good work," Tatenika reassures her. "I do not think she wants your sorry, but I will tell her. Being important ..."

She shrugs.

"The humans, we were alone. We were alone and lonely and wanted to find our neighbors. And now you are here. You can't not be important to us. But your helping ..."

She makes a deliberately uncertain face, and wiggles her head a bit.

"Maybe you can helping us, maybe you can't helping us. Maybe we can helping you. We want the helping. Everybody wants a helping. But you helping us and miserabling you is not fair. Right now, we don't want the helping. Right now, we want the meeting our neighbor."

"...You know what you should do, if you all really have to make such a huge deal out of it, get people to make sweet food," pastry-cake-chocolate illusion, "Special for me. It's magic, like the moon, so it's hard to explain, but the more they care about people liking their food, and the more they try hard to make it the best, the better it is for me. I will say how good it is. Maybe people compete for the best? If I have to do this, I might as well do something fun with it? Also, I don't have to block a big road in a big city if there's somewhere I am not in the way."

Tatenika nods, and then half-turns and signs something at a person standing outside a tent.

"We can get sweet food that people want people liking it," she agrees. "And we can find a different your house. But ... the people here?"

She points to the street.

"They want the meeting-neighbors. They not jealous of we have their place. And ... the tiny curses? The tiny curses that washing hands kills? We know of them."

She points down the road at the people in white at the barricade.

"Different worlds, we think they have different curses. The people there are the people that fight our curses. We can find a different house, but they want to keep people here and wash everything, to best know the curses can't escape them and they make people sick."

"Oh. Tiny curses. Germs."

Well, they've seemed surprisingly non-tyrannical so far...

"A quarantine is your choice I guess."

"What more are good and fun for you?" Tatenika asks. "I in Tirra ... I think I want talking to people, eating their food, seeing the towers they have. Other humans want to know the alphabet, tell stories, see the moon, ..."

She leans forward.

"What do kitsune want? What does Weiss want?"

"...I don't really want to talk about it right now." She is blushing slightly.

"...My friends. Maybe places where you put all the amazing things?" She demonstratively puts up an illusion of the inside of the Glass Tower, a museum of astronomy and glassworking and metalworking. The centerpiece was this huge silver orrery...

Tatenika nods and smiles, pleased to have found something they can do for Weiss beyond just ensuring that she doesn't starve.

"We have places for amazing things," she promises. "The city has a small one; you can see it. And when the germ-fighters know the germs have gone, other cities have big ones."

Then she adopts a concerned expression.

"You say there are no monsters here. But ... your book about monsters says there are lots different kinds. If you look at the rift, can you know if monsters can come the rift? And can I tell questions and you tell us how to fight the monsters that come?"

"-Oh yeah, I'd smell 'em from miles away, kitsunes are good at that. I fight cryptids sometimes, it's not like anybody else is going to. You can't really close a rift early, it's... The magic on Tirra is doing it. Honestly we might want to look for a way to yank it open for good, if you want to trade with Tirra? That's waaaaay above my head though."

Tatenika straightens up and looks excited.

"Yes! Humans are lonely without neighbors. A for good rift and people coming from and to Tirra is good. The best! We will pay lots."

A little bit of uncertainty enters her expression again.

"But monsters are bad. Can you ... someone is human, you magic on them, someone is kitsune? And then they good at fighting monsters? Or can you I ask questions, you tell, I know magic, I am good at fighting monsters? Or can you see our weapons, know if we are good at fighting monsters?"

...Here's an image of an m16 in some generic trooper's hands. And a.... Tank? She thinks? It has a cannon, anyway.

"These would kill most monsters. Maybe not cryptids. Oh also I have this," she brandishes the check from earlier, out of a pocket. "Oh, I bet you could learn magic? Human magic. Only Tamamo can make more kitsunes... Probably."

þereminia has not had as much focus on weaponry as some other worlds, but they do have guns and things of approximately that size. Plus, a single, known stable rift, with all other rifts being inherently temporary is basically the best possible defensive situation. Tatenika thinks that the city will probably be able to get a permit for an emergency nuclear device from the Global Minimum Standards Body, worst come to worst.

Tatenika nods.

"We want to learn magic! A human comes the rift, we can tell questions of human magic."

She points at the check.

"That is a ... money-knowing-thing. I don't know the word. Do you want you I make a your-money-is-known at a money-is-known place? And put that in it?"

She glances around at all the activity and preparations and scowls, ears flattening for a moment.

Then shakes her head to shake it off. "I didn't even get to spend it until I figured it'd be better not to keep hiding! By Galasa and Hekosi, the guy I sold them to must be pretty happy with the profit now that they're alien coins, huh?" She chuckles. "Do you not use money that is an object, like coins?"

Tatenika smiles in amusement.

"The trader will get paid a lot," she agrees. "But one of each coin is coming to the city's amazing-things place. But we don't use money that is an object, no. Money is ..."

She trails off and stares into space, visibly composing her reply.

"Money is ... not real? It is like magic pictures. It is in the people, not in the world. Money is like, if I eat that," she says, pointing at Weiss's check, "the money is yours, not gone. Money places work to know where money is, and use those to help know, but the money is in the trading, not in the those."

"Tirra merchants aren't going to like that."

Sigh.

"...I know complaining about it over and over won't help but ugh. I might go somewhere secret if I feel red again. Like, my rift to my place. It's nice to have that and I don't want y'all to be scared if I poof." (She goes invisible for all of a third of a second.)

Tatenika looks concerned.

"Going to your rift is okay. We don't stop people going," she reassures her.

"You can't be not important, but maybe you can look not important?" she suggests. "We want, you tell us if you leave the city, please, so we are not scared you poof. We want you not come to place of city with yellow quarantine pictures. But you can come other places! You can come to city amazing-things place, or the money-place, or the trader's, or the book place. Can you look like not ...?"

She waves a hand where her ears and tail aren't.

"I can mostly, but- Right, this person who only speaks in Notal and gawks at things is definitely not an alien~ Wow~"

Tatenika waves a hand.

"Notal is not hard. In five days, lots of city speaks Notal. And ... we want you to fun. We can pay people look like you, gawk at things, speak only Notal," she suggests.

"...Okay, that would be pretty amusing." She giggles.

Tatenika beams at her.

"Yes! We will do it," she says. "In some days, so people can knowing Notal. Before then ... you want to tell questions? Help me knowing Notal? Look at rift and for gooding it?"

An envoy comes down the street, and sets Weiss's books on the table, now that they've fully scanned and distributed them. They nod politely to Weiss and Diplomat Tatenika, and then turn and head for one of the tents.

Inside, things are very hectic — although from the outside Weiss probably can't tell, since everyone is signing to one another in order to keep the tent relatively quiet. Central River City Emergency Services is organizing:

• A baking contest
• A look-alike contest
• The myriad Notal-learning efforts that have sprung up approximately autonomously
• The re-routing of supplies, both basic and emergency, for a city that is expected to roughly double in population over the next week
• The handling of the quarantine procedures — people are being allowed into the city, but not out, and everyone who doesn't want contact with the alien is being reorganized into a separate district temporarily
• Procuring authorization for static weapons emplacements to put around the rift
• A proposal to the Global Minimum Standards Body about equipping the rift with a last-resort nuclear device to prevent monsters from gaining a foothold
• Preparing language questions for Diplomat Tatenika to ask if she gets a chance
• Preparing magic questions for Diplomat Tatenika to ask if she gets a chance

... and generally coordinating what is proving to be a fairly busy day.

The envoy signs at one of the dispatchers, and then waits while they finish a message, before receiving another assignment and hurrying out the back of the tent.

"The rift is... We know 'maybe' and 'sometimes' and 'it feels like'. We know how to make rifts that go from Tirra and to Tirra... Sometimes. Complicated. Also... A thing I don't want to talk about... Because..."

She collects her books into her tail, thinking.

Shrug. "Because. -Oh! I want to see a map," demonstrative illusion.

Something is off. They have towers, and cars, and all the other modern stuff, but they... Really aren't acting like any country she knows, even if she's been gone for like sixty years...

A map is an easy request to foresee. One is brought out from the tent, and Tatenika spreads it on the table between them:

She points at a point on the eastern coast of the northern part of the smaller major landmass, about half a line south of the big lakes.

"We are here," she says.

Then she taps the center of the southern part of the larger major landmass, near the red line.

"Humans come from here," she continues. "But now we are all places."

...................Yep, USA, Europe, Africa...

There's no way this place is, what, Georgia??????

??????????????????????????????????????????????????

Tatenika watches Weiss's reaction.

"I work for Smaller Continent Uniform Trade Standards Area," she elaborates, since it looks like Weiss is looking for something more. "They are here,"

She draws a shape around most of the smaller major landmass (northern and southern parts), noticeably excluding the more desert covered and mountainous area to their west.

"...But where is... Hrm."

Maybe she should keep mum about the whole 'Earth' thing because there's NO FUCKING WAY the US, what, split into east and west and then the east side conquered Canada and South America? Well, maybe after 300 years, but not 60...

The realization hits her with a sinking feeling. It's an AU. AU Earth. That's... Probably not any weirder than Tirra is. Maybe less, even. Who knows how isekais work, or where that fox jewel came from in the first place...

Push it all back. "Okay, so we are near the ocean?" (Tap the map.) "I hate boats unless absolutely necessary."

Tatenika nods.

"The ocean is ..."

She turns and points over her shoulder.

"It is four days walking, only a little bit by going-places system. But we have going-places things that go through the air, so if you want see Larger Continent,"

She points at the larger landmass.

"You can go in air, not on water."

Ugh, AIRPORTS. SECURITY. PLANES.

"Maybe later."

What did she miss most about Earth... Fast food? The internet?

"...I want to learn whatever it is you're all speaking, too. Maybe learn your board games?" Here's a solid illusion of a chess set, pawns advancing autonomously turn by turn as a demo.

Tatenika peers at the illusion. They have games like it, but she doesn't appear to recognize this one specifically.

She leans back.

"We can learning you Smaller Continent Official Language," she agrees. "You want learning it first, or learning board games first?"

"I'm going to be tense and irritable either way so... Yes. And the, the games that are on the math machines. Those looked fun."

Tatenika nods, and turns to sign some words at the person currently standing just outside the tent.

A few minutes later, the Emergency Services personnel helping coordinate all this have procured a two-player casual strategy game with some simple SCOL dialogue, and a computer to run it on.

Like most þereminian computers that aren't phones, it's a large, boxy model with a separate screen. They run a cable from the tent for it.

The game itself is a turn-based RPG that involves defending against continuous waves of enemies. The enemies descend from the top of the screen, and you can get different resources by successfully killing them. You do this by spending resources to summon and command little minions that you can place around the battlefield.

The game doesn't require fast reflexes. Both players have their own independent turn cycle, with enemies moving in accordance with the turn cycle of the player whose side of the screen they're on, but the two players share resource pools, and can do various other things to help each other out.

Occasionally, the enemy wizard who is generating these monsters comes in to taunt the players (in Southern Continent Official Language), and — although Weiss will probably not see this unless she plays for many hours — the game ultimately ends by noticing and pointing out a cycle of monsters that produces a positive amount of the resource the wizard is trying to get from the players, and negotiating their conditional surrender in exchange for the information. Although you can also just keep playing, and see how many waves you can defeat until an enemy reaches the bottom of the screen.

Like all þereminian computer systems, the data storage is removable, and saving your game for later just involves yanking the data storage out. This particular computer has two data storage slots, so that friends can save their progress on separate media.

The controls are fairly intuitive, although without much grasp on the language, Weiss may have trouble following the logic of which enemies produce which resources. Tatenika has played this particular game before with her niece, though, and will do her best to explain in halting Noten what is going on and provide translations. By watching the resource counters, Weiss might notice that they seem to count in base six.

It doesn't need fast reflexes? Too bad, her APM would be really high. Ahh, Smash Melee, she misses you... This has the vibe of a game that has a lot of interesting and amusing little descriptions on the units.

She tries to ignore how many people are fucking CATERING to her, or at least find it fun instead of IRRITATING.

They can take brief breaks to discuss SCOL. She's bright, she takes illusory notes, but she's also distracted and flighty and not especially motivated to rapidly learn, so progress is far from optimal. Mostly she keeps talking in Notal.

"You know... It's interesting how this one is cooperative, not competitive? So, hm, I think I need to get an ice guy for the bird monster but that uses up most of the blue, are you gonna need blue?" And don't you have more important things to do than play vidya with her?

"Competitive is, the players fight each other?" Tatenika clarifies. "I don't need blue yet; I can use green."

"We have competitive games, but they are ... many people find them less fun to ... one player is good at it, one player isn't good at it, yes? So your first þereminian game, I thinking, first cooperative," she explains. 

Tatenika makes several hundred marks per hour. It turns out that getting people to reach agreements that permit additional trade and more efficient utilization of infrastructure is really economically valuable, and she has the rare skillset to make it happen. So she is paid quite well.

Her time is not the most expensive on the planet; that honor goes to a really alarmingly brilliant research mathematician on Larger Continent. Her time isn't even second or third most expensive on the planet. She is unusual in how she provides value to the world, but not unusual in that she provides value to the world.

And right now, the single most valuable thing she can be doing is absolutely putting their visitor at ease and trying to ensure she'll be willing to share knowledge about magic, rifts, and other worlds later.

"Yeah. Ranked play can get toxic, but a little competition can be fun. When I have more words for it I want to figure out what things cost. Oh!" She produces one of the gold coins. "For the museum, like the other two. You can pay me by weight of gold, but if you want to pay more because it's alien, I won't say no."

"Thank you," Tatenika responds, taking the coin and setting it aside to be picked up. "I will ask what the museum will pay."

"I can say how much some things cost," she offers. "This math machine — computer — cost about 2,0000 marks. A good muffin costs about 4 marks. The amount it pays to live for a year — Universal Basic Income — in this city is about 1,1000 marks. But the cost it takes to live in the city is more than 13,0000 in a year. Outside the city, it is about 4,3000."

She casts around for other examples.

"A robe cost about 530 marks, a meal cost about 30. You can learn it fast. Careful of lightning monster!"

.......And a silver Ecu was worth one??????

"I want to buy raw silver and copper."

Tatenika blinks.

"... yes," she agrees. "How much? For just you, or selling with the rift?"

"I don't know, it's just- One silver ecu got me one mark and that's twenty copper centimes- 32-" Base six, base six... "Which is... You can eat bread and stew for three days."

"Uh."

Tatenika does some quick mental math of her own.

"This is learning me some things of Tirra," she says. "The people there ... mostly they farm? And they do not have machines for digging?"

"Machines are good for digging — they can dig good amounts of down, not many humans need to dig. Machines are good for farming, also, but ... farming is more ... there are lots of bits that are not the same, they need a human to look at them. Also, food must be eaten now, rocks can wait to go the slow boat way. Also, machines can be turning silver rocks into silver better than fires ..."

She does not have the vocabulary to explain modern ore washing.

"Lots of small things, all together is a big difference in price. Years ago, silver costs more. Years ago food costs more. But getting less costs are not the same."

"Tirra mostly does not have machines. More than half of people farm. It is getting better, slowly. There is better magic, there are better roads, there are more boats, there is more metal. A person came through a rift with a hand computer and from it showed people how to make good metal." Behold, a Bessemer converter. "Other people came through rifts sometimes but rifts are always only sometimes so far. A long time ago there was... How much are you telling everyone on the planet? There are things it's not good to tell everyone."

"We are telling everyone ... things about Tirra, and about plans, and about meeting-neighbors process, but not about ... your things that are private things," she explains. "We are telling everyone about monsters, so they can be safe. If there is a thing that is not good to know, we don't have to tell everyone."

Tatenika bites her lip and looks worried.

"There are stories about ... things where it is the knowing of the things that is bad, not the doing with the knowing. Is this a like-that thing? Or is it like knowing how to make a weapon, and if everyone knows there is more fighting?"

She thinks.

"More like the second thing. Maybe a little bit first thing."

Tatenika sets down her controller and looks serious.

"We will not telling everyone, then," she promises. "Is it safe for the Emergency Services people —"

She gestures to the tent.

"— to know? Or should you tell only me?"

"It's probably okay to tell people who are careful and serious. I have to think about how to say it probably."

Tatenika waits patiently.

"People are reading parables of the light gods? The light gods are people who are ... made of magic. 'Praying' is thinking about them in a way that tells them things and maybe also feeds them. They are good people, who want to help. They are not just stories. They are called the light gods, a category of a more general thing that is just called 'gods'."

... oh. She can see where this is going. That explains how a world could have, apparently, occasional visitors with knowledge of advanced metallurgy, and still have a problem with monsters that are vulnerable to guns.

Frankly, it sounds like it might explain what's going on with magic, even, if there's a more advanced alien species that uses it. And Weiss's magic already works here, so they're already contaminated. Fuck.

"Can you ... tell whether praying works? Does it feel different than thinking normally?"

If there's a noticeable difference, they might be able to tell whether the whole planet is affected yet, or whether it's time to make very fast very serious decisions about nukes, depending on how bad the non-light gods are.

"Priestesses, people who are favored by a god, can do god-specific magic. They can definitely tell if they are praying, because the god-specific magic, divine magic, works or doesn't work. Ordinary people can't, unless the god answers them. The next part maybe I say to just you and you choose what to say to other people."

None of Tatenika's panic shows on her face, by dint of long practice. She cuts the hardware switch on her earpiece, and sets it on the table, and then leans in to listen to what Weiss has to say.

She whips up a strong baffle.

"The light gods broke the dark gods into small pieces during a terrible war- War is everyone fighting everyone- A long time ago. The pieces aren't dead and can only be killed very slowly, but they can't do much as long as they stay apart. The pieces are curses and undead and Cryptids. There is a problem sometimes with people thinking, I will take this piece of a God and be strong and tell people what to do! Or I will take these pieces and put them together into a God and the God will reward me for making it! This would be... Really really bad. So we don't talk about it much in case people get ideas."

... okay, that's a lot less bad than Tatenika was expecting, actually. It also smells like a story and not a complete explanation.

She thinks about this for a moment — but actually it's not her job to figure out how to handle these things; it's her job to get information for those people so they can do their jobs.

"We have weapons that can kill cities for thousands of years," she tells Weiss. "Everyone knows how to make them, because they are simple. The people of all the world, the Global Minimum Standards Body, tells people not to make them, and mostly people don't. When people do, the GMSB finds out by watching for weapon-building-stuff and makes them stop."

"Is taking dark-god-pieces like making a weapon? People can see it and stop it? Or is it like praying, and people can't tell if you are thinking, and then poof there is a god?"

...Nukes: Check.

"I think the light gods would be more worried if just praying could bring the dark ones back. I think it's more like making a weapon, yes."

Tatenika nods.

"If you can tell us what it looks like, we can ask the GMSB to tell people not to do it. And they know how to look good and stop people. And, if someone does get a dark-god-piece, we won't do what they say anyway."

"Oh good. Maybe you can find the right people to tell and I'll tell them later. After this heavy talk I'm going to take a break and vanish for a bit."

Tatenika really wants to insist on learning details of the potential unfriendly magical alien empowering process now, but she's worked hard on getting Weiss less skittish, and pushing it probably isn't going to help.

"There is a GMSB Inspector here to look at the meeting you process; you can tell them," she offers. "They wear purple and gold little stripes. But if you want to take a break it is okay."

"...So, the thing is, you want me to explain more and help you all be safe. You're not pressing but I can almost kind of tell. I know. I get that. I am trying to be good at this, and say the things that should be said. It's important. But... You said you don't want me to be sad because of this? I also don't! I am not... Mmmrh... I am going to rant, to talk a lot in an upset way, for a bit, because I know myself and I know that I woke that feeling up and now, I won't calm down until I do. It's not your fault."

Pause.

"Thinking hard about what to do, what is best, what is worst, will this hurt people, is this better than that, do I keep secrets, how do I make people like me, will this be scary, will they like this... I can't do that. I am not a Diplomat," she loanwords. "Nobody sent me. I'm just a girl who spends a lot of time out in the woods, hanging out with friends and killing monsters when they're in front of me. And now a whole city, a whole planet, a thousand thousand thousand people and more, are going - Alien! Kitsune! Aaaaa, excited scared! It's too big! It's too big. I can't think about it. I... Will feel guilty, sad that I did not help or that I hurt someone by not helping, and I will help and help and help and help, fix the big problems, deal with the problems of towers and cities not houses and villages, I was suffering to help people who I'd never meet, making decisions that can help or hurt a thousand people at once, agonizing over whether I did it right or I could have done better, until I was tired and miserable, until I cannot think anymore, until I feel so sad and worn-out that I go - wear red in the forest for twenty years. I did that. I tried too hard, and broke myself, and... I know not to do it again."

She grabs her ears and rubs them some, some kind of stimming, then looks like she's feeling self-conscious about it and stops, and her tail lashes around instead.

Deeeeep breath. 

"So I'll help. I'll be responsible, and say the things we need to say, and answer the questions, and be smart and careful and- I'll do the basic duty of - trying to do an unknown amount of good to a billion people I'll never meet. But I'll hate it the whole way. I'll only help so much. I'll be perfectly fine and calm and playing games one moment and just - not at all the next. I do a lot better with small problems, personal problems, people I know. My friends, who I'm going to try to go get when I'm more sure you won't set off one of those giant bombs 'cause you're too scared and twitchy. -I don't think you are, I think you're being a lot more sane and calm than you've any right to be, I'm really glad about that and was worried you'd be sending people with guns to try and lock me in a metal box. Which, uh, would not have worked at all, by the way. But you haven't. It's great. I'm not nearly so competent at calming the fuck down and getting over myself. So, I'm trying. I care that meeting people of another world goes well. Just... Only so much. Only ever so much. Tamamo's tails, most kitsunes wouldn't be half as patient, helpful, serious..."

"...Okay, rant over."

Then she takes down the baffle and sighs.

"So... Yeah. It's not a problem now, it's a problem in six months if things go badly. I'll be back in like... An hour, and tell whoever all about the signs."

And then- It looks distinct from when she just goes invisible, it's like she's turning a corner into nowhere- She's gone.

Tatenika's first thought is something along the lines of "Aliens: They're just like us".

She gives Weiss's former location a fond smile, just in case she can still see her, and then pulls out the storage media from the computer to save their game and puts her earpiece back in.

She stands and heads back to the tent, tapping her earpiece to get a dispatcher's attention.

"Kavri, I've got something that needs attention from Inspector Dafika. Could you send them a message to meet me in the temporary conference room? We can kick out the linguists."

Weiss isn't wrong that people are freaking out. It's a big deal! It's worth freaking out!

But there's a þereminian saying, passed down for generations: the first step of every plan is to breathe.

So there are parties, happening. And people speculating about the other world, and discussing how magic might work, and worrying about monsters, and learning languages, and trying to plan for the future in a world where a lot fewer things are certain.

And then there are the people who have decided that these things are too big to deal with, today, and they are just going to quietly continue living their lives.

Volharmi is a train driver. He arrives at work at precisely 13.00 every morning, checks in with his supervisor, and then gets in his train and drives it until his lunch break at 20.00. When there is an emergency, or some other unexpected occurrence, he is required to adjust the schedule of his train. This is fine — there is a defined procedure that he follows in such cases.

On a modal shift, no such event occurs, and his train runs on time until 25.30, when he completes his shift-end paperwork and turns it in just before clocking out at 30.00.

Then, in winter, he puts on his thick coat, and turns left out of the train station. He walks with metronomic precision and arrives at the little tea shop he likes at 30.22, where his phone has already placed his daily order (unless he cancels it before 30.00).

He drinks his tea and eats a muffin, before walking down the connecting street to his apartment.

Today, there is a quarantine barrier half way between him and his tea shop.

It's not that he doesn't understand this is a bad idea. He understands that perfectly well. He comprehends the importance of quarantine — and, in general, following defined procedures. He knows that it is a completely stupid idea as soon as he thinks of it, for several reasons. Not least of which is that the tea shop will be closed, obviously.

But, with the sort of horrible inevitability of a ship hitting an iceberg because the captain has a critical lack of executive function, he does it anyway.

Specifically, what he does is this:

When he sees the barrier, he realizes that they're going to stop him getting to the tea shop. So he scales the building next to him. It doesn't have belay ropes, so he really shouldn't be climbing it, but it's made of brick, so he's got plenty of handholds.

He pulls himself up onto the roof, and looks out at the crowd of gawkers hanging around the barrier hoping to see anything. There are fewer of them on the rooves, so he starts making his way closer.

Emergency Services knows that people will go over buildings if they can't go around them, obviously. There's fencing set up across one roof, with a sign indicating that beyond is a quarantine area, and that entrance is restricted to permitted personnel at ground level.

But there's a lot going on, and it's hard to completely surround an area, and there is not actually anyone watching this specific rooftop in person, although there are cameras.

He approaches the barrier cautiously, checking to be sure there's nobody watching, and then vaults it and breaks into a sprint toward the fire escape.

But even if they can't post people around the entire perimeter, there are two people sitting on a roof near the center of the secured area with paintball guns.

Their job is simple: tag anyone who should not be there with paint, to make it easy to follow up with them and figure out what's going on. So when Volharmi silhouettes himself against the sky, one of the guards takes aim, and hits him with bright pink paint.

Volharmi nearly falls off the roof, but catches himself on the fire escape rail. Paintballs are less-lethal (and the guards are trained to aim for center of mass, to avoid eye damage as much as practical), but they still hurt, and he was already not in a good frame of mind.

He runs down the fire escape, and then into the side-door of the tea shop.

It's locked.

So he turns toward the mouth of the alley, to see if he can break in through the big windows near the front.

Which is when some of the ground-based Emergency Services personnel tackle him.

"Hey, sir, are you okay? Do you know where you are?"

"I — the alien's quarantine, but my tea —" he responds vaguely, looking forlornly at the tea shop from his position on the floor of the alley.

"Ah, okay, I think I see what's happening."

The mediator rolls off of him and offers a hand up.

"You know that you shouldn't be here?"

He nods.

"I know. I just thought that if I ... or I didn't really think this far ahead. Is there a big fine?" he asks, sounding kind of uncertain.

"Not too large, but there is a fine, yes," the Emergency Services worker explains. "Here's what's going to happen: I'm going to lead you over to the temporary area where we're keeping other people who tried to get into the area. I'm going to ask you a few questions to establish your identity. Once we have your identity, we'll send you follow-up paperwork about how to pay your fine or how to make an appeal in the mail. You're entitled to help managing that paperwork if you need it. Then I'm going to call you a cart, which will take you to the hospital to be given a checkup and stay in there for a little while just as a precaution — we don't have any reason to expect that there are dangerous pathogens or that you've been exposed, we're just being very cautious with potentially completely unknown diseases."

They pat him on the back.

"Does that sound reasonable?"

Volharmi gives a jerky nod. It's not how he wanted this afternoon to go, but now there has clearly been an emergency or similar unexpected occurrence, and he has a procedure to follow in response to it.

"Yes, mediator. I ... I understand."

"Okay, great. Come this way, please. Is that your phone you're wearing? I can get your contact information off it if you've set it to be accessible ..."

Above them, on the rooftops, the paintball gunners have reset and continued scanning the area. Most people in the city (and across the world) are handling first contact with grace, excitement, and poise.

For everyone else ... well, þereminia has had thousands of years of practice dealing with a particular kind of person.

The alien is probably hiding in her personal pocket dimension, if Diplomat Tatenika is right, which she frequently is.

(The fact that Weiss has a personal pocket dimension has caused some amount of envy among the staff.)

So now the Emergency Services people finally have a chance to get caught up. A few minutes after Weiss leaves, things calm down a lot. A bit later, things have reached a holding state. A lot of people go off shift, and sleep in dormitories set up in the commandeered buildings inside the perimeter. Other people double-check the supply caches, food, and other preparations. The Director of Smaller Continent Emergency Services puts out a global press conference with an update.

And a very serious person in thin vertical gold and purple pinstripes listens to Diplomat Tatenika's explanation.

"I see why you want to bring this to our[ex] attention. I will send a secure update to the Body, and remain available on-site."

"Thank you, inspector."

She stands, and makes her way toward the back of the tent.

"And now, if you'll excuse me — I'm going to go rest myself, until our guest returns."

She hangs out in her little patch of Woods, hugging her own tail and feeling like an idiot. Like a zoo exhibit. Like a criminal about to be shouted at for impossible to foresee mistakes and transgressions.

It feels like none of this is going how it's supposed to. Really, her mistake was not being invisible when going through the rift... She could have had fun and explored, if there wasn't immediately a Big Fucking Deal.

Or was it? Can she really say that she made a particular mistake at a particular time if she didn't have a plan or knowledge coming in? And video games are exciting, and there might be TV shows and fanfiction and-

-And something something the value of silver collapsing and fucking up peoples' savings, and maybe whatever abstract follow-on improvements come after don't come for the poorest soon enough. It's not like she has a clear picture of economics. Just a vague notion that it exists and involves supply and demand and maybe a stock market.

Gods. Illumine, I hope this mess turns out okay. Otena, help me see to the heart of things. Hekosi, we're tiptoeing on the precipice, can you see?

The gods do not answer her. Usually. Today, she gets - A hug. A smile. A firm nod.

That calms her down. Haah. They're real, she knew that, but knowing and knowing, huh? And if they're usually quiet, they're mostly just respecting her wish not to get too involved...

All you can do is your best. And she is being responsible, distributing warnings so people don't get themselves killed by a Runner or a Slickling or a shard of darkness and hatred. She doesn't have to be the blazing statue radiant, shining with burning light and holding the sword aloft. She's no Galasa. After all, the comet's tail is a result of it slowly, inevitably burning up... She can just be a fox, or a girl, or a foxgirl, sometimes. And cry. And nap. And play vidya. And that's fine.

Everything's fine.

Weiss takes after Tamamo. She can be having fun, and then cry moments later, and then be over it just as quick. Mercurial foxes indeed.

...She's kind of pissed about the price she got for those silver ecu, though. The scrooge is strong within her.

She'll... Not try to take a nap again, it doesn't seem that much more likely to work now than it did before, but instead she wanders the interior of her Woods and tries to find the place deepest inside her that leads Home. It's still there, far away but reachable, an escape and return if she ever tires enough to walk it. Then she paces the edge of her Woods and starts feeling around the metaphysical surroundings, the Spirit World.

There... Almost isn't one. Just a whisper thin possibility, faint streamers leaking in from the Rift. A hint of potential, the scent of deepest sleep that might not ever awaken, and only that much because of her, and because of the rift's touch. Huh.

And if she goes - sort of up again, further dreamwards where time and space and material have even less hold... There's only her, and the rift, warbling and fizzing at the edges. She could go through easily enough from this half-real place in the Spirit World. That's what kitsunes do. But she shouldn't go back to Tirra just yet. Not without explaining. And getting trade goods.

...A terrible curiosity strikes her, and she has to poke it. Can she even make it more solid, more real? It's like normal dream gateways in Tirra's healthy, awake spirit world, but ten times louder and brighter. Reaching out to nudge it feels like trying to touch a hot stovetop: Something tells her to not. But she's going to anyway. Just... Not directly. Instead, sort of... Form a sort of energy net to drape over it and... Tug at the edges a bit... WOAH NOPE STOP that wobble looked kind of dangerous.

(In the material world, a distorted low warbling tone sounds in the air in the bank lobby for five seconds before trailing off)

...She needs Megi and Tessa and Sinnah to attempt this. Sinnah, at least, will love this place, it seems like a great opportunity for making money. If they tolerate her absurd bluntness.

She'll reappear somewhere very close to where she disappeared soon after, looking slightly sheepish.

The street isn't empty — there are still a few people walking up and down it on various errands — but a lot of the hustle and bustle has calmed down. This is now a temporary structure setting in for the long haul, not being rapidly constructed.

The table is still where she left it, although Diplomat Tatenika has left. Instead, a person of indeterminate gender is doing a slow martial art near the table and listening to an audiobook.

(þereminia doesn't believe in forcing people to stand around doing nothing, when they need someone to wait.)

When Weiss appears, they straighten up and tap their phone to turn the book off.

"Hello, ma'am," they say, because they haven't learned Notal honorifics, but Đorvat feels too awkward not to include any honorific at all. "It is good to see you. Do you want I to get Diplomat Tatenika? Or some food? I am, uh ... my right-now job is waiting for you and getting things for you. Or talking! But I am not a Diplomat, so my talking is, uh, not the best."

Đorvat is fairly certain that leaving a relatively junior and unskilled staff member to wait for Weiss is a statement of some kind. But, at a certain point, everything Diplomats do is a statement, and arranging for someone else to be waiting here would presumably also be a manipulation, just in a different direction. They've pretty much resolved not to worry about it and just focus on their job. They don't have enough experience to choose a specialization yet, but this will probably look great on an application to specialize as a Mediator.

If they don't offend the alien.

"-Hi. I talk to Global uhhh guy?" Here's a patch of pinstripe like UN inspector or whoever he was was wearing, displayed on air.

Ðorvat nods.

"Yes, we go this way."

They lead her into the tent, and over to where the GMSB Inspector is sitting at a desk and writing in a notebook in their exceedingly recognizable suit.

Shavolhan stands as they approach.

"Good to meet you, Weiss. I am Inspector Shavolhan, of the Global Minimum Standards Body."

Srsbsns mode. "I think I am supposed to tell you about the thing I talked to lady Diplomat about, and how to see when people are doing bad things with them. May I do a magic thing to make it so only you can hear?"

Shavolhan nods gravely.

"Yes," they agree. "And I will keep it private except from the GMSB."

Baffle. It looks like a slightly gray blurry sphere around them, partially intersecting floor and ceiling. It muffles everything to white noise.

"The fragments of the dark gods have cursed and poisoned the land of most of the world of Tirra. It is very dangerous to live outside of cleansed areas, and civilization there is generally limited to hunter-gatherers. Priestesses of the light gods can feel dark god influence most of the time. So can kitsunes and some sorcerers. There are wizard spells that can detect dark god power as well. If a person has dark god power on them, they might be affected by an - Incorporeal," she remembers that word from the game, "Monster. Or they might be doing dark god type magic, or they might have cursed objects that might combine into worse monsters and eventually combine into a dark god. There are ways to conceal dark power, but all of them that I know about will fail under a close and careful wizardry scan with the spell called 'Purity Array'."

The inspector nods.

"Are all cursed objects ... Do they all combine with each other? Or are there different kinds? Are there things other than cursed objects that make dark gods?" they question.

"...I am not the one who knows the most about this. I think all cursed objects, creatures, and places can combine. There are different kinds. Mostly they only do it on their own over a long time. But people who do cursed magic can do it faster. They are very dangerous. There is a thing that happens sometimes where a cursed magic user goes into the wilderness and gathers a lot of cursed energy there and then comes back very strong. The light gods warn the inquisition when that is happening. -There is an organization associated with the light gods called the inquisition whose job it is to look for cursed magic users and cursed objects and break them."

The inspector writes this down on their notepad. If Weiss happens to see it, she'll note that it appears to be in a completely different script than the other writing she's seen around here.

"If we put a 'Purity Array' at the rift and are very careful, will that keep dark god fragments out?" they ask. "Or can the curses, uh, leak? Go without a person or object taking them."

"I know you want to be more sure than just me saying things but I am at least four in five sure that curses won't come here anywhere except the rift... Priestesses of Erius are happy to work for just money as long as the work isn't- Law breaking? Or hurting people? I think money and trade is holy to them. Also I just thought of this, but sometimes even ordinary people not doing magic or being a kitsune can feel cursed energy. I've heard it described as - knowing something is a bad idea, or a place feeling unhealthy, or a place feeling too quiet and still, or a bad taste and feeling on the skin, or a place feeling angry and resentful..."

They record all of this as well.

If they just announce this information, lots of people are going to start spontaneously imagining that places around them are cursed, which sounds disruptive. Maybe they can recommend to the Body that they release a set of different similarly-vague environmental descriptions as part of surveying for any magic already present, and see if there are statistically significant correlations. That decision is well above their head, though.

"Thank you. Is there other things you want to tell us? Or questions I do not know to ask, about this?"

"I'm trying to think of them... This is pretty important. Oh. A bit more about cryptids than will be in the book. Each is unique. I've fought... Eeeeeleven? Eleven, yes, and you can guess that each will have at least two obvious magic abilities, two subtle ones, and one 'ace in the hole', something hidden and unexpected. An example would be being physically tough and throwing fire as obvious things, and being able to move faster when on fire as a subtle thing, and being able to paralyze people with a look as an ace in the hole. There is usually some kind of thematic link to things Cryptids can do, but the worst part of fighting them is not knowing what they can do. Also, Cryptids are mostly people smart if not very people shaped in their motivations and reasoning. Smart enemies are the most dangerous kind. I will absolutely fight monsters that show up here. But you know, you want to do it yourselves, good on you."

... if some of the monsters are people then this whole situation just got a lot more complicated.

And it raises questions about whether the laws around genocide — the kind of thing they're here to ensure are observed — should come into play or not.

They sigh and pinch their nose.

"If cryptids are people-smart, can they be talked to? Paid to not attack?" they question.

"-Uh. If you try that you'll probably regret it. Fuck! You really have to check don't you though, you can't just accept me going, no don't worry they're definitely all irredeemably evil! Galasa's courage..."

Shavolhan nods gravely.

"We must check, yes. We don't must be careless, but we must check."

They put a hand to their chin and think for a moment.

"If a —" they hesitate momentarily as they try to recall the word that was in her book "— if we send an adventuring party, to try to talk to the cryptids, is this probably okay with Tirra?"

"-I mean. It might not be okay with any specific polity but I don't think Tirra-par-Tirra would... Object... Otherworlders are exciting. The inquisition will be really nervous about trying to talk to cryptids because historically sometimes people do that, decide cryptids are maybe okay and the cryptids use that as a trick to kill a city later, or decide that if the cryptid hurts those guys over there it's not hurting us... There are a lot of things you shouldn't trust on Tirra. Almost all kitsunes are mostly nice-ish or at least not very mean, more 'steal bread' or 'haha I tripped you' than 'I'm going to kill someone'. But a few of my sisters are very bad, cruel, lying and saying things that hurt and doing magic that changes people's minds, makes people attracted to them..." she taps her head, "...I don't know why Tamamo tolerates them. But it is absolutely reasonable to verify things."

"I'm glad you agree," Shavolhan tells her. "You are ..."

They don't know a good equivalent of the SCOL word 'honorable'.

"... good to trade with, and I want us to be just as good to trade with for you. I will send my notes," they say, gesturing with the notebook, "to the Body, and they will think about how to make it safe for people here, and also fair to everyone, and how to verify this."

She sighs and rubs her forehead.

"Doing the right thing is annoying. And tiring. And apparently your job. You're going to want magic things in addition to technological tools if you send an adventuring party to Tirra. I know a kitsune named Sinnah whose best life involves sitting in a room forever making magic things and being paid a lot of money for it. I bet she'd love this place for the chance to do that alone."

And rubbing the rest of her face now too.

"I like my job because — someone has to do it. Someone has to say, we cannot agree on all these things, but we can agree on a few things, and we can do those things well," Shavolhan tells her. "But it is hard, sometimes. It's okay; we have time to do meeting Tirra well. You are helping."

"I'll drink to that," she says, slightly muffled by her hands. "Except, that usually means alcohol and I don't like alcohol so I won't, actually, drink to that. I think we're done here? For now? And someone else would be better for my next questions?"

"Yes, I think we are done," Shavolhan replies. "Thank you again."

They poke experimentally at her sound baffle.

She dissolves it, then looks around for the Diplomat or anyone color-coded precisely like her.

Đorvat is still here, and presumably still tasked with assisting her.

Down the hall, however, she can spot someone in a long purple dress walking by.

Hovering indecisively near noticing range sounds AAAH so she will find a corner and listen to the rolling babble of conversation and try to pick out sentences or words in this language.

Đorvat will hang around nearby, just in case.

But otherwise people seem content to let her stand in the tent and listen, if that's what she wants to do. She can hear the low voices of dispatchers coordinating over the phone, and slightly further away a more casual conversation between some people who are off duty but still on-site because of the quarantine. After a moment, she picks up Diplomat Tatenika's voice coming from the other direction, although she seems to be talking to herself because there's no responding voice.

?? Why

No

She is a fox now

A red-wearing fox

And going back in the warehouse

And hanging out there following individual voices and trying to understand words

Well, they definitely aren't going to bother her in that case.

Over time, she can gradually pick up more words and get the cadence of the language. It doesn't help that things seem to conjugate by formality, and also that half the speakers are signing, but she can make some progress on learning it.

If she stays in there long enough, some of the people will wonder if they offended her somehow, and Tatenika will end up back at the table in the street with a tablet, in case that helps. But as long as she stays red, nobody is going to try and approach her.

Ughhhhhhhhhhh whyyyyyy is she liiiiiiike thiiiiiiiiis.

Because being found out as a kitsune has, historically, not been a prelude to a good time for her?

Because the attention of a whole city usually involves suspicious stares and whispers?

Because she can practically FEEL how thousands are shifting subtly in response to everything she does and UGH?

Normally she would go hang out with sisters or just go nap in the woods about this kind of spiral. THIS TIME she is wondering if the locals will WORRY if she vanishes for days. Is it unfair to them? So many hopes and dreams riding on this... But... And she's still mad about the silver coin. It's stupid. She doesn't endorse it, it's just a few ecu, but, she's mad.

She wants a hug. But she doesn't KNOW these people except the cop and Tatenika a little bit and it'd be weird. They'd get someone to brush her tail but she can't just ASK someone to BRUSH HER TAIL what if they have more important things to do. And it'd still be a little weird if less so.

She's still inside, but a little fairy-light ball that's linked to an illusory screen in front of her (another of her long list of tricks) will go float to Tatenika and say in Notal, "I'm anxiety spiraling. Also I'm irrationally upset about those centimes and ecu I sold. And want a hug but it would be weird. There's too many people. It's less weird if there's... If it's... If I know if it's weird to you? Is there someone who's - a hair person, who could brush my fur and it not be weird?"

Tatenika considers this.

"Well — I almost don't know what you mean by 'weird to me'. This is not what I usually do? I usually lead discussions and parties. Today has been a weird day," she answers. "For the centimes and ecu — now that we know they are foreign coins, and they have ... history ... the shop is probably willing to give you more money, to be fair."

Left unstated is that Tatenika will absolutely put pressure on them to make it up to the friendly alien if necessary.

"For the hair person — do you want a person who is paid to brush hair? Or a person who wants to brush you but isn't paid to do that?"

"A deal is a deal and it would be unfair to demand more but my emotions don't believe that, and also I feel stupid and greedy for being stuck on it. Don't bother the guy please. I'm... Not sure about the brushing. I don't like upsetting people who haven't done anything wrong, and people will be upset by upsetting me but I don't know how to not be upset and it's a negative feedback loop. I think people who work with hair and get paid for it are less bothered by - quiet - and people who want to brush me might want to talk to me and that might be good or bad bad bad. Also making everything here about my worries instead of - country things- I should talk about magic or the Kingdom of Notal or something instead..."

"We do want to talk about magic," Tatenika admits. "But — there's a SCOL saying: 'You cannot ask the water not to run out.' It means ... you can only do what you can do, you can't do what you can't do. Sometimes you don't know what you can't do, and trying is good. Sometimes you know what you can't do, and trying is like asking a cup not to empty of water. You have helped. Let me find a hair person until you can help again."

She sends for a hairdresser.

"Talking about things that aren't about me might be easier... But later..." (And then the wisp winks out.)

She de-reds her outfit (her fox shape usually wears a neutral black/brown/red highlights sort of cape-robe-thing that doesn't get in the way of motion but still looks somewhat classy) and produces her favorite brush from her tail of holding and curls up on either the street or a convenient table with it sitting nearby. Her tail is almost as big as her torso, rather floofy, orange with a white tip that sways slowly even as the rest of her radiates slight discomfort.

And, in a few minutes, a hairdresser arrives and begins brushing out her coat with practiced strokes and a calm demeanor.

The rest of þereminia is not being calm.

The first priority for a lot of people was using Weiss's books to learn Notal, but that did unavoidably mean reading what those books said, and what they said is fairly wild, by þereminian sensibilities. There's a good deal of uncertainty around how much of Parables of the Light Gods is fictional — a set of morality tales, perhaps — and how much is meant to be taken literally. Smaller Continent Emergency Services put out a press release reminding people that it's still early days, as far as learning about their dimensional neighbors go, but that hasn't stopped some people from jumping into the books with both feet.

So, in reading these books, they find:

(She briefly tints her paws, face, haunches, and the base of her tail red, to indicate which areas should be Not Touched.)

The Parables of the Light Gods is... Full of short stories, some with incredibly obvious moral lessons, some with much more subtlety. The stories themselves range from a few paragraphs each to one that's ten thousand words long- "Farmer's Requiem". 

Each one is prefaced by a short description of where it was sourced from, who told the story, sometimes a personal message from said storyteller, and context about the people or region that is probably supposed to be informative to a native. Each one is mostly peppered with references to a specific Light God. Each one has, after it, a somewhat rambling philosophical essay by Lineaus, who gathered the anthology, of what he thinks the intended moral lesson was, and some notes on common variations of the story. He always ends the essays with a question. There are clearly many layers of references and meaning present that are hard to grasp with a tentative understanding of the language. In particular, the Light Gods are interchangeably referred to by name and by association with a symbol or a description of their most common associated virtues.

Some notable ones include: 

Farmer's Requiem- A simple farmer sees many travelers passing by on an important road over the years. Kings and nobles, heroes and magic-users, merchants and craftsmen, fellow farmers, people of all species and races. They each pass by, have a brief conversation with the farmer, and the text shows the farmer's impression of the visitor, and then they vanish from the story never to return. The farmer never thinks of anyone as 'bad', even when they are shockingly rude. 

Lineaus says: The Requiem is usually shorter, I have included more visitors than usual. The most common read is that 'we should be kind and understanding to everyone, even those considered less worthy'. I disagree- I do not think the story is about how the visitors treat the farmer, but rather what the farmer thinks of his visitors. His guileless optimism leaves no room for resentment or depression. Is he wise or is he a fool for it?

Marching Drums- A young man of age sixteen sees the Army marching past. Their bright uniforms inspire him; Surely if he becomes a soldier, he would not feel sad anymore. He joins the Army but is still miserable. He fights monsters but is terrified. Then he has a divine vision telling him to quit the Army, and he does so, goes home, learns carpentry from a neighbor, and marries someone he knew growing up, and slowly becomes happy.

Lineaus says: This is one of Otena's, saying that glory and appearance is hollow, and connection with others is better than chasing status. Not all are suited to standing in defense of others. Is this at odds with the comet's call, which inspires us to stand firm in adversity? I say not, but will leave the question of why not to the reader.

The Blighted Fields, The Three Masons, and The Tower which Weiss picked out to tell short versions of. The lessons he claims are: To be kind to others, to do hard work now that pays off later, and not to bite the hand that feeds you. Lineaus asks: Which Light God is most present in this story? Does the lazy mason deserve his fate? What do you think Tamamo's reasons for helping the sorceress as she died and not sooner are?

Some short ones:

A little boy finds innocent joy and wonder in mundane moments during an ordinary day in town. Appreciating the little things is good, Ragni's blessings upon you.

An official desperately wants more money but resists the urge to engage in petty corruption even thinking he'd never get caught. Erius nods in approval.

A man commits murder and hides it. Years later he returns to his home town and confesses, feeling guilty. A local priestess says it's not okay to kill, but she forgives him anyway. Illumine means things can get better.

A village welcomes visiting strangers. One of the strangers is a kitsune and engages in a prank spree, making some laugh and some scowl. Tamamo laughs and cries at misfortune and fun, both.

A beautiful parade float that people spent a whole year working on was lost due to one little girl's moment of jealousy and a torch. Alteri tsk's and shakes his head. Creation is always more difficult than destruction.

A lengthy poem about how people are born, grow up, grow old, and die, then are born again, just like the seasons are a cycle, just like the moon is a cycle. Isara's dance continues forever.

The traits of the gods that can be gleaned from all this, roughly, are:

• Galasa, the comet, the call to action and duty and war, the traditional Youngster's Journey, bravery
• Illumine, the cloud, hopes and dreams of a better tomorrow, the feeling that things can be okay, healing
• Alteri, the wind, practical concerns for a practical deity, the satisfaction of well-done work, calmness and inspiration
• Otena, the aurora, family-marriage-love-friends, empathy and sex and the connection to others, relationships
• Tamamo, the empty space between the stars, the moon's lover, the fox goddess, the thin line between brilliance and insanity, between good and evil, between joy and sorrow. The most mercurial goddess. Prayed to for luck. Ascended ancient kitsune.
• Isara, the moon, quiet reflection and consideration, great and small cycles, the seasons/life and death, funerals and spirits
• Hekosi, the eclipse, god of festivals, holidays, the culmination of eons of effort, turning points and choices, prayed to for large projects
• Erius, the bird, cooperation and the social contract, doing good, trade and travel, knowing the costs and values of things
• Ragni, the sun, joy and contentment and living in the moment, the harvest, fertility, protection from disease

With an entire world's worth of people reading these things and reacting (even if only 0.1 of people are excited enough to read them in the original Notal instead of waiting for a good translation), there are a variety of different responses. Some of the most common are:

Why are some of these stories glorifying war? I mean — okay, I guess it's different if they're all fighting monsters. It's really more like an ecological management action than a war. Are you sure you have this word translated correctly? What's the etymology?

Oh boy! A nine-category universal schema to sort people and things into! I'm totally an Isara person, don't you think? Which one are you?

... okay, but is Lineaus being metaphorical with this part or not? Because clearly he treats the story as made up, but he's talking about Tamamo as though she's real?

Ultimately, most of the stories make sense as morality tales ­— which says good things about how likely they are to be able to cooperate with their newly discovered neighbors. But there are enough things that don't make sense to more or less dominate various discussion forums.

Real scholars are mostly working from the much more practical camping and navigation manual in order to extrapolate things carefully. But many people find discussing the "light gods" a lot more immediately interesting.

And, for a few people, they find the idea not only interesting, but distinctly appealing.

Lharmis is perpetually lonely. Not because she lacks friends, or because she doesn't have time to see them, because she does. She's a sterling member of her community, and everyone in her apartment building knows they can always stop by her place to chat. She is a face-recognizer, and almost never gets tushot. She surrounds herself with lovely people, and she loves them.

She's lonely because — well, there's a technical term for it, but she's not a psychologist, and to her it has just always felt as though the "you are alone" button in her brain is stuck on. She will be having a deep, meaningful conversation with one of her friends, and then some biochemical switch flips, and she feels fundamentally and profoundly alone.

It's not a crippling affliction. She lives with it, and takes some pills that help, and she treasures every moment that she can spend with her friends and loved ones all the more for the contrast. She loves hard and deeply.

When she was a child, she was fascinated with Marnesi mythology, particularly stories about the Other People. The idea that there could be a world hidden beyond sight, where helpful spirits would constantly watch over you and do their best to protect you, or even just witness your struggles — it helped her get through some dark times. She knows that they're probably not real. She's not scientifically illiterate. But the thought comforted her then and now.

... and, you know, aliens weren't supposed to slip through rifts between solar systems either.

Maybe there's nothing out there — but maybe there is.

It's her day off, and she reads through Parables of the Light Gods with the hastily assembled reference dictionary open beside it on her computer, and she imagines what it would be like to know that she was never truly alone — that she need only direct her thoughts to a god, a strange magical being, and she would always be seen.

She talks with some of her friends on her mythology forum about the best translation for the Notal word "prayer" is, and eventually settles on the right kind of awareness meditation.

She sits crosslegged on her bed, blinds drawn and lights turned down low, and she focuses her mind on the truth that she knows to the core of her being: that there is nothing more precious or more wonderful than truly knowing another person.

Otena, she thinks, I don't know if you're real. But if you are, I so, so badly want to know you.

There are so many people in the world.

Not just this one. In Tirra as well.

There are so many things to care about. 

There are so many huge and little tragedies occurring, all the time. People tangled up in their own thoughts, and hurting each other because they don't know any better. People who would be good and happy if only they could trust that moment of connection, of empathy and vulnerability.

Mortals would tire of this, doing everything they can and there always being more to do. She does not. She looks and loves and gives and loves and does not stop. One after another. Always more people in need, always more people to connect to, to see, to help.

A man from the ocean is being interrogated in a cold stone box by suspicious-eyed guards, he just wanted to meet people from dry land. That sincerity, that open friendliness, being met with fear- She loves them. But if she whispers in an ear- 

A woman is pregnant and the man who got her that way ran off as soon as he found out. She screams and rages, calling herself a fool, and him a bastard, but it was no crime to want the touch of another. She loves her. She can't help more than a sense of a comforting pat.

A man, a great musician, wrapped up in his own head, neurotic and anxious, sure that nobody really understands the deep and intense joy of practice and composition. She loves him. She tells him that his songs are good- Look, the laundry-lady down the way is humming it right now-

An elderly winged woman is wondering where her long-lost daughter might be and if she ever found the happiness she couldn't at home, not knowing that said daughter is not two miles away, searching for her. She loves them. But if she whispers in an ear-

A woman feels a deep yawning loneliness, even when surrounded by friends, a connection that's never fully complete. Always reaching out and it never being enough, and just sadly accepting that, but reaching out, reaching out- She loves her. She reaches back and shows how lonely all those other sparks aren't, because of her, and how she is appreciated and loved. (This one is more like her than most. A very little bit of her reaches - through, and sticks, with a distant barely-there distracted recognition and appreciation- Is that... One of Tamamo's, it seems? Aww, poor dear, so overwhelmed at the scrutiny. Tamamo, will she be alright? Oh? Well, if you say so...)

A man, drunk, despondent, because he hurt his wife and-----------

Lharmis feels the touch on her mind, of something foreign and gigantic, but so, so gentle and loving all the same.

She bursts into tears.

And when she has collected herself, she knows that she is loved. She knows it like she knows which way is down, like she knows where her hand is in space.

She reaches out to the hospital, of course, because she can probably go off of her medication now.

Their advice is — if your brain just did something weird, don't potentially upset everything by changing your medication. Continue to take it as normal. But if things are still stable in a month, talk to your doctor about it. Here, we can schedule you an appointment, how's about that? Yeah, their schedule is a little full. We're getting a lot of people who are having reactions to hearing about the aliens. Yes, it's all covered under your existing policy. Okay, great, see you in a month.

(The þereminian hospital system is deliberately overbuilt and overstaffed as an emergency-preparedness measure, because people care a lot about knowing medical care will be available when they need it, but that doesn't mean they're not busy. Especially when, predictably, a lot of people are suddenly reporting hearing voices from aliens. It happens whenever there's a new popular fantasy series too, although usually not so badly as this.)

So Lharmis tells her online mythology friends about her experience, and mentions to her neighbors about it, but it's not as though her belief in the power of love is exactly new, so few of her neighbors remark on it.

And the world continues to spin.

Over on the smaller continent, it continues to spin under a hairdresser who finishes working out the last patch of Weiss's fur.

"Do you want a ... you put it in your hair, and the hair is soft and shiny and fluffy?" she asks her, in broken Notal. "Or anything else? I also do, uh, making your finger-knives the same on both sides."

"Finger knives? Hihihihi. Finger nails. Like you use on wood. If you don't mind, yes? Thank you. It's nice to be pampered sometimes... All the fuss is so much, but I'd feel bad if I hid while people freaked out, you know?"

She gets a set of nail files from her bag.

"It's good to be pampered," she agrees, looking over Weiss's nails with a professional eye. "It is ... making the world nice, that people can get relaxing."

She shows Weiss a little card of different nail styles, although presumably she can't read the captions.

"Do you want, uh, just a little to be the same on both sides, or flat or like a circle or like a nail? Like a circle is comfy, but flat is ... showing off and like a nail is, uh."

She makes a face. "Sorry, I don't know the word. Good for hurting people in the fun way? Or yourself?"

"...Huh. Hmm. Showing off like 'I'm very fancy and rich' or showing off like, 'like what you see? Want to see more'? --If you do it to my fox shape it won't be on my human shape. Fox nails shouldn't mean the same thing as human nails, and I want my fox nails sharp because I like the idea and nothing else."

"Flat is showing off 'I'm fancy and rich'," she agrees. She takes the file and starts gently neatening up and sharpening Weiss's nails.

"Because ... it is hard not to catch the corners on things, you see? Probably nobody will think you are being 'want to see more' if your nails are sharp because fox nails are supposed to sharp. It's like nobody will think I am being Prince Taveritik* because my hair is brown, because my hair is brown really. But if my hair was white really and I made it brown people might notice."

* A fictional prince who is somewhat popular to cosplay, as these things go. Also she just likes the show, okay?

"Also people probably won't think you mean anything with your nails because you are a Kitsune, and there are no other Kitsune to say 'this is how it means'. Do you want your human nails to match your fox nails?"

"I feel like staying a fox for now, so no." It's not cheap energy wise to constantly swap, not that she'll say so out loud.

"There's a lot of things like nail shapes that I don't even know to ask about. I know about red now but what else am I missing and is it important?  I don't know."

She switches to her next paw.

"There is a book!" she says. "For people who are coming to Central River City. It has the clothes and the nails and the titles. But the most, uh, important ones ..."

She thinks for a minute.

"Red is important. Not —" she grabs her own breast demonstratively "— is important. Everything else is not important. It is a ... it is fun for people to know you and know how to talk to you, so it is a way to tell them how you want to be talked to without talking. But you can also just tell them, and that's okay. Lots of people, they can't remember the nails, or they have to have them flat to not hurt themselves, or things like that."

"Oh! Do not, uh ..." she mimes spitting. "Do not putting mouth juices on people. That's important. I don't know about," she mimes licking, "though. Maybe it is okay because you are a fox, and animals do that."

"Hihihi, no spitting, yes. I'm not great at languages but I'd like to see the book... I might lick people playfully without thinking about it? If I like them and I'm having fun. A lot of ordinary fox things feel natural for me to do like this, like rolling on my back or taking small things because it's funny, or chasing my tail or hiding and jumping out to surprise people... I will keep it in mind. And not touch anyone in sex ways. I hope those are the same mostly for you and humans from Tirra."

"If they are humans, they are probably the same!" the hairdresser agrees. "If not, it is okay. Things happen and people will tell you. When I have done with your nails, I ask them to send the book. Probably someone can make a Notal book?"

"It will be useful to more people than just me if I can fix the rift, so I don't even feel like I'm asking for something a little bit unreasonable and silly!"

She makes a face.

"The, uh, what was the fucking word ... City ... people ... Government! The government is supposed to give people the visiting-the-city stuff in a language that they speak it," she replies. "So even if you did not ask, they would have to do it. It is just taking time to learn Notal and do the everything."

She sets down Weiss's paw and looks her in the eye.

"But also asking for things that you want is not bad. Lots of people, they have trouble learning that. I spend my life helping with hair, and nobody needs help with hair. We could all be bald! But people want hair, and I want to make them feel good with it, and that is not bad."

She takes her last paw to start work on it.

"When people come to me the first time, for their hair, I many times have to tell them: it is okay. You are not bad for wanting pretty hair."

She takes a moment to remember why she started talking, and then tacks on "... or other nice things that are not hair."

She makes a - not quite a growl or purr kind of noise. It sounds vaguely complaining. More a whine than anything else but also not that.

"...Yeah, I know. I just keep feeling different and having to hit that feeling with sticks, mentally speaking. It gets better when I know people, as a group or as individuals."

"Feelings are hard," she agrees. "It is easy to be nice to other people and hard to be nice to yourself."

She wipes off her file and stores it away.

"Okay! Your nails are sharp. Is there anything else you want? They are paying me lots and by time, so take as much of time as you want. I could ..."

She mimes braiding.

"... if you wanted? Or tell you about clothes, or just talk?"

Gack. Pay. Money. Eaugh ough blergh.

Her ears droop.

"I feel much better already... I'm not sure about braiding my fur though. I've forgotten your name if you ever mentioned it."

"I didn't. I'm Kaþerva," she says. "I usually don't give my name because some people just want silence and doing, but you were a talking person, not a silence person."

She's also a people person, and she can read those droopy ears just fine.

"... I don't know what I said to make you —"

She mimes ears moving down with her hands.

"— but I'm sorry. I hope I helped more than that."

"I'm having scary thoughts about money and paying for things and how expensive - all this - is. It doesn't seem like a thing for you to talk about. And you did help. I might come looking for you again later, Kaþerva! I'm Weiss, but I'm sure you know that."

Ah. Yeah, talking to Weiss about money is definitely above her paygrade. She does hair.

"Okay! Come visit any time, Weiss. It was good to meet you!"

She picks up her bag and makes her way out. She nods at the diplomat as she goes by, and stops in the situation tent to mention that Weiss wants a copy of The Laws and Customs of Central River City.

For the next little while she will pad around the quarantined-off area, appreciating the feeling of nice sharp clicky claws and well-groomed fur. Isn't her tail pretty? And if she's wandering around she feels less like a SPECIMEN waiting for some undecided fate. She's not very directed about it, though. She'll chat with people if people want to chat (in Notal, she's not even really trying to learn SC... Whatever again today...).

Plenty of people want to chat! The medical folks have a plan to lift the quarantine fairly soon, because lots of people are willing to take health risks to get a chance to talk to Weiss and they haven't seen evidence of anything particularly novel or virulent. Mostly, they're just waiting on the city being reorganized to get everyone who definitely doesn't want to take the risk relocated. But for now, there are two shifts of people here, and only one of those shifts is on duty. The others are hanging out in the clear space behind the tent, out of the way of anyone with an actual task, variously talking and playing games.

The most energetic game is something like a cross between corn-hole and a Notal vocabulary quiz — you can score points by either getting a ball through a target with different sizes of hole on it, or by spelling a Notal word correctly given the definition, before your opponent does.

If she walks over to investigate the area, one of the people sitting watching the game will offer her some sweet-and-spicy broth that a knot of people are sipping from paper cups.

Hah. She's a little tempted to cheat with her native-ness, but she'll restrain herself to cheekily answering one vocab-question very quickly and then lapping at a cup of the broth and enjoying the ambiance of fun.

The broth is both hot (temperature) and hot (spiciness), which makes it not the ideal beverage for lapping. But it does warm her up.

Someone discretely checks on their phone whether any of the ingredients are poisonous to foxes, and is relieved to discover that it is probably fine.

After a little while, one of the off-duty Emergency Services personnel sidles up to her and tries to figure out whether she's open to a conversation.

"What is music like, in Tirra?" they ask, after a moment. "How many, uh, —" they sing a note "— are there in a — " they sing a scale.

"I'm not really a music person? That sounds sort of off... Hmm..."

She discovered her ease and flexibility with illusions early on, but all the music she vaguely remembers from two worlds ago is, well, vague...

But she'll illusion up what is maybe a good rendition of some sort of Beethoven... Unless she's rounding off all classical music to Beethoven...

"I have a good memory for sounds, I think because of the brain parts needed to do illusions well, but I don't know things about the songs."

Orenamis nods.

"My sister is like that," they offer. "She is frustrated when ... seeing a song like math. But I like the math. What other Tirra songs can you share?"

"Hmmmmmm..." Urk. Most of her favorites aren't actually from Tirra. Well, they do have string instuments that are mostly violin-like, and pianos, in big cities... She can try to stick to more acoustical things...

Wait wait wait. She has an easy excuse. Kitsune sounds don't have to be limited to what one can actually make with a real instrument. She can play snippets of all sorts of things. Rise Against, video game soundtracks, chillstep, weird J-Pop...

Oh, this one is distinctly Tirran: The Thunder Show! That one circus with a little mini-orchaestra and the lightning sorcerer who figured out a strange magnetic-warbling instrument that takes really impressive magical control.

Her tail wags as she remembers watching the show and projects it into the air: A woman dressed in flamboyant black and white, leaping and dancing across a metal stage and performing all sorts of tesla-coil and magnetic manipulation tricks, and then using her manipulation to play something shaped like a great church organ but with a distinctly more electronic sound. (The sorceress is singing and speaking Notal, in the show, the song is about the force of a storm and the joy of speed).

That rapidly draws everyone's attention away from the game. People crowd around to watch the performance. When it finishes, they all flutter their hands in silent applause.

"That is very neat!" Orenamis pronounces. "Can you just know and show all songs you hear like that?"

"Only if I liked it and was paying close attention! And I'm filling in some details. See the crowd? They're kind of all the same face."

They peer at the crowd.

"Your remembering must be so good," Orenamis observes.

Once the lightning performance has ended, she gets a number of requests to show another performance, although people are careful not to crowd her. Through their improving Notal, they make sure to be clear that this is a request, and they won't be upset if she refuses.

"Oh wait. It's not a show exactly but here."

Festival scene! It's a harvest festival back near home. There are roses EVERYWHERE. And food everywhere. The Baron is dancing on stage, badly, and everyone is laughing at him cheerfully. Two priestesses in clearly specially designed outfits are carrying large censers and wafting them at people. Dogs are barking. People are drunk. There's a large bonfire. A fiddle and drum band is doing a simple wordless fast tune.

Oh! That's totally recognizable as a holiday.

One of the members of the crowd gets out their phone to show pictures from the solstice festival, which was a little bit ago. There's a similar amount of people and food, although nobody seems particularly drunk, and there's no dogs in evidence.

"The next ... one of these ... is on the day when the day and night are the same length," they explain. "On 41054-05-24, in three ... uh. In three ... amounts of time?"

They shrug helplessly at the missing vocabulary.

"What are your holidays like? Is it just the food? This is a harvest festival, to celebrate being done bringing all the food in and being ready for winter."

"Oh! Yes, the old holidays, they have a harvest festival. In the today, people want to celebrate other things," they explain.

They draw a picture of a circle in the air, and start pointing at spots along it, starting at the bottom and moving by eighth-turns.

"The winter holiday is — the sun is coming back, the cold won't last forever. The half-way holiday is — quietly watching the snow. The spring holiday is — flowers are blooming, fresh vegetables are here again, the sun comes back faster now. The half-way holiday is — it starts to get warm, fall in love with people. The summer holiday is — things are so hot, stop work and go swimming. The half-way holiday is — our things are so much better than they used to be, people do good things and things get better. The fall holiday is — the harvest is coming in, there is lots of traditional food. The half-way holiday is — the sun is going and things are sad, people have left us, but it won't be forever, the sun will come back again. Then the winter holiday again."

    "Those are the most-places holidays," someone else interjects. "Cities have their own holidays. And the holidays have their foods, and dances."

"Isara would like that. The cycle, continuing, growing, better each year. I think I like the summer holiday. Though, I hate deep water. A river is better than the ocean."

"We have a river!" Orenamis volunteers. "The city name is for it. Central River City — A river goes in the middle of it city. It is cold for swim now; there is ice in it. But in the summer, it is nice to swim."

"There is also the ... a place for everyone to swim indoors, even when it's cold," the holiday-namer offers.

"Maybe, maybe."

Her tail wags slowly.

"I liked the computer game. I like - jokes and stories and puzzles and games."

Orenamis makes a gesture involving wiping a hand across their forehead.

"The people should have gotten you — has anyone talked about getting a computer you?" they ask. "One that it gets the games and books from the Network, and lets you talk to people?"

"Don't think so. I was kind of distracted though."

"You should have a computer," Orenamis insists. "I am not ... I am not a getting-things person, and I am not working, but when you want to, you should ask in the tent and they get a computer for you. Or maybe they already have one, and just haven't given it yet because everyone is distracted, yes."

"Hihihi. Distractions are usually fun. What do you all do for work?"

They go around the group listing occupations. Based on the location, it's probably not terribly surprising that Emergency Services personnel are over-represented.

In the circle, they have three guards, two sudden-infrastructure construction specialists, a contingency planner, two dispatchers, a linguist, and a computer specialist.

Her ears perk up as she gets an idea for a light joke. To mess with the linguist, she starts speaking Atsosi. The Northern Federation's longue, ideographically written. There would have been a few common phrases in it with phonetic translations to Notal in the adventurers handbook.

"Hello, I wonder if you understand this? I don't think you had much to learn from! Hihihi."

The linguist has slightly too much dignity to tear his hair out about that, but he does whine a little and scramble for his phone to jot down the phonetic transcription before he forgets it.

If she's going to tease him with unknown languages, though, he's not going to hold back his own questions about Notal grammar.

This starts a period of lively debate about the cross-linguistic prevalence of different grammatical structures (as is often the case when þereminians are confronted with new linguistic features), regardless of whether Weiss actually answers.

Eventually, however, the sun sets, and people start drifting away to bed down in the dormitories. Weiss is terribly interesting company, but there's a limit to how much people want to stay up and talk. One of the on-duty people pokes her head in to make sure Weiss knows that she's welcome to a bed in the dorm tent, the existing sleeping role in the storage building, or she can let them know if she needs something else.

Eventually, things will be down to just her and a handful of others as the city goes to bed around them. She might notice that the street lights — both on this street, and what she can see reflected off the clouds — are significantly more red-tinted then they would be on Earth, and perhaps slightly dimmer.

She'll definitely answer a reasonable, limited number of grammar questions.

...When people start going to rest, she finds someone and tells them that she's going to go home and fetch more kitsunes. She'll nap in the storage room and then go. They'll probably come out of the rift at the bank again some time tomorrow?

At around noon the next day, a kitsune dressed in grey robes calmly steps out of the rift and into sudden visibility. There's a wooden wand in one of her hands, and a scroll in the other.

She is followed by a kitsune dressed up rather more than either of the other two! She's wearing a dress, and jewelry, and carrying a folding paper fan, all rather fancy for Tirra's tech level.

Weiss comes through last, saying, "-Big opportunities, like I said. But the big thing is going to be stabilizing the rift."

"Rifts just are not stable. Though we have never actually tried to stabilize one, historically they're all either too remote, too brief, or go to places that we don't want a connection to..."

"We've arrived, ladies, let's greet our hosts?"

They didn't know exactly when Weiss was going to be back, so the kitsunes are greeted by an elderly woman sitting in a chair in the Bank's lobby and knitting a pair of socks. They're bright purple with orange spots, and very fuzzy.

Perhaps more relevantly, as soon as they appear she taps a button on her phone and stands to greet them.

"Hello!" she says. "Welcome to Central River City; the diplomat is on the way to greet you properly."

Her Notal is accented, but her command of the language is otherwise quite good.

"Hi. I'm here to be paid a lot of money for magic?"

(Megi lightly swats her arm, for being rude. Sinnah just rolls her eyes.)

"Ma'am if anyone - who can get here - knows what to do with the rift, Sinnah does. Best wizard I know."

She's a little confused about why Megi would swat Sinnah. Maybe they just have that kind of relationship.

"That's good news!" Xolkensa cheerfully responds. "And yes, we will pay a lot of money for magic. I know we want to stabilize the rift so we can trade more, and also buy lessons in doing magic. I don't know the exact amount, but the diplomat will. She will probably offer you a — offer you all the money at once, for certain, or an amount that depends on trade through the rift over time."

"Oh, yes, everyone involved in this is going to be so rich even if they don't want to reach for it. We're going to need a lot of diamonds. And paper and ink- The good ink. Oil based."

"It's very exciting. I'm delighted to meet you- Is this a bank? I go by Megi, this is Sinnah, and you already know Weiss..."

She taps out a message to dispatch on her phone.

"It's good to meet you too," she agrees. "I'm Xolkensa."

She says it with an initial sound like the last sound in 'Bach'.

"And yes, this is a bank! Or, it was — I think they've already retrieved the secret keys from the vault, and are considering plans to turn it into a permanent transport facility once the rift is stabilized. They didn't want to mess with it too much before that in case that destabilized things."

"You should see the computers- Notal doesn't really have an equivalent word, I think we're just going to loanword it- I bet they can help with your more experimental things."

(Sinnah 'hm's. She's still holding her scroll and wand in a relaxed but ready kind of way.)

"I'm a priestess, has Weiss explained...?"

"She gave us a book about the light gods. It's — we've had stories about magic beings before, but they were just stories, so we don't really have priestesses," Xolkensa explains apologetically. "I think we understand, but it's foreign to us."

"It must be quite unbelievable. I've known about magic and gods as far back as I can remember. I'm happy to explain what I can about the Light Gods, and demonstrate or offer proof in ways you arrange- So that you can trust them more."

"That's kind of you," Xolkensa responds. "I'm sure we would like some more demonstrations. But we do already believe in magic; Weiss used illusions, and I just saw you appear."

"Anyway, would you like any—"

She cuts herself off as she spots a figure through the glass doors of the bank.

"Ah, here comes the diplomat," she says, pointing.

Tatenika is wearing a different floor-length purple dress than yesterday; this one is a pale lavender. She makes her way through the doors with a smile at everyone.

"Good morning. I am Tatenika," she says. Her command of Notal has also noticeably improved in Weiss's absence. "And I'm so happy to meet all of you. We'll have good paper and ink here in a few minutes, but diamonds will take longer, since they're only really used in industrial applications. Do you need particular sizes, purities, or amounts?"

"Diamonds are used for magic item crafting. Various sizes and clarities. Diamond dust too. Quartz can be used for low power applications in a pinch. Who am I teaching, what am I making? Good wizards are good at a mental motion that it's hard to find mundane correlates for. I can make testers that shine light if you are exerting will correctly. They are also good at geometry and mental timing."

Ah, Tatenika is thoroughly familiar with this kind of person.

"It sounds like those testers will be a good thing to make initially," Tatenika remarks. "After that, our priorities for magic include stabilizing the rift, and then a great number of experimental designs to find the limits of and applications for magic. We are unlikely to want to commission bulk goods from a master wizard — better to train our own people up for that. I have a preliminary list of experiments that have been proposed, but you might find it more productive to talk through the list with one of our professional-discoverers of material properties and making things."

"Are there any attributes other than geometry aptitude and timing that are important?" she questions. "If not, I can have an initial class drawn from the population of the city ready for an introductory lesson in a few hours. Otherwise, designing an aptitude test and getting students may take time. How many people are you willing to teach at once?"

... and the other two Kitsune look like this discussion is hitting them wrong, for some reason. Unfortunately, she really thinks Sinnah and Weiss require very different approaches.

"Mediator, perhaps you would like to take our other guests outside to talk about some of the preparations we've made from them while I go over logistical concerns with Sinnah? I believe we have some refreshments they will find suitable."

She subtly signs I'm Xolkensa with one hand, turning to address Megi and Weiss.

"If that's alright with you, we can talk a bit more about being a priestess?" she says.

"Exerting will is the most important skill for general magical aptitude but you can perform design and theory work without it, technically. Timing is important for using scrolls, which are stored single-use magics, and free casting, which is doing magic- Not without tools, but without specific magical preparations beforehand, I would say. Like this."

She draws a perfect circle in the air with her hand and there is a little burst of wind for exactly two seconds. 

"Geometry aptitude and to a lesser extent general intelligence is important for design, preparation, crafting, and so on. I'm fine with teaching but I would want more pay than the same time spent on mid-high level crafting because crafting is very simple to me and students sometimes aren't."

"That's fine by us. As Weiss would say, Sinnah is very Sinnah and I can tell the conversation is going to be two hours of magic theory- Not my hobby if a perfectly valid one!"

"I'm looking forward to what I presume are the results of the baking contest!"

"Yes!" she agrees. "The baking contest, and also we have made a bunch of these!"

She digs around in her bag, and comes up with a pair of fake fox ears on a headband, which she slips on. Then she hands a pair of headbands that don't have ears to Weiss and Megi. The earless headbands are designed to be a little flexible, and have cutouts that will let them subtly curve around the base of their ears.

"Tails are harder, but we also thought they're probably easier for you to hide under skirts or jackets," she adds.

"Oh, interesting! So we don't stand out quite so much? That's a lovely idea. I suppose I can do my best to hold them still... It's like not scratching an itch sometimes, though. And yes, we usually hide tails under skirts and jackets. Ummm... Weiss was very excited about something called 'computers', but I don't think I really understand...?"

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."

Xolkensa nods. If there are verifiable effects and it doesn't turn out to match up with the experience of wizard spell-casting, then probably this is just a case of reality being stranger than it first appears. Either way, they'll be able to find out eventually.

"I know that Weiss was looking forward to seeing more of the city," she says, changing the topic, "but are there particular things that you're interested in doing here, while you're our visitor?"

"Do you have temples and shrines here?"

"... not in the way you mean, I don't think. We have some historical sites, some places that are used for holiday rituals, and we have community centers," she offers. "But those aren't the same places as each other, and none of them are places to pray specifically. Oh! We do also have beautiful places for thinking quietly and trying to become better, which might be similar enough. Are any of those things that you would like to see?"

"I think it's not quite...? I'm trying to think of... Well, my ideal day is spent somewhere comfortable and in good company. I'd like to meet people and see if we can be friends? Oh, I have healing magic- It's not a priestess trait but a kitsune one. It's, mm, quite expensive, but I make a point of offering. It works best on critical trauma. It can alleviate disease symptoms but not cure them."

"We have disease-fighting specialists," she assures her. "We are pretty good at fighting disease now. But if you want to work healing people, I can check what our healers are paid for trauma cases, and you can see if that's enough money for you?" she offers.

"As for being somewhere comfortable and meeting people — probably you want an event space? A place where community things happen, and lots of people come through to do different activities. Like playing games, or discussing books, or things like that."

"Mhm, that does sound fun. And, well..." She looks around surreptitiously to see how many people can hear. Weiss's ears flick when she notices this and Weiss seems to hold in a slight sigh. "Sinnah will break the news in the bluntest way possible I'm sure but I want to be a bit more delicate about a certain kitsune- Not necessarily need, but common desire at the least. If I'm to be healing I'll need it, anyway."

Xolkensa arranges her face and body language in a posture of open, nonjudgemental receptivity — another core skill for mediators.

"I'm sure we can work to accommodate you; what is it?"

She gives a slight nod to cover up her own internal firming-up.

"Most kitsunes have a lot of sex with non-kitsune men. In addition to being fun, it's quite nourishing - it feels good on a primal level over and above how I hear humans experience it. Obviously, preferences and the social scripts around it vary. Weiss is not interested in this. Sinnah surely is. And I am a tad more romantic than most kitsunes. I don't think there is any particular rush."

"Oh!"

Xolkensa leans back and returns to her knitting.

"There will be a lot of people who want to have sex with you," she promises. "You can use a computer to find people, or ask us to find people, or try and make friends in the city, or hire a sex worker. If you need sex to do healing, the hospital can probably arrange sex workers for that. Do you like hurting people during sex, being hurt during sex, or do you not care? And why men specifically, though? All Kitsune just like men?"

She giggles and blushes, and uses her fan to hide her face for a moment.

"No, men are magically - well, some kitsunes can also get energy from having sex with women, maybe... A fifth, a tenth? But with men is universal, and it's a much stronger source than most others. Specifically, semen. It does leave them - the effect is about like an hour of field labor, regardless of how long they last, per, ah- Shot. I think I want to keep any hurting pretty mild. I usually would hang out at taverns and wait for someone to be... Charming, you know? Or cute. Or shy in a cute way. No hurry."

Xolkensa nods.

"If you want people to come up to you and be cute at you, you should wear pink," she advises. "And hang around at an outdoor café or in a community space. It is the color for wanting to start new relationships or have sex. There are more specific signals, but until you are more used to reading clothing, it's best to keep it simple. Actually — has Weiss told you about our clothing?"

"Pink! Alright, I'll make sure to change later. She said you would translate a book about it? And to not bother anyone wearing red."

She nods.

"Yes, that's the main one. The basic system is simple: red, someone is overwhelmed, do not interact with them. Orange, they are near becoming overwhelmed. Green, blue, and pink are all social colors with different meanings. Purple means that they are working," she summarizes. "Colored head lights largely override robes, but many people still prefer using robe colors. The book goes into more detail, but those are the important parts."

She taps out another message to dispatch.

"I'll check whether they've finished the book, in case you're interested. So ... I have this baking competition, —"

Which Weiss is making good progress demolishing.

"— getting computers for both of you, getting you the law book, showing you some places in the city that you can meet people, checking in with the hospital about healing, and taking Weiss to see the museum on my list. That's a good list to start with, but please let one of us know if there are things that should be added to it."

"Oh, I'm sure she appreciates the baking contest very much- I had the thought to bring some seeds from Tirra, actually, as a sort of gift. Hmm... Oh Weiss~ Can you turn me pink, please~?"

She feels a little guilty about enjoying the bakefest so much, hearing them discuss it!! But this is all really good!! A panoply of sweet, soft, crunchy, savory, sour... At least her clear numerical feedback is probably welcome? Still, her tail wagging and ear twitching slows down a bit.

"Mmmh? Okay, sure."

She whips something up for Megi, failing not to blush as the implications of that color pass through her mind.

"That'll do you for... Twelve hours ish?"

Her hair is a vivid hot pink. Her jewelry is rose gold. Her robes are nearly-white fading to deep pink, with some valentines-heart accouterments that Weiss added in a few seconds of attention to weaving the illusion. It looks fully real. She's very pink now. Megi does a spin, grinning at the way her robes-cum-dress flare at the deepest-pink hem and shows a lot of thigh.

Sinnah ducks in for a moment around this point, and the kitsunes take a few minutes to discuss the Rift in obscure Notal and sometimes Ancient Tirran terms. 

The short version of the conversation is that Sinnah is planning to ask for a miracle from the Light Gods to stabilize and possibly move it, and Megi prayed for answers and got a positive feeling, so she thinks that'll work, but they really ought to make it as easy as possible for the gods. This will be accomplished by studiously graphing its response to magical nudges along various axes, and then using Weiss's excellent Spirit World navigation and Megi's attunement and Sinnah casting a custom spell that does 'show the gods exactly where this energy flow ought to go'. 

So, Weiss and Megi have some tedious but important work to do between diplomatic conversations.

Xolkensa shakes a hand appreciatively.

"You look lovely, dear," she tells her.

They chat for a while, and Xolkensa makes sure the scores from both of them are correctly recorded and sent off. In a few hours, a number of grateful notes and new variations on recipes will find their way back to Weiss.

In the mean time, Tatenika and Sinnah have reached an agreement on fair prices for her services (to be paid in a mixture of diamonds, precious metals, and local currency). And Emergency Services has rounded up a class of the eight best learners with high scores in geometry and (some measurements of) willpower in the city (who passed a Notal competency test) to begin learning magic. Even with so many criteria to filter for, the students are still noticeably better suited than a class gathered on such short notice from Tirra would be.

They sit in a comfy þereminian-style classroom — one wall devoted to windows, bright, sunlight-spectrum lights overhead. The students are arranged on various beanbag chairs, with notebooks, audio recorders, and silent stim toys. A low table sits in the middle of the room, for writing and demonstrations, and a projector and whiteboard turn one wall into a display — although Sinnah might not get much use out of the projector.

In addition to the students, an Emergency Services observer sits in the back, ready to diligently take notes for later study by people who could not be in the room for this initial lesson.

Diplomat Tatenika shows her in.

"Your class, Teacher Sinnah. I'm sure they're all very excited to see what you can teach them."

She has, during negotiations (and only sounding slightly distracted by it), made two dirt-simple light crystals as testers, hunks of quartz with a pair of bare wires attached to them on either side. She paces the space by the blackboard.

"Hello, everyone. I'm Sinnah. I don't like standing on ceremony. If you've got a question ask it, if enough people ask questions that I can't make progress clearly I'm doing something wrong and need to re-evaluate. As I understand it the goal of these classes is to create a local wizards who can successfully design and cast spells. For lack of a better idea for a framework, I intend to follow the same initial steps that a new wizard apprentice would go through, at least at first."

She hands the testers to the nearest two students. 

"Exerting will is the fundamental action of wizardry, so I'll cover this before even the foundations of theory. Free casting, preparing materials for wizards to use, activating scrolls- All of these things require exerting will. You simply cannot do this variety of magic without it. This is a mental action. There is no physical analogue, though some people find physical metaphors useful. To me, exerting will is a natural application of my own native stubbornness. I expect that magic damn well better move for me, I won't stand for it not doing so, and it does. Some describe it as wishing. Some describe it as determination. Some describe it as blinking your eyes without blinking, or breathing with your soul, or pushing with a hand made of magic. Many find it helpful to use accompanying body and hand motions to focus. Successful exertion of will while touching both of the wires with your skin, shall make them light up. Go ahead and try it. Please pass these around every few minutes. Any questions so far?"

The two students with the tester take a minute to think, and then start trying to make it light up.

One of the students on the other side of the room raises a hand.

"Is there only one kind of exerting will? Or it is like a physical motion in that there are different directions or variations on it that we will learn as we get more accustomed to it?"

"Exerting will has an intensity. An amount. It also has timing, when it is applied. It also has a location, in that it emnates from your body. Masters can control it to do so from multiple independent points with different timings and intensities. These factors affect the shape of magic, and the final shape of magic is what has effects on the world. Other than that, no- It has one 'flavor', I suppose you could say. Most spells are designed to accept a wide range of possible intensities with the timing being the largest skill factor."

The students nod and absorb this fact. The two with the will exertion detectors focus on them.

No additional questions appear to be forthcoming at the moment.

"This is not a class on the Spirit World, so I will only cover it briefly. We don't understand why wizardry is the way it is, exactly, but it is. Unlike other forms of magic, which largely depend on - willpower, accumulated talent, symbolism, divine energy, or the collective unconscious depending on who is theorizing - two wizards performing the same spell with the same diagram will get precisely the same result, in the same way that two people dropping a stone from a high tower will. Perhaps the more chaotic forms of magic are explicable but not explained. Perhaps they're fundamentally subjective and mutable. Regardless, wizardry is wizardry. Exerting will produces more intensity when the Spirit World is close, and less when it is thin, distant, or blocked. But the same intensity has the same result, thick or thin."

She starts drawing on the board. A large circle. Then a list of runes.

"The classic form of wizardry involves drawing a circle, then drawing the correct runes in the correct orientation and position around that circle, and then channeling will into it. Will travels along the circle, and interacts with the runes in ways that cause lines or curves of will to enter into the circle. The patterns of will that form inside the circle correspond to physical effects in the world that the spell then causes. Here is an elementary example. We want to create a perfect hexagon of will in the center of the diagram. This rune is firthe, and this rune is lai. Firth casts a straight, perpendicular line with a progression speed of one. -The progression speeds are scaled relative to firth. Lai alters the trajectory of nearby runes according to the inverse square of its radial distance from the affected rune and the projective force of the affected rune..."

She goes through a demonstration, drawing lines and applying numbers, and projecting a hexagonal shape in the center of the circle with six firthes and six lais.

"The physical effects of patterns produced in spell diagrams can be, at times, difficult to predict. We don't necessarily understand why they are what they are. However, there are extensive reference tables of the effects of certain shapes, and there do also exist spells which convert physical conditions back into will-patterns. If you, for example, compare the output of cold metal and of hot metal in such an analysis spell, it is possible to derive a final will-shape that will heat metal. It is then possible to construct a set of runes and timings that will create that will-shape, and thusly invent a spell to heat metal. That, however, is an advanced topic which I won't necessarily cover more today. This spell that we have just constructed-"

She draws a circle in the air with her hand. An LED-like mote of light appears, stationary in midair. It winks out after about a second.

"The perfect hexagon produces white light. So long as that hexagon of will exists in the air where I have drawn my circle, so does this light. However, when the will stops being fed into the circle, the lines shorten, the hexagon ceases to exist, and the light vanishes."

She'll pause the lecture for questions during all this, of course, and answer any that come up. Probably there will be many.

There are. A few of them include:

"I'm not sure I understand — you drew the runes on the board, but to actually cast the spell, you just drew the circle. Is that a shortcut you're taking by manually controlling your will, or are you somehow getting runes ..."

"What happens if you have a malformed circle? What are the tolerances like?"

"Is this spell an approximation to a reproduction of a particular light, or constructed from first principles?"

After a minute of back and forth, however, the first student produces a flicker on the will detector, and grins. He passes it to the person behind him, quickly jotting down what the experience was like in his notes.

"I did mentally draw the runes as I mentally drew the circle boundary when I did that demonstration. The act of mentally drawing spell circles without any kind of assistive tool is called free casting, and it is an expert move. You will only be able to do that with substantial practice on page casting, scroll casting, and chalk casting first. I will try to keep in mind to demonstrate basics with the actual tools going forward. Incidentally, note for later to the observers, next session please include hand-chalkboards in student supplies. To practice chalk preparation and casting."

"Malformed circles and incorrectly placed runes do disturb the lines and distort the resulting shape. This can result in inefficient will usage, or in egregious examples completely unintended effects, which can be dangerous. Beginner spells are thus designed in a 'fail safely' manner- If the lines are off, no valid shape is produced, rather than an incorrect shape, as much as possible. The tolerances definitely depend on what exactly you're casting but they can get quite tight. Spells are classed in difficulty mostly by how small the tolerances are, they determine whether it is basic, intermediate, or expert, and what mediums are suitable for it."

"The perfect hexagon is considered a first principle at this point. I don't know how it was discovered, that's ancient history that I'm not specialized in."

First student to will-project gets an acknowledging nod. "You'll want to practice doing it consistently, later."

The class continues in the same vein; three people manage to get the will-detector working fairly quickly. Three more manage it by the end of class, and the last two have no luck.

They cover a lot of theory, most of which probably needs to be re-confirmed in a lab. One other quite important question comes up about halfway through the class, however:

"If you can store intent in chalk in order to make magic circles with, can you make an item that stores intent and releases it on command?"

"That's called a wand, or a ward, or a magic item. You have to define the conditions where it will react- Usually a command word spoken while being held. And you need diamonds. And it's an advanced topic."

That said, for the last part of this scheduled block every student can try using her pre-prepared diagram chalk to write out a spell and cast it. She has four beginner spells to choose from: Light, Condensation, Static, and Stillness.

Well, they all want to see all the spells, obviously. The students divide themselves evenly between the four options, and carefully start drawing out the spells. After a quick clarification that it won't interfere with the magic, one student produces string that everyone uses to draw accurate circles. In positioning the runes, the students show greater average spatial awareness than Sinnah's previous students ­— but then, they were specifically selected for aptitude with geometry.

Once the diagrams are drawn, they each attempt to cast.

Sinnah has cast an analysis spell in the meantime, to give timely and pertinent advice as the casting is attempted.

They're beginner spells for a reason. Light makes a light, height of it off the circle controlled by one's intensity. It's good consistency practice. Condensation beads moisture onto the circle. A basic survival spell and also useful if you want a dry room. Static builds up static electricity. This one takes a modicum of timing skill to keep up. Stillness can be tested by spinning a top or coin in the circle- It stops much quicker, and small dropped objects fall noticeably slowly. It won't work if the circle has low precision.

Five out of eight students manageable visible effects. Two more she can tell are at least on the right track. The last-

She doesn't actually know how amenable this is to practice but the general consensus is 'not enough to make it worth trying to apprentice someone who can't manage a spell in the first eight hours of practice, even if they're otherwise brilliant'. It's not her who's deciding who her students are, though.

Not everyone can be good at everything. The students are going to practice, of course — not least of all because the scientists are going to want to record a lot of trials to have some data to work with.

But if she expresses that sentiment out loud, the þereminians will nod and agree to shuffle the participants if anyone doesn't have it by next class. There's no shame in not having an aptitude for something that literally three people on the planet can do right now.

Sinnah is pretty happy to fill up 16 hours a day with teaching and/or testing object crafting.

Maybe 12 if they're going to be more relaxed about it.

The entire planet is extremely excited about magic; they want to learn everything, as fast as possible.

... which naturally means a nice, sustainable pace that won't make Sinnah (or the students or support staff) feel burnt out. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, as the saying goes.

þereminian jobs are typically a bit more than one fourth of a day, two thirds of the week. They used to be much longer — and still are, in some places — but þereminia is pretty proud of having been able to decrease the work week as productivity has increased over the past few centuries. But if Sinnah has a higher tolerance for long work periods (and she's an alien, so it's plausible), they can run two shifts and work with her for a full half-day.

They're particularly interested in magic item design (for which they can supply plenty of diamonds) not least of all because they strongly suspect computer-controlled scribing and casting will let them create substantially more controlled and complex effects than a pre-industrial world can manage even with good tools.

She can lean the theory to that, sure. Scrolls before artifacts. Many of the skills are transferable anyway. Some people with really steady control will be needed to make the ink.

...She'll need feeding, in the kitsune fashion. She is not very discriminatory. Someone mentioned sex workers in her hearing range once before, she thinks? That could be a lovely intersection of sustenance and relaxing fun.

(Also, it turns out magic does not really ... work on most of the globe. The same effort produces dramatically less intensity of will exertion away from the environs of the Rift, aside from one or two small exceptions.)

þereminia has a healthy relationship with sex, yes. Plus, sex work is one of those things that is going to happen regardless of what anyone has to say about it, so it's best to just set up a licensing board to make sure everything is disease-free and consensual.

Anyway, if she wants to hire someone she can go visit a brothel, or make an appointment with someone. There's an app, but since she's a special guest the diplomatic team is also happy to arrange everything. What kind of person does she want? Or people, plural? Male, female, or other? With or without a penis? Someone who enjoys hurting people, someone who enjoys being hurt, someone who likes bondage, or maybe someone kinky? Does she want dinner and conversation (maybe dancing) first, or just sex? In private or public?