There's a woman crouched in the grass nearby, sorting through the debris scattered by the impact. Her clothes are in a style that gives the initial impression that they were designed for function rather than appearance, but they're form-flattering enough that they could reasonably be called flirtatiously revealing despite the relative lack of exposed skin. Her hair is likewise tied up in a simple bun that flatters the line of her neck.

She turns to look at the newcomer, looks her up and down, and says in a businesslike tone, "Right then. Whose prophet are you, and should I be asking why they didn't give you clothes?"

"Also, uh, sorry for poking around if this is a holy site now."

Grass. Sky. Random woman surprised at her nudity. Did she somehow get flung back to Earth? That seems really improbable. Cameron glances down at herself. Nothing happens. She double-takes, frowns, and a moment later she's suddenly wearing (a convincing illusion of) nigh-featureless walking boots and a very minimal, simplistic black dress.

"...why would this be a holy site? And why are you apologizing to me if it is? I just got here."

...okay, she's officially confused. "You're a stranger who appeared naked and unscathed out of nowhere at the place where something fell from the sky, am I not supposed to assume you were sent by a god? You didn't just walk here, you'd have dirt on your feet at least, and on top of that you just used some sort of ... clothing powers ... without an incantation or even a gesture or a scroll. There's like zero chance you're just some gal who happened to show up."

"Right... because I'm a magical girl. Who just happened to show up. By falling out of the sky. Magical girls usually have soul mods that keep us groomed and allow us to appear clothed, if you didn't know."

What very specific rock has this person been living under that she talks about sorcery as matter-of-fact but doesn't recognize a magical girl? Cameron hops nimbly off the lip of the crater, onto the grass. Some very specific god's rock, maybe. Cameron has seen weirder.

"...if there's a god around here who's in the habit of haring off halfway across the solar system to attack ships full of civilians and kidnap random magical girls back to... where are we?" Cameron holds up a hand. "Nevermind."

And her hand pierces the very air, and then returns holding a glossy black rectangle about half the size of a book, with a flat surface like a perfectly polished gemstone, which emerges from a seam in the fabric of reality. She taps it with her finger, and it lights up with a vividly clear static image of some kind of purplish four-armed monster-man with tentacles for a face wrapped tightly around a pair of nude women one of which might be Cameron herself. Following that image, a collection of smaller symbols and numbers appear on top.

Cameron frowns. It's only been a day and a half since she was on the ship. And she's not getting a signal. There's nowhere on Earth that gets no signal. Either a god or something else did kidnap her and is now jamming her tablet... or this isn't Earth after all.

The solar system? That would certainly explain the confusion. "We're on the earth. I didn't even know there were people living on the sun. If you're shipwrecked here, I don't think we know how to build the kind of ships that you'd need to get home."

Cameron doesn't even know where to start addressing all the things wrong with that sentence. She actually flounders for a moment, failing to words.

But if this is Earth...

Cameron turns away from the woman and raises her voice, "Excuse me, random god or whoever! If you stop jamming my tablet right now and explain yourself I might stop feeling obliged to kill you over your random murder of hundreds of bystanders!"

"My condolences on your shipmates." She can talk her down from deicide later.

When there is no reply to her challenge, Cameron deflates and sighs.

"Thanks, but it wasn't like I knew them or anything. It was a Jovian tour craft ...and I'm sure you have no idea what that is if you think people might live on the sun while also being under the impression that Earth isn't space-faring. But I'm from California. I don't need a spaceship to get home. I'm more interested in this god you think brought me here, and where exactly here is."

"I was assuming a god sent you, as a prophet. It sounds more like you just got shipwrecked. I haven't heard of space-ships before today, but the earth's a big place, who knows what they've got going on other places."

"I haven't heard of California. We're outside of Costallow, in Gesland."

Cameron doesn't recognize the name, so she taps her wiki app and repeats the words.

Her wiki app has never heard of such a place.

"Okay," she says slowly.

She's... probably not going to get any more of a straight answer out of this possibly-brainwashed woman. So, setting the where aside for now...

"Is this a specific god you keep talking about? Or are you just making bizarrely narrow assumptions about random magical girls falling out of the sky?"

"No, just, when someone dramatically hurtles to earth from above, leaves a crater, and emerges unharmed... it's the natural assumption? I'd expect most random sorcerers would just travel by horse like everyone else. Maybe a magic horse if they were especially powerful. Or, you know, seven-league boots, or turn into a bird, or something. Is magical travel usually noisy and dramatic in California?"

"No, that's..."

Cameron takes a breath. Clearly they're talking past each other. Getting frustrated won't help.

"Okay, back up. Let's start over. Hi! My name is Cameron Aphron, and I am a magical girl of middling power with a fifth-generation Reinforcement-specialized soul I inherited by accident without the involvement of any of the usual patrons, who go around giving people souls and there-by turning them into magical girls for various reasons. Yesterday I was on a Jovian spaceship when a reality shear of some kind, which looks kind of like an angry kaleidoscope in the fabric of space, collided with and destroyed the ship, killing all the passengers by ejecting them into vacuum where they presumably suffocated. I fell into the reality shear, which apparently instantly spat me out again close enough to Earth that I hit the atmosphere before I could gather my wits. My burning corpse crashed down in your back yard, and, as normally happens when a magical girl's body is destroyed, my soul reset itself. I woke up bodiless a few minutes ago. Then, because I'm a very powerful healer, I didn't have to wait for a new body, I could just re-create my body myself. Which I did."

Cameron takes another breath.

"Now, how does what you think happened compare to that? And what exactly is a prophet?"

"Hello, Cameron. I'm Tegan Fallahal. Most of that made no sense to me, and doesn't sound similar to anything I've heard of."

"Late yesterday morning – about twenty-four hours ago, actually – several people saw something bright fall to earth, and many more people heard the impact; I'm guessing that was your burning corpse. We went looking around the area where we thought it probably landed, and found that crater. We didn't find anything that looked like human remains. We figured it was a starstone – a rock that fell from the sky, that happens sometimes. I was looking through the debris, because starstones sometimes have rare metals and such, and then you climbed out of the crater and then you were here for the rest."

"A prophet is, broadly, anyone who starts or reforms a religion. They're usually sent or called by a god of the religion in question, if the religion has any. They always have otherwise-unattested abilities of some kind, to distinguish them from everyone else. They always know they're prophets, and of what religion, though the ones that're called don't know they're going to become prophets until it happens. I don't know how literal the word 'magical girl' is, but prophets can be boys. Or men or women, most prophets are adults."

"As far as I know, everyone on earth has a soul. I haven't heard of dead people being able to do things. Magical healers exist, and I've never heard of anyone coming back from the dead."

"If not having a patron could explain how you don't know what's going on, I'd guess that you're likely a nonstandard prophet."

This is the face of someone who is disappointed because the person they're talking to just revealed themself to be painfully ignorant.

Cameron sighs. She isn't going to touch most of that mess, but.

"I assure you, magical girls are not prophets, and prophets are not magical girls. Your prophet thing isn't a thing anywhere else I've been, and magical girls are definitely their own thing that is the same thing wherever you go."

And Cameron gets the feeling she's been way more places than Tegan. If the signal jamming isn't for Cameron in particular, it might be active all the time, to keep these people cut off from the outside world entirely. This is sounding more and more like a cult of some kind.

Out of morbid curiosity, Cameron taps her tablet, opening Google Earth in offline mode, then angles the screen so Tegan can see and flies down through virtual space until she's hovering over San Francisco.

"This is where I live."

"I'll take your word that you know what you're talking about on that."

She watches the moving image with interest – and then it flies closer and those are buildings – "I've never even heard of anywhere like that." And she has so many questions.

"I was afraid of that."

Cameron closes the app and slips her tablet back into her Pocket, vanishing it through a seam in the air.

"If you take me into town, are people going to be really upset about an outsider who's not a prophet? You've made it abundantly clear that I could easily pretend to be a prophet, but," some or all of the other prophets you know about could've just as easily been pretenders. "I don't want to."

"You wouldn't be able to keep the charade up forever, anyway. And nah, we get travelers and stuff coming through here."

"You look like a Burner, dressed like that, by the way. I dunno if the – connotations – are the same in California, but people are gonna assume you're... how do I even explain it. They're – casual, blunt, direct, not much subtlety or nuance. Not someone you go to if you need things taken seriously, or treated thoughtfully. You'll get the idea when you've met some, I guess."

"What makes a Burner a Burner? I'm just dressed like this because I like black and it was the only pattern simple enough I could hold it in my mind on short notice when my Style failed to auto-generate a culturally appropriate outfit, presumably because your fashion language isn't already part of its generative data-set..."

Which also implies a very isolated and insular culture... except... "...you get travelers? How often? Where from?"

"Uh, it's a religion, I forget what the official name for them is, but they follow the Hearthmother. You won't stand out too much, there are in fact Burners around here, but you're welcome to copy my outfit if you like."

"We're not a big town, but there's usually at least one person traveling through at any given time. Usually from nearby, of course, Glenbrook and Wickton and Collersfield, but we get the occasional merchant from as far as Roma or Silesia, maybe a couple of times a year."

So it's either a whole community of cult towns, or... something much weirder than that. Not enough information. Better to stop speculating and just observe.

"Alright."

Cameron goes over and pokes each piece of Tegan's clothing, once. Then the little black dress dissolves and is replaced by an exact duplicate of (the outer layer of) Tegan's outfit. It's tighter on Cameron than on Tegan, clinging to every curve and straining to contain her nigh-superhuman figure. She frowns down at herself, and it bleeds to black one article at a time.

"Okay, I guess this will have to do. Which way to town?"

Tegan shows no discomfort with being approached and poked, and once she figures out what Cameron's doing she moves to make the unpoked articles more accessible. She does, however, stop Cameron from copying a twisted-bar pewter bracelet on her left wrist – "that's a religious thing. Path of Charity. You only wear it if you're a Walker."

"Can't adjust the stuff to fit? Oh well, it'll do for now. Town's this way." She leads.

The town appears at first glance to be a relatively affluent classical or medieval village, but the standards of hygiene wouldn't be out of place in the 1940s, and many things seem to be made with brass or bronze that one might expect to use iron or steel. The people are dressed in black and gray and brown and white, usually multiple colors on one outfit. The clothes are seemingly modest, but form-fitting and suggestive – here a woman has only a single thin layer over her visibly jiggling breasts, there a man's shirt seems constantly on the verge of falling off without ever quite, there a woman's skirt is split high to reveal opaque tight leggings. They don't seem shy about casual and incidental touch, either.

Well, that's better than the alternative, Cameron figures. She idly tells the simulated fabric of her borrowed outfit to get slowly thinner. The medieval architecture isn't what she was expecting, but it isn't actually surprising, at this point. Maybe their parents were possessed by spirits of LARP.

"Do you know how long ago this town was built?"

She also stares discreetly and systematically, at clothing, and at faces, because she can feel the phantom tension coming from her Style lessen slightly when she does. How many of these people are wearing a pewter bracelet like Tegan?

"Not offhand... I think the temple was built in the late Republic era, so it'd have to be at least, uh, six hundred years? I think that's about right."

Most of the people are wearing the bracelets, but as they walk through the town she can spot a few exceptions, who are also dressed differently:

• a pair of women in light, flowy outfits in white and yellow that leave their arms and calves bare, smiling at everyone and receiving a perfunctory tolerance in return;
• a man and a woman in straightforwardly modest clothes, looking vaguely uncomfortable;
• and a man dressed in a somewhat less suggestive, though still relatively form-flattering, version of the style of the main crowd, wearing a torc in the twisted style instead of a bracelet.

No one younger than about twenty seems to be in evidence.

Six hundred years can't be how long they've been isolated. They wouldn't be speaking recognizable english.

The way the uncomfortable couple are looking at everyone else provides a huge boost to her Style's adaptation progress. Cameron smiles at them, even though they'll have no idea why.

"Your religion seems popular," Cameron says neutrally to Tegan.

"It's the main one around here, but it's not that widespread outside Gesland. And there's parts of Gesland that're mostly Burner. I think there's a Riverite town down north."

"You mentioned Burner, but I still don't know what any of those are. Can you give me your one-sentence summary of each of these religions?"

How are people looking at Cameron, now? In any particular way?

"I dunno if I can do one sentence, but I'll try to keep it short."

"My religion is the Path of Charity. The five anchors are – take good, give good, make good, make time, make love – which roughly boils down to, real quality over shallow flashy stuff, giving's better than getting, do good and build good things, be there for people, sex and pleasure are good. Disciples of Charity – low-level priests – are sworn to austerity and service, and they're not allowed to refuse sex to anyone, with a couple of obvious exceptions."

"Burners follow the Hearthmother, I think I said, she's a hearth goddess as I'm sure you can guess, also grain and hospitality. They're big on touchy-feely lovey-dovey stuff. High priestesses are sacred prostitutes, she doesn't let men be high-level clergy, I dunno why."

"Riverites I don't know as much about, but apparently they worship 'the Three Brothers' who I think might be... rain, wind, and... I forget the other one. Pretty sure not river though, I dunno how that comes into it. They're big on, like, sacrifice and meditation and stuff? The one I met was blindfolded as a religious thing but she said she wasn't blinded, like, she still had her eyes, just – she was choosing to go without? There's a rumor that the monks cut off one of their hands but I don't think that's real."

When people look at her, it's generally in a dismissive sort of way; not like she's being scandalous, but rather it's almost like they think she's unattractive.

...she hasn't gotten looks like that since before she got her soul. What the fuck.

No seriously what the fuck. She's a magical girl, her body is literally, mathematically, optimal.

Her skin starts crawling, at the looks. All-over writhing prickles and a rushing in her ears...

Cameron locks down her expression, shows nothing outwardly. It has to be Tegan's outfit. They don't seem to be giving Tegan the same looks, but there could be reasons for that. Maybe this was deliberate sabotage, to turn the townsfolk against her, maybe it wasn't. Probably wasn't. But if it was she can't let on that she's noticed. Because it probably is the outfit, not her face or body. And she'll be fine if she can invent a plausible reason to ditch it before making any more first impressions. 

Focus on the exposition.

"You have three religions and only one of them is pro-abstinence? And the other two are both sexually encouraging? Wow."

How the fuck did that happen, and can Cameron export it?

"I have a friend who'd love that last part, in your religion, by the way," Cameron says conversationally. "She has... consent issues. In the sense that she wishes people would forget the entire concept with regards to her."

Where exactly is Tegan taking her anyway? If she's leading Cameron straight into a town meeting or to meet the mayor or something like that, after setting her up for those looks, Cameron is going to stop being nice.

"Yeah, people from other countries are usually more uptight about sex. Makes sense California would be the same way, I guess."

"And yeah, it's good to have – a way to let people know that they should stop worrying about you, trust you to be able to take care of yourself."

"Did you have anything in particular you wanted to do first, now we're in town? I could try to help you find some clothes that fit you better, if you like."

...so it is the outfit, and Tegan knew exactly what she was doing. Cameron keeps her suspicious glower down to 'plausibly deniable' but she bets her little black dress would've made a much better impression.

You look like a Burner, dressed like that.

The suspicion on Cameron's face is no longer deniable. "Is there some reason you didn't want me to look like a Burner while we walked into town." Like a religious rivalry, maybe?

Tegan mostly succeeds at not making a face. "I told you what they're like, right? If that's really what you want people to think of you, I wouldn't stop you, but if it were me, I'd rather look like I didn't have decent clothes than like I was some kind of an undisciplined flounce."

So that's a yes on the religious rivalry.

Cameron merely gives the surrounding townsfolk (and their distaste) an eloquent look. "Really."

Fuck this. Cameron deactivates her Style, and the too-tight copy of Tegan's outfit rips apart as her body tears through it, before the remains dissolve into nothingness, leaving Cameron entirely nude.

"How about I just do this instead."

Well, that's certainly going to get some sort of attention. There's some muttering, but the tone is more speculative than judgmental.

Sigh. "I can't tell you what to do, but I really think you're better than that. Don't sit on anything with your bare ass."

The way people are looking at her now is definitely preferable. In kind of a Cytherian way, maybe?

"...better than what, exactly?"

"It's a very... straightforward look. Unsubtle." Beat. "Like... there's more to flirting than just pointing at your crotch and saying 'you sex me now', you know?"

People are looking at her, but not like people on Earth would be looking at her if she were naked in public there. They seem more interested in the magic than her body; the looks are more assessing than either appreciative or judgmental.

Yeah, that is about how people would be looking at her in Cytheria. That's reassuring.

Cameron's lips quirk. "It'd work on me. The trouble is, no one who does that ever actually means it, so it kind of fails as an analogy, doesn't it? More to the point, the way these folks are looking at me now is definitely nicer than they way they were looking at me when I was dressed like you."

"No one older than like fifteen, anyway."

"Dressed in my clothes, you mean? Anyway, you'll get different looks again from people who didn't just see you casually use magic. Even Burners don't go around naked. You look... well, like a foreigner who thinks the whole not being uptight about sex thing is exotic and shiny. Which I guess is fair. You'll figure it out if you stick around long enough."

"I'm sure. As long as I don't offend anyone in the meanwhile I don't care if people think I'm odd, or foreign. Since I am both of those things. And it's just until my Style finishes adapting. It's already more than halfway there."

Cameron really wants to meet a Burner and get their side of the story. But that can wait.

"I don't actually need anything. I've got a tent in my Pocket and I can sustain myself with magic in the absence of food and water. But it's not comfortable. What do you use for money around here?"

"I suppose. It's not impossible you might offend someone a little, same as if you went round calling us exotic or quaint, but I wouldn't expect anyone to take really serious offense. They might look down on you a little, but – ultimately, you're not the first foreigner to come through here and you won't be the last. There's a limit to how much damage you can do."

She doesn't snicker at "tent in my pocket", but she thinks it. "Nice to have in an emergency, though."

She fishes around in a pocket and pulls out two rectangular metal bars, one brass and one silver, and hands them over. "Here." They're about the length of her little finger, twice as wide, and half as thick. Each one is stamped with the image of a hatchet on one side and a tent on the other, but as she turns them over the perspective of the images shifts, so that the objects seem to be rotating in three dimensions.

"One silver is twelve brass. Most places will take whatever you've got, though, as long as you don't mind your coins being valued at the metal."

...enchanted currency. Yeah, that isn't a cleverly disguised screen. Cameron isn't sure what that implies but it sure implies something.

"I work professionally in the nude. If there's implied name-calling it's certainly going in both directions."

Cameron wryly reaches into her Pocket and pulls out of a seam in the air a $20 bill and an inch-high (glass??) tetrahedron with a "1" on each face and an ever-shifting glow of rainbow light inside. She expects the paper money to be meaningless, but Tegan ought to at least recognize mana dice.

"None of my money is made of metal." She holds up Tegan's enchanted coinbars. "Who makes these?"

...she's pretty sure Burner priestesses don't go around naked all the time, and she knows gymnasts don't either. Maybe it's a foreign religious thing? ...no, she was fine being clothed, and California was foreign about sex.

"Oh. No, people aren't gonna take scrip from somewhere they don't know. And alms-money is made at the temple; who makes that jewel thing?"

Cameron notices Tegan's confusion. But she doesn't feel like trying to explain internet porn to someone who probably doesn't know what a camera is, right now.

"...are you sure you've never seen one of these before?" Cameron gestures with the glowing mana die. "Mana dice have been minted by the Beacon for the last few hundreds of years. They're the standard, and only guaranteed-safe, power source for sorcery, and as such they're a universal currency everywhere magic is known, which is everywhere since the Veil's destruction a year-and-a-half ago."

"I've never heard of the Beacon, or the Veil, or a time when magic wasn't common knowledge."

...could the Veil be shielded against? Cameron actually doesn't know. It somehow never came up. It was always simpler to make someone 'count' as magical.

"That... is weird. Like, at least an order of magnitude weirder than anything else about this place."

Okay, how to explain this...

"The Veil was what we called the thought-suppression magic that stopped magicless people from noticing or thinking things the Beacon and the Puchuu agreed they shouldn't be allowed to think. The Beacon, and the Puchuu, were a pair of intelligent planet-sized machines made of joy that did the majority of soul-distributing, before my partner killed them both."

And it sounds so much less awesome than it was when she says it like that, wow.

"Are you sure there wasn't any kind of... sudden change in the ability of some people to notice magical things a year-and-a-half ago? It was very easy to 'count' as magic in the Veil's eyes so it might be that a lot of you unveiled yourselves as children without noticing..."

"...not that I heard of...I'd expect there to be, at minimum, stories about people who couldn't see magic things, if there had been even one in ten thousand over the last few centuries. Likewise if there were people without souls."

"I think the Burners like to talk about joy."

"Saying they were 'made of joy' is a flippant and gratuitous over-simplification," Cameron admits dismissively.

And then she's silent for a long moment. Because... "If that's true, this place was beyond the Veil's reach. Either you've been shielded from the effects, a thing I've never heard of... or this isn't Earth at all, it isn't even in the solar system."

The sky... looks like normal sky. The sun looks like Sol, as far as Cameron can tell with the naked eye. But either Tegan is a better liar (or was thoroughly lied to better) than Cameron has ever seen, or that sky is the lie.

"I don't think I understand the question well enough to help. But it sounds like either one of us is seriously misinformed, or you are very lost."

No shit.

Okay, this isn't Earth.

And it probably isn't in normal space either.

And it is almost certainly artificial, deliberate, in some way.

For now, though, that doesn't actually change anything. She wasn't actually going to try to go home until after she figured out what was up with this place, so her priorities are the same.

"Alright. In any case, I'm going to be here for a while. What, exactly, are my lodging options long-term?"

Oh good, a question she knows how to answer. "Making camp in the wilderness is always an option, of course. If you don't want to do that, there's free bunks at the temple, or you could rent a bed at a flophouse, or a room at the inn. Or you could build or buy a house, I suppose."

Well, if she isn't going to camp out...

Cameron glances around. At the visibly aged townsfolk in particular.

"I can easily heal an elderly person of the ravages of time to make them young and healthy again. Who's the richest old person you know of who might be interested in paying me for that on short notice?"

She hands the coinbars back to Tegan as another thought occurs to her.

"But, are there houses for sale, right now, in a town this small?"

"If you can do that without expensive reagents, it'd be worth a lot. You might end up wanting to go somewhere bigger."

"Houses, and rich people, are both probably gonna be on the east side of town, I don't go there much. I don't know whether there's a house up right now, but if you're thinking about long-term plans there'll be something eventually. —You can keep the money. Help you get started, right?"

A thought occurs to her. She lowers her voice. "I'd normally assume that you only heal the body, but given... all of the everything... I should mention – if you can heal souls, make people actually younger, so they get more years to live instead of just making their bodies youthful and healthy, then you'll need to have good self-defense magic because there are some very powerful people who would want to live forever. That's the kind of power that wars are fought to control."

"Thanks." Coinbars vanish into a seam in the air. "Will you show me the east side of town or do you want to introduce me to someone who goes there more often?"

"And... my healing does make people 'actually' younger, yes," and if it turns out there's anything to what sure sounds like fairly standard ageist superstition, she'll be ready to murder it when it shows up to kill her otherwise-healthy patients, "it's a full restoration and can be repeated indefinitely without side effects. And if people would start wars over this, that's all the more reason to sell it to those people, for exorbitant amounts of money, before I reveal that I can do it without limit and am willing to provide it for free to anyone who needs it."

Pause. 

"But if it comes down to it, yes, magical girls are built for combat. I could probably raze this town to kindling and I'm a defensive specialist."

"I can point you in the right direction, but if you want someone who knows their way around... if you ask at the inn, they'd probably know who would know? Or you could just wander around on your own, Costallow's not that big. I'd come with you, even, if you wanted."

"Well. I hope you know what you're doing."

"So do I."

Hmm.

"Let's ask at the inn?"

"Sure." She leads the way.

During the walk, Cameron's attention drifts away for fifteen seconds.

And then she whispers, "Cleansing Aura!"

It... doesn't feel like anything, really. But there is a very subtle before vs. after. Pathogens, toxins, and anything else organic that might trouble a human body quietly bleeds out of existence particle by particle. The spell is very precise, able to slowly errode away even the waste still inside a human's body while not even touching necessary gut flora.

And it's not like she's using her mana for anything else right now, so Cameron wills all of her power into the spell, and the aura easily expands to cover the entire town.

Tegan was dirty and sweaty enough from hiking out to the crater and poking around that, together with the incantation to tip her off, she does manage to notice the change. "Did— I think that affected me, too. Did you mean for that to happen?"

Cameron nods.

"If I can keep this spell up while I'm not doing anything else, I might as well."

Tegan may notice that her sweat feels slightly less sticky, and any body odor she had is rapidly fading, leaving only its least-stale edge.

"Well. Thank you."

And presently: "That's it, over on the left." It's a larger building than the ones surrounding it, and somehow homier-looking. An old-fashioned hanging sign over the door reads Sunshine Inn.

"Alright."

Cameron follows Tegan inside.

The innkeeper is dressed in white and gray, and has her hair tied back in a ponytail. She smiles at them as they come in. (Her assessing (and appreciative) glance over Cameron's body is quick and subtle; it would be easy to miss it.) "New meat! Welcome to the Sunshine Inn, I'm Sunny, what can I do ya for?"

Cameron totally notices anyway.

"Hi, Sunny. I'm Cameron. I'm the most powerful healer you've ever met," this in the tones of flat fact, "and apparently this is the place to ask about who might be old and rich enough to pay me a lot of money to make them young and healthy again."

"Oooh. You wanna talk to Simon Potts, over on Pigrun and Farring, but you'll need an introduction – you should show Doc Lemon what you can do, he can get you in with anyone in this town. I gotta stay here and ride the counter, but Tegan can show you where he lives. Hey, do you need clothes? I got this gorgeous scarf—"

Tegan facepalms. "I really should have thought of that. Thanks, Sunny."

She's tempted to say something about the offer of clothes, but she's long since learned not to interfere when Sunny's doing her thing.

A scarf? Is she... hah, that was totally deliberate, wasn't it. Cameron likes this person.

"I do not currently have any clothes but I'll be able to fix that myself, soon. Thanks for the offer, though. How about I come back here if it turns out I can't buy a house today?"

"Sounds good! I'd love to have you. I think the old Pearson place is up for auction soon, you might be able to cut in early if you don't mind 'em gouging you a little. I'd hold out, though, and I promise I'm not just saying that 'cause I'm hoping to getcha into one'a my beds."

Nod.

"I'm glad to be had, and I'm sure your beds have many appealing qualities."

Smiling wryly, Cameron turns to Tegan. "Shall we go see this Doc Lemon?"

"Sure."

"See you round!"

Cameron waves as they depart.

"It's Doctor Clement to his face," she mentions, as they're approaching the office.

"Noted."

Cameron's cleansing aura has been covering the whole town for a while, now, and she keeps it active as they enter this Doctor's abode. Maybe he's noticed it, after this long.

She knocks.

And a middle-aged man opens the door, brown hair just beginning to gray, eyes keen behind round glasses. He's dressed in a white button-down shirt with the sleeves crisply rolled up to just below the elbow; a silver-gray bowtie; and a straight ankle-length wrap skirt in matching gray, buttoned on the side.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Fallahal," he says, nodding to Tegan. Turning to Cameron, "Alvin Clement, at your service. How may I help you?"

"Sunny says you can introduce me to Simon Potts."

Cameron, who is still nude, holds out her hand. This guy looks just old enough for the effects to be striking without making him unrecognizable.

"Would you like a demonstration of why you should?"

He glances at her hand, but makes no move to take it. "I expect that rather depends on the nature of the demonstration." He steps back to welcome them in to the dimly lit room.

"I'm a very powerful healer. I'd like to heal you, to prove my ability."

"I am neither ill nor injured at present."

"Yes, you are. By about fifteen years, I'd guess."

"If you mean to say that I suffered some sort of injury or scarring when I was younger, then I'm afraid your diagnosis is mistaken."

"That is not what I mean to say, no."

She moves closer, looking him over carefully.

"Your hair is fading to gray. Your skin is of reduced suppleness. Your eyes are of diminished fidelity. These are all symptoms of damage I can easily heal."

Cameron holds out her hand again.

"I can see why the claim would require demonstration, then. Very well. But if it requires contact, I hope you will not be offended if I observe the usual precautions."

He walks over to a table with a variety of instruments, pours water from a glass pitcher into a shallow rectangular silver basin, plucks a leaf from a hanging bundle and drops it into the basin, submerges his hands in the water, and incants, "ᛚᛁᚲᚢ·ᚦᛟᛗᛟᚾ·ᚦᛖᚾᚨᚺ". A white light shines up from the basin, and he withdraws his hands, which appear dry.

He gives her a strange look. "I have never seen that spell cast smooth," he says. "Even cast twice in succession in a freshly hallowed surgical theater, there is always a certain baseline sparkle. What I just saw implies that this room is absolutely, immaculately clean. Are you responsible for that, too?"

Interesting. That was definitely not sorcery as Cameron knows it.

"I am. I was wondering if you'd notice."

Cameron smiles, hand still outstretched.

"And it isn't merely this room. I'm currently extending the cleansing effect beyond the borders of this town. My healing spell is considerably stronger in effect, but it does require touch."

"She claims not to be a prophet."

He takes her hand.

Cameron drops her cleansing aura, and starts aligning her healing spell instead. More for effect than because she needs to, Cameron closes her eyes.

Fifteen seconds later, she looks up and intones, "Perfect Incarnation!"

And all signs of aging fade from the doctor, his body restored to something nigh-indistinguishable from the platonic ideal of health. His tissues are like new, the energy of youth surges in him, and his body becomes fit. His hair is still graying, but it'll grow in his natural color.

He blinks, blinks again, squints, and then – takes off his glasses.

"Remarkable." He turns the glasses over in his hands. "Yes, you'll certainly have your referral." He unties his bowtie, letting the ends hang down, and goes over to the basin to repeat the ritual.

"I'm sure this isn't necessary," he says as he pours the water, "but you understand why a man in my line of work needs to keep in the habit of being too careful rather than not enough."

"Of course."

Even with her cleansing aura down, nothing it removed from the area will have had time to migrate across the radius of the spell to reach them, yet. The room they're in should still be immaculate. Cameron doesn't recast it yet, though, because the doctor looks interested and might want some other demonstration for his own sake, first.

"I'm sure you'd also like to know that my cleansing aura is specific, not general. And what you've seen so far is only a side effect. It's designed primarily to remove infection, illness, and toxins from within the body, which it does very precisely and completely, by cutting the infectious microorganisms and harmful substances out of the fabric of reality, bit by bit."

Wry smirk. "If I keep it active continuously, it even prevents a certain set of bodily needs from ever interrupting me."

"Continuously – that would explain –" The light from the basin sparkles faintly, this time, almost a shimmer. "Is it not active now? This casting did show the baseline sparkle."

"If your aura would prevent others from dropping earth as well, then I expect many would object. Myself included. The Path of Charity calls us to give back our remnants, dung included, and for good reason. If we did not return our manure to the earth, the fields would grow as barren as if they were never let to fallow."

"I assure you I have better things to do than install myself as a magical alternative to... dropping earth."

Cameron hesitates a moment, then decides to explain a little but stay vague.

"My magic is like a machine that is currently switched off. I can use it without switching it on, but there are limits, such as being restricted to one spell at a time, and a more involved casting process. Switching my magic 'on' limits me in other, small ways, but it's mostly for cultural reasons that I'm not in the habit of defaulting to that state."

"I'm glad of that; thank you. And I think I follow, though I have no particular expertise in machinery."

Tegan quietly moves to let herself out.

Cameron moves to follow, then stops and beckons at the doctor in a questioning manner.

"Will you come personally? Or will a note suffice to convince this Simon Potts fellow."

"The usual thing would be for me to introduce you in person, perhaps over tea. I could arrange things if I knew when you would be available, unless you prefer to handle that yourself."

"You don't have to hurry out just because I'm no longer needed here," Tegan murmurs to Cameron.

"If you have another appointment, don't let me keep you, but," Cameron says to Tegan with a shrug.

And then to Doc Lemon, "I'd hoped to meet him today. I have nothing but what I landed with, and no money but what Tegan generously donated to me. Selling youth to the rich is my best short-term option, and I need to take advantage of it quickly before it gets out that I am gratuitously overcharging. And it will get out, and soon, because I will not withhold healing from those in need."

"I'm sure I can arrange something."

Tegan shoots him a sympathetic look.

...did she make him uncomfortable? Hm. She is kind of upending his schedule.

"Thank you for sparing the time on such short notice," she says, sincere. "If I am ever the solution to one of your problems, I hope I will be able to reciprocate."

"That's very kind of you."

"One possibility, if it strikes you as appropriate, might be to present the situation to Mr. Potts in less transactional terms: rather than straightforwardly purchasing your services, he would be taking an opportunity to help a powerful, generous, and charitably-minded healer to establish herself. It would not be inappropriate to offer as a token of your gratitude that he could be one of your first beneficiaries."

"That... would be a terrible idea, back home. The kind of thing that results in me being harassed by increasing amounts of lawyer until I'm forced to murder someone. But I suppose I'm, in theory, willing to trust your local expertise, if you can assure me that kind of thing is safe, here."

"I can hardly imagine how a society could function that punishes generosity and rewards ingratitude. I can think of no reason it should be unsafe in such a way here, and for Simon Potts in particular to do such a thing would not only contradict everything I know of his character but also destroy the good name he has built over seventy years."

"That said, if you prefer to take another approach, then I am certain that one could be formulated."

"I think," says Tegan, "that I don't understand the danger well enough to know how to be sure that it doesn't exist here. I don't think I've heard of anything like that happening, but – who would try to bring suit against you, and on what grounds, and for what end?"

"Well," says Cameron, trying to think of a simplified example, "the way I'd expect this to go at home is: they see the value in what I can do, and agree to sponsor me. We sign a contract that gives me a working budget, and gives them partial ownership of whatever I do with the money and the right to, like, put their name on whatever service I offer. Then, the first time we disagree on something, it turns out they have the legal right to throw me out of my house and the legal right to demand that if I'm not healing in their name I may not heal anyone ever again."

Cameron shrugs.

"I imagine that, if we knew how to teach the Path to outsiders, there would be some interest in traveling to your home country for the purpose."

"As it is, I can only reassure you that no such contract would be necessary. If there is a difficulty of trust, the one-time exchange for healing should suffice; whatever your intentions, he will have either purchased a rare service or funded a worthy venture."

Now that's an entertaining mental image. Excuse me mister billionaire, have you tried not being business-savvy? Join our cult and you too can be eaten alive by the rest of the economy!

Cameron manages not to laugh aloud, schooling her features.

"Indeed." Nod. "Shall we?"

He smiles, faintly. "Certainly. If we are fortunate, we may even be in time to speak with him over lunch." He redoes his bowtie.

"If I am to introduce you, perhaps I should know your name."

"Of course," she says with a deliberate hint of sheepishness. "My name is Cameron, and my title is the Rousing Salve. Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise," he says sincerely.

Simon Potts's house is one of the largest in town, though still small by Cameron's standards; from the outside, it might fit twenty medium-sized rooms across two stories. The doctor knocks, and a minute later an elderly man in a short-sleeved tunic, sash belt, and slacks answers the door. He looks at them, then double-takes at Alvin.

"Good morning, Mr. Potts. I hope we aren't interrupting?"

        "Not at all; please, come in." Simon leads them into a cozy drawing room with sunlight filtering in through plain white curtains. The house is furnished unostentatiously, but well; there is little outright decoration, but the chairs are comfortable, the space is uncramped, and nothing is shoddy or in less than perfect repair. Cameron's chair gets a seemingly-decorative cloth draped across the back and seat, though Simon manages to make it seem like a fluid and unremarkable part of the process of making the room ready to receive guests.

Once everyone is seated, Simon serves tea and small triangular sandwiches; the tableware is plain ceramic in clear glaze, with brass cutlery.

The doctor speaks first. "Simon, I'd like to introduce you to Cameron. She's an accomplished healer, as you can see," – he gestures subtly at himself – "and my understanding is that she intends to begin offering it philanthropically."

        "Well. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Cameron. If I might ask, what brings you to Costallow?"

"At least two highly improbable coincidences," Cameron says. "Possibly enemy action of some kind. It is a mystery."

It's kind of obvious why hers is the only clothed chair, but Cameron can hardly blame these poor mortals for the habits they must keep in these conditions. Nevermind that it is doubly redundant in her case.

"Since I am in Costallow, how would you like to be a young, healthy man again? Today."

        He glances at the doctor, then back to Cameron.

        "I believe I should like that very much."

Cameron nods.

"I thought about this on the way over here. And I think I've decided on a fair price for this very valuable service it seems I alone am capable of providing. It would not be at all fair to set a fixed price that some could pay and others could not, when the truth is that I can in fact do this without limit, at no cost to myself but time and attention."

Cameron leans forward.

"So, I will restore you to youth and vigor, and then I will ask you for exactly the same thing I will ask of anyone else who comes to me to be made young again, rich or poor: five percent of your liquid assets, as determined by you. Do you agree that's fair?"

Cameron expects to be rather thoroughly cheated, under this policy, but also expects any plausible amounts of money to be enough for her until after the initial rush has died down.

        He regards her assessingly. "You're a very interesting person, Cameron."

        "While I would gladly pay the price you name, my honest assessment is that that is not fair. Liquid assets are not at all the same as assets one can afford to part with, and in particular I would expect the wealthy to have both a higher proportion of illiquid wealth, and of course a higher proportion of inessential funds."

"That would be why I will deliberately avoid double-checking that I actually receive five percent, I think," Cameron says. "It is not the exact number that is important, but the impact on my clients of hearing the number. They will think, 'what pile of money could reasonably pass as a twentieth of my available wealth' and give me what they feel they can part with, is my thinking."

        "Perhaps. Though you may find that the less honest are also less likely to be poor, for a number of reasons. Still, it is a clear improvement over the common practice, and perhaps it will work as well as you expect. I can only hope."

        He sips his tea, thoughtfully.

        "While I would be perfectly happy to spend the afternoon enjoying your excellent company, I would understand if you preferred that I go to look over my books."

"There's no reason those should be mutually exclusive."

Cameron stands and moves around until she's close enough to touch him, and reaches towards him politely. "My spell requires touch."

        There is the subtlest ghost of an eyebrow at the implication.

        He reaches up and takes her hand.

        And lets out a soft "oh," as the years melt away.

        It is a young man that stands up, his hair mixed black and white, turning his hand over and back and flexing his fingers. "I am sure you will be hearing this often, but you are a truly extraordinary young woman. Thank you." Even his voice is somehow smoother, a rich baritone.

        "I hope you will excuse me," he says to Alvin and Tegan, who nod with murmurs of assent. Turning back to Cameron: "Shall we?"

        (She might catch Tegan's slight smile.)

The hormone transition always hits hard in the extremely rejuvenated. Usually she has to do some convincing before whoever she healed is willing to use her as an outlet, or else they simply lose control and pounce on her and she has to do the same convincing afterwards.

This matter-of-fact expectation is a nice change.

"Of course," Cameron says serenely, pressing herself against his side a little. "You've very suddenly regained the ardor of a teenager. Taking any other course right now would be quite hurtful."

As they leave the room together, Cameron reaches behind her with her free hand, out of Simon's field of view. And a second, exact duplicate of Cameron appears, facing the opposite direction. She comes back to the table and sits down with Tegan and the Doc.

        It's not the worst pickup line he's ever heard.

        She might find that his intentions are less direct than she imagined. He does put his arm around her, as they leave; but his hand goes on her shoulder rather than her waist, and he gives the impression of being perfectly happy to simply make conversation, though he can take enough of a hint not to actually start looking over his books. (The cut of his trousers somehow manages to make his erection visible but not quite overt, and somehow elegant rather than awkward.)

 
        (Alvin's eyebrows raise at the surreptitious duplication.)

Downstairs: "Is that why you work professionally in the nude?"

Earthly fashions could take notes. Ganymese bottoms actually do that better, but they kind of have to when opaque fabric is considered unfashionable there.

Cameron isn't being coy, she meant that literally, but as his healer she of course will go at his pace. In fact, if he does want to get his bookkeeping (and payment) out of the way first, she'll perch decoratively over here and wait.

"Probably not," duplicate Cameron says, "depending on what 'that' is?"

        If she's not making the next move, he can make small talk with her. "I admit it is not entirely clear to me how even a suddenly renewed ardor would be so urgent that a delay in addressing it might cause harm," he remarks. "Certainly I never experienced such a thing in my ...first youth. Does your experience suggest I ought to be in a hurry?"

"In case your patient suddenly finds themself in an urgent mood?"

        "Is this really what you want to be asking about?" Alvin asks Tegan.

"Ought to be? Not exactly. But it would only be natural if you were. And I'm such a convenient outlet. I am not the kind of disrespectful that expects you to pretend like that," she points at his bulge, "is of no consequence."

She lets out a giggle for the Doc, at that, but she addresses Tegan's question first.

"No," she says to Tegan, "although that's a good guess. Most places, mundane medicine can do this much for people." She gestures vaguely at the direction Simon and her real self went. "I make pornography. I also provide resurrection to fallen magical girls, but. Mostly I make porn. So obviously I'm naked for that, most of the time."

        ...he probably shouldn't be surprised that she's the sort of person who goes around naked.

        "I don't know that I would have called it disrespectful. But if you are interested, I certainly wouldn't refuse."

"Huh."

        This time it's Alvin's turn to be distracted. "Mundane medicine – is that teachable –"

"Didn't you want to –" never mind. It can wait.

"I'm always interested," she says with a wry smirk, because Simon seems like the kind of man who wants to feel generous, rather than merely permitted. "And I'd consider it a matter of pride, to not leave a job unfinished."

One hand drifts idly to her breast in a suggestive caress, a wordless reminder of things his hands might do.

"After all, I'd hardly send you elsewhere to get reacquainted with your renewed body, when I seem to be to your taste."

"...want to what?" Blink. "And, I could explain the principles? But I don't think I know enough to recreate any of it. And the real me has my tablet."

        He steps close to her, and rests his hands on her bare hips. "In that case," – he kisses her briefly, on the lips – "I should be delighted." He's smiling.

"She has an enchanted scrying tablet," Tegan summarizes to Alvin.

To Cameron: "I think we both wanted to ask about your – duplication? Is this you an illusion?"

Mm. She leans into his touch and puts her hands on him, moving to where she can help him out of his clothes. Her skin is smooth like silk, unnaturally perfect, and her hips soft even as her muscles move under his hands, pressing her into his bulge while she explores his chest.

"I have a portable computing device," Cameron corrects. "It's a mundane machine. I am sort of an illusion? My mind is instanced, and my body is a simulated material pattern projected by... the thing that is to light what light is to sound."

Cameron holds out her arm, and swipes at herself hard enough to scratch. Instead of a red line, the mark on her arm glows with rainbow light, as if her skin is a thin paint on top of... well, it looks a lot like what's inside those mana dice Cameron showed Tegan earlier.

        "Extraordinary." His hands wander over her back and butt and shoulders, as much caressing as exploring for his own sake.

        He cooperates with her undressing him, but doesn't actually do any of it himself.

"I think that makes... three? impossible things about you. No, four. At some point one has to wonder."

        "...the healing, the duplication, the – nonmagical scrying abacus?, and—?"

"Her arrival. Apparently the starstone yesterday was actually her. They have space-ships where she comes from, and she was shipwrecked."

        He blinks, processing this. "...I imagine we will all have much to learn from you, should you see fit to teach."

That's fine, assuming none of his clothes are tricky to remove. She strips him to he waist while making appreciative noises at his wandering hands. Then she moves below the waist and strips him to the ankles, at which point he may have to finish undressing himself.

Heh. Cameron as: alien space babe. That's fun.

"I'm not a very good teacher, but I'll answer any questions I can. Eventually..." She trails off. "I can actually think of a way to contact my partner, but it'll be expensive and I want to know more about... where here is in relation to where I'm from, before I try that."

      It appears that he kept his body well-groomed, even in his old age.

      He steps out of his shoes and trousers. When he removes his socks, the process is more aesthetic than efficient, without quite crossing the line into overtly putting on a show. He puts one foot up on the bed, which incidentally flexes a variety of interesting muscles, and uses both hands to remove the sock; the overall effect is reminiscent of a soldier unlacing a boot. After repeating the process with the other foot, he turns to her, smiling; takes her hand; and sits on the edge of the bed so that he's looking up at her.

      The whole process has an air of disciplined elegance to it, and his body language at the end is not so much inviting as expectant, a low-key coiled tension like a soldier awaiting orders or a prey animal meeting its predator's gaze. "I hope you will not be too gentle with me," he murmurs, and kisses her fingers.

      His erection stands rigidly at attention.

      "Well. Obviously I am professionally interested in your medical knowledge, but perhaps you have a better idea regarding what might be most usefully prioritized. From what I understood of your references to machines, it seems as though your home country has answered questions that it would not even occur to me to ask."

"Is there anything we could do to help you with making contact, or maybe scrying to match up the maps?"

Cameron smiles knowingly and pushes him back, before crawling forward in a way that drags her breast up his thigh, up the length of his dick, up his belly. She gracefully pivots forward to straddle him. Her lips hover over him, both sets, a teasing kiss and a teasing... kiss.

Then, without warning, she drops. She's more than wet enough, for him to glide right in, and more than tight enough for him to feel every inch. She shivers in pleasure, at having him in her, but there's no pause before her hips start twerking, hard, jolting him every time she comes down. She kisses him just as hard.

"I do have to start somewhere," Cameron says to the Doc. "What does occur to you is as good a place as any."

And to Tegan, "I doubt it, but I am curious how you'd do that. How does your scrying technique work?"

He falls back, unresisting – shivers, his eyes fluttering closed – kisses back, half-moans –

– and gasps sharply when she drops, his eyes flying open. He presses up into her, meeting her kiss with a hot fierce passion born of the thrill of being had.

"I only know the basics, but – in general, you need a scrying ground like a mirror or a crystal, and a focus token to direct the scrying. Plus the arcane basics – every spell takes at minimum a ritual environment, a power source, and an incantation."

"It usually takes more power, and a more specific focus, to scry over longer distances, but some things are harder or easier to scry than others. It's easier to scry the surface of the moon twelve thousand miles up than a town square fifty miles over."

        "Part of that is line of sight," Alvin puts in, "though it is also possible to make use of curved paths. The near side of a mountain may be scried more readily than the far side, but both are considerably easier than the inside."

"It's also harder to get close-up views of things. Has to do with specificity." Pause. "—What I don't understand is, you showed me your city on your tablet. If you can – machine-scry it, from here, why can't you do that same kind of thing to show you the path between here and there?"

Cameron is intimately familiar with that reaction.

It quickly becomes obvious that Cameron can keep this pace without getting tired. Every time her hips slam down, the bed shakes, and her walls clench around him, but there's a sense of restrained strength even so. Cameron isn't any heavier than a girl her size should be, but she isn't bothering to hide the hints that she is far stronger.

And, somehow, its like she knows which slight variations in angle are more pleasurable for him with each thrust, and like she knows exactly how close he is to his peak, even before he does. Her superhuman grace and precision obviously exceeds her strength. The pause between slamming her hips down and lifting them up for the next stroke grows just the right amount to keep him on the edge.

"I can't 'machine-scry' it, from here," Cameron explains. "I can only look at what the device had in its memory at the time."

Eelesia would be better at this. Cameron misses her.

"We have different terminology, obviously, but 'pure' sorcery also requires... a pattern for the mana to follow, a source of mana, and vocal pronouncements as a catalyst. It sounds like you guys have some kind of local, ambient power source, though? Especially since those rules are... not the behavior I'd expect from efficient scrying sorcery? I don't think I've ever heard of sorcerous scrying being practical for anything but looking at the insides of things, actually. And I also didn't see the Doc use anything I'd recognize as a power source for that thing you did with the bowl."

It's been a long time since delaying his climax was this challenging, but he isn't out of practice either.

—and then it becomes clear just how thoroughly she is in control, and he lets out a breathy moan-whimper of lust and need and helpless submission and the despair-pleasure of being made to ride the edge, and he lets himself go, because there really is nothing he can do to affect how long she prolongs his delicious suffering—he wants it to be soon but he hopes it won't—

"Ah."

        Nod. "The water cleansing uses cleareye sage for the power source. And there is ambient magic, but in most places it's too weak to use as a power source."

"...I wonder if you know something we don't about efficiency? Or possibly vice versa."

She watches the signals play along his nerves (there's oddities in the way the impulses move, all the same signs, but drawn slightly differently) and feels him stop holding back. Her hips slam down, and stay down, and her walls clench hard as she moves her lips to his neck, watches the orgasm build in his brain right up to the edge... and stay there. It starts to recede, and she flexes her walls that much tighter, keeping him there, keeping him there. She moves with him, holding him down without letting him thrust against her, and if she were less than perfect at it that would be enough to push him into orgasm. If she breathes wrong, he'll cum.

She doesn't.

She watches it try to diminish, waiting, and then... the nerve signals change. Flashover from falling to rising.

Now.

Suddenly she's riding him with fast, full strokes, rolling her hips against him hard. And despite being on the edge a moment ago, he doesn't cum right away. Instead the intensity rises and rises and rises until it fills his whole body and then erupts from his cock in a roaring torrent that goes on and on.

Cameron cums too, during that, but it's quick and she barely acknowledges it. All of her attention is on moving her body and on her magical perception of Simon's nervous system. Still, she's a little shaky and breathless as she coaxes the last few spurts out of him.

"I think its more likely that you have a different set of figurative and literal tools," Cameron guesses. She frowns. "What does clear-eye sage come from? And is it only a power source or is it also a pattern-reference?"

The edge is razor-thin, closer than he's ever experienced without falling over, one more impossibility from this impossible woman.

—and then it's, somehow, something else, beyond the edge yet not over it, as though she had thrown him off the cliff and he found himself not falling but flying—and then he does fall, comes, and even that continues too—

—and, finally, he's spent, catching his breath as he lies beneath her, gazing up at her starry-eyed.

"...please," he finally manages, "please let this, today, be real. Please be real."

Nod. "Plausible."

        "From... the garden...? I don't think I understand the question."

        "It's not only a power source, but it's not quite a pattern reference either. Different sources provide different kinds of power; I would describe it as a choice of raw material for construction, rather than a set of plans."

"The realest," Cameron giggles.

She lets him recover at his own pace, being his soft, breasty blanket until he's ready to get up.

And a whisper, "Cleansing Aura."

Cameron nods thoughtfully at the Doc. "Yes. That's how I'd describe it too. But to extend the analogy, all of the raw materials found in nature are either toxic or mutagenic, thus mana dice. So just what the fuck lives in your garden?"

He'll probably lay here for at least a few minutes. He's not in a hurry.

        Doc blinks. "While it's not unheard of for raw natural magic to have side effects, a competent spell design should be able to counteract the unwanted tendencies, or at minimum make them more manageable. Domesticated plants and animals are also easier to work with than their wild counterparts, though that's hardly specific to magic in particular."

Snuggle.

"That... it's like half of what you're saying makes perfect sense but then you pivot from there into something that makes no sense. I mean, it sounds as though you use mundane ingredients to power sorcery, but that's nonsense. Unless your herb garden is itself some kind of... flower elemental? Or something? And maybe there are ways to mitigate the mutagenic effects of using impure sources, but you should still have green skin or flower petals for hair or something!"

Cameron slumps and leans back in her chair.

"I'm increasingly sure there is some... weird local factor, confounding things, here. Like the Veil used to be for everyone else. If... some alien showed up from outside the Veil's range, and didn't know about it, they would've seen all those people taking leave of their senses in bizarre but eerily consistent ways and been very confused. Some phenomenon that acts consistently enough that, living within it, you've never questioned it's ubiquity..."

Snuggle.

And eventually he's ready to get up. Not that lying here isn't pleasant, but – he finds himself full of energy again, wanting to get up and move.

After several minutes looking over various ledgers, he ducks into a side room and shortly emerges with a hinged wooden box in an elegant style that flirts with minimalism without seeming too plain.

Inside, the bottom is a tray for holding bars like the ones Tegan gave her, two rows of twenty-four slots each, marked out at every six. The center twenty slots, ten in each row, are filled with gold bars. In the lid, a small bundle of papers is held in place by a ribbon; the frontmost is a scrip for a pound of salt from "Malja Shannast, Costallow". The whole thing weighs about five or six pounds.

"With my compliments. I've chosen a larger box, in anticipation of your future work; may you fill it quickly."

        "The garden is just a place where I plant things in the dirt."

"My guess would be that it's what you called ambient magic. Everything is at least a little bit magical, but dramatic side effects like that would only come from correspondingly powerful sources. Do your mundane things work the same way? Are you able to, I don't know, eat bread without wheat sprouting from your hair? Can you wash your hands without a river strong enough to sweep you away in the current?"

"Thank you, Simon."

She takes the box, and it vanishes into a seam in the air.

"Please do tell your friends about this."

She gives him one more brief kiss before they head back out to join Tegan and the Doc.

"No, of course," duplicate Cameron is saying, "magical things don't do that either---" and she dissolves into a rapidly dispersing aurora mid-word as the real Cameron and Simon come into view.

"---just the use of non-pure mana for sorcery you perform yourself, because of the aural resonance between the tainted mana and your etherum-shadow," the real Cameron continues, leaning on the back of her now-vacant seat. "So yes, I think we mean very different things by 'ambient magic' and the thing you mean is a prime candidate for the thing."

And then she says, "thing," one more time, just because.

        Is that her voice coming from the next room? Simon supposes it wouldn't be the strangest thing about her. —yes, it must have been, she's continuing the conversation. He mentally adds it to the ever-growing pile of mysteries and impossibilities that surrounds her.

        "I don't think I understood most of that, but I think my first question would be whether the 'etherum shadow' might be what we call the soul," Doc says, "and how literally to interpret the word 'shadow'. Is there an etherum-light in which one might cast a shadow?"

"Um, the mind, by which I mean the movement of energy in your brain, would be the 'light' in this uncomfortably stretched analogy," Cameron says. "It's more like a wake? It doesn't have effects on you, you have effects on it. It's the thing that causes spirit accretion. Magical girls don't have it."

        "That sounds loosely analogous to how the soul forms – actually, under certain theories, how magic in general comes about – though it would be more properly described as a growth than an accretion, and the relationship is certainly not one-way. Is there anything else that causes spirit accretion? Anything else that casts an etherum shadow?"

"...are you, all of you, possessed?" Cameron asks, sounding more intrigued than disturbed, but kind of disturbed.

"No. Possession is a fundamentally different kind of thing from souls. The possessing spirit exists separately from the person, and the person from the spirit, both before and after the time during which it inhabits them. The soul is a part of the person, and grows with them in the same way as their lungs or their nerves; it cannot be separated from them without both dying."

"Well, the first half of that is sort of true... but you're not using the words 'spirit' or 'soul' in ways that make sense to me. Let's... try not using those words?"

Cameron gets a rather abstract expression on her face as she tries (and only mostly succeeds in) remembering how Eelesia explained this to her.

"So... the etherum-shadow is what causes the phenomenon where an object or location accretes conceptual attributes when a large consensus of people pays attention to it a lot, and is also the medium by which a mundane mortal's voice can catalyze a closed mana channel, since the-phenomenon-we're-not-calling-spirits is caused by the open mana channels left behind by the etherum-shadow."

Cameron is almost certain she missed a detail in there somewhere.

"I am a former human who's mind was uplifted into an artificial god-brain that is immensely sophisticated and a self-contained, inexhaustible source of magical power."

Cameron spreads her hands, palms up, and shrugs.

What.

"We don't know what causes places, or inorganic objects, to have particular magical properties, but if the same kind of stone is quarried from different places, the magical qualities will be more similar than two different types of stone from the same place. The magical properties of living things seem to be a kind of natural spellcraft, in the same way that a hawk's talons are natural weapons or a tortoise's shell is natural armor."

"The same materials and species bear the same properties across cultures, and new species and materials already have their magical properties when they are first discovered."

"Every human being has a complex magical structure integrated with their body; it is often considered as the part of the body that is composed of magic. This structure is incidentally involved in a variety of biological processes, and necessarily involved in every instance of spellcasting, since as the part of the person that is of magic it is the means by which one interacts with magic. This is what we call the soul."

"Other living things have magical aspects likewise, but none so potent or complex as a person's. We do not truly understand why, but it is often speculated to be related to the capacity for speech, due to the importance of incantations; though people mute from birth exhibit no known magical differences from any other person."

"Just as people, animals, and plants are primarily physical and secondarily magical, there are likewise types of beings that are primarily magical and secondarily physical. Some types of these can attach themselves parasitically to a person, inhibiting their ability to think clearly and overshadowing their thoughts and feelings with its own animalistic ones, until it is removed. Others attach themselves in a similar way to an animal, in which case the relationship is not necessarily harmful to the animal, and may even be beneficial. Still others attach to a place, influencing the flora and fauna there in subtle ways. Most types, however, are largely independent of any such symbiosis."

"This class of beings is what we call spirits, and the parasitic attachment we call possession."

No, seriously, what.

"An artificial god brain? That's – you're talking about apotheosis. That's not a thing. People don't just become gods, any more than trees spontaneously turn into clouds!"

        "There are stories, about alchemists," Simon murmurs thoughtfully. "I never found any more substantial than wild rumor, but, well. It would hardly be the first impossible thing about Cameron, but it is the first that might go some way toward explaining the others."

"Ghhkhkkl," Tegan opines insightfully.

Cameron is silent for a long moment as she absorbs the Doc's words.

"There's nothing spontaneous about it," Cameron says absently to Tegan. "The artificial god-brains were invented by those planet-machines my partner killed, a long time ago. Eelesia suspects that when they arrived on our planet, they hunted and captured gods to experiment on and study them, because we have stories about a lot of gods that don't exist anymore. I bet at least some of those dead gods were killed by that first generation of magical girls, personally. The religions during that time period were more than horrific enough to justify it, and it would only really take one dissenter with the right specialization. Of course, then the Veil went up and confounded everything, so we don't really know."

Cameron continues to try to fit the Doc's framework into the ontological framework she's familiar with. And fails. That as good as confirms it. This whole place is doing something to these people, and the problem with that is the scale. It's too big to be anything (super)natural. This whole place... is someone or something's... experiment.

A cold prickle crawls down her spine as she looks up at the Doc.

Simon shudders. "Killing gods – it's an ugly business. That's the kind of thing that breaks civilizations."

Cameron shrugs at that. "It happened."

She straightens up and offers Simon a smile. "Sorry. We should get on with things. There's something I need to do outside before I head back to Sunny's inn."

"Of course," says Simon. "It's been an honor to have you."

Tegan and Doc stand up as well. "Thank you," Tegan says to Simon. "It's been a privilege."

And they file out.

"I think that went well," she remarks.

"Mmmhm," Cameron agrees.

"Okay," Cameron says, sobering. "I want a better lay of the land, so to speak... I'm going to try the obvious thing."

She looks around, and heads away from the nearby houses towards the closest clear, open ground that looks unused.

"You can watch me set up the sorcery," she adds, mostly to the Doc.

Some sort of general-purpose divination, presumably? She honestly doesn't even know what to call obvious anymore.

        "I believe I would be interested in seeing that," he says.

Cameron pulls out her tablet, and brings up her sorcery notes. It's a locally hosted wiki that's mostly Eelesia's work, consolidating a hierarchy of basics, the 'simple machines' of the 5d energy world. Diagrams and equations with neatly organized descriptions.

Then she pulls an etched glass disc out of her Pocket as well. It's an inch thick, and it has a triangular notch in it. She pulls out a tet next, fits the glowing die into the notch, then flings the disc out like a fat heavy frisbee.

At the top of its arc, Cameron snaps out, "Oum!"

The disc freezes in place, lights up with rainbow radiance, and shatters into dust as light plays down and scorches a pattern into the ground. Cameron steps forward, stopping at certain points in the design, and placing down a glowing aurora cube at each.

Flashy.

"A complex effect, for such a simple invocation. I assume the materials were pre-prepared in some way?"

"Oh yeah. Very very simple, just projects whatever is etched into the glass into whatever's below the disc. For when you need to set up an array in a hurry. Or when you're impatient and lazy and have spares," Cameron adds wryly, setting down the last cube.

She straightens up and steps carefully outside the bounds of the array. "Now I test it."

"Iao." The power core marked with 'iao' runes lights up briefly. "Vai. Khz. Lom." The areas around each of the other cubes lights up in turn.

Each 'word' corresponds to a specific 'rune' in the array. When she speaks the sound, rainbow light flows from the adjacent cube into the specified rune.

Curious. The outlines of the procedure make sense – a complex ritual involving a series of individual invocations – but if she needs that kind of complexity, why are the individual incantations so short?

(He doesn't interrupt, as long as she appears to be actively working.)

—oh, of course. She's testing. A series of diagnostics, but she's diagnosing the magic itself. He doesn't have any firsthand knowledge of the techniques used to survey the magical environment in an unfamiliar location, but he would not be astonished if it looked more or less like this.

But she seemed to think magic couldn't use natural power; if wherever she fell from was empty of natural magic, then why would she already have such a thing prepared? – no, it wasn't empty, it was that nonhuman magic was toxic. So this must be designed to check for the presence of contamination.

But she doesn't seem to be reacting as though these results were unusual, and the rainbow light seems indistinguishable from the inside of her duplicate from earlier, which weakly suggests that there isn't any detectable contamination in it. Is the local ambient magic simply too weak, or too nontoxic, to register?

Cameron catches the look on the Doc's face and pauses to raises an inquisitive eyebrow at him.

"It looks like your spell isn't detecting anything, and I was wondering why. My best guess is that our ambient natural magic is much weaker than the toxic natural magic you're accustomed to, and so is too subtle to register."

"...what? I haven't cast anything yet. I'm just testing that the array is getting power and responding as it should. I don't want to lose extra mana dice if a line came down wrong."

"Ah, I see. My apologies."

"It's fine?" Why is he apologizing.

Alright, array checks out. Cameron consults her tablet again. If she builds this thing in the wrong order her trip is going to be short and embarrassing.

She peers discreetly at the tablet – that's supposed to be nonmagical? She wouldn't even know where to begin. You'd need a light source, since it seems to be glowing... and then maybe some kind of stained-glass in front of it? You could get very basic shifting images with multiple independently rotating layers of glass; that can't be what this is doing, but maybe a more advanced extension of the same principles? But it's supposed to be based on some kind of mathematics – maybe the right starting point is more like an astrolabe? She really has no idea.

Cameron starts chanting. It's the same small set of syllables, repeated in various combinations. Like this, it's much more obvious that each syllable is activating its associated symbol within the array, as the aurora light is directed to flow, this way, that way, connect here, brace there, lock together.

A rainbow mandala forms on top of the lines already there, more like a diffuse smear of color than the sharp lines of the array.

Cameron walks around the circumference of the mandala, physically reaching in and pulling arcs of light up from the flat design to make it three-dimensional. Then she calls out one more syllable, and those arcs rotate into the fourth dimension, accelerating as though pulled until they hit some invisible point of resistance and lock in place.

A gentle breeze starts flowing inwards, towards the array from all directions.

Cameron steps back. "Alright. I think I did that correctly."

Fascinating. It looks like she's working with a different design philosophy for her spellwork: more explicit, separated into clearly separated minimalistic parts, refined essences like oil and water and salt rather than mint and coriander and thyme.

"What is it meant to do?"

She's never seen a ritual that involved such large detail work – actually, it looks like the aspects of a ritual relating to refined, rather than raw, components, except that the whole thing is like that – and why does it need to be glowing like that? Unless the lines are informative somehow – and it looks like they're just describing the structure of the ritual environment – that would only happen if she's working with an incredible amount of power, in which case maybe the refined components are so that she can have more control, more precision? Or maybe this ritual was designed as a teaching demonstration – Cameron does seem like the sort of person who would go haring off after learning one spell in discipline – but she also claimed to be an artificial god, and that her partner had killed gods. It's probably the power one.

"Um. How would you check if you got it right, and what would happen if you didn't?" And does she want to be standing near it, if so.

"It's a gravity shade," Cameron says. "If I didn't get it right, then when I trigger it, it'll consume the rest of those mana dice, get very bright, and then do nothing much. But... feel that? That breeze means it's doing something."

She toes a small rock and uses her foot to toss it over the array. The rock, as it crosses the boundary, suddenly bounces upwards off thin air, then arcs back to the ground on the other side of the array. Cameron frowns. That... might be wrong? But she doesn't remember for sure.

"I think it's working. Anything between the arrays is sheltered from down."

"I wasn't aware that – falling down – came from a place. It... separates things from their weight? Or, no, that's probably like saying a regular shade separates things from their color... I really don't understand enough of the theory, sorry."

"Separating things from their weight is a reasonable description, yes," Cameron says with a nod.

Cameron pauses to take a breath.

And then she chants her transformation aria. "Unafraid of rape, nor beholden to love, I will not be diverted from this, the one true cause. Every enemy of lust shall beware, Erocentric Avenger Rousing Salve."

The words are more than sound, more than their meaning, they are tangible. And in their wake comes ripples of aurora leading pieces of shining black and emerald green, kaleidoscoping out of nothing to fit itself onto Cameron's body.

Cameron's raiment leaves the parts that matter exposed, and is seemingly made of pristine, alien materials, but in addition to that its presence, its existence, is vivid and stark, standing out.

Oh.

For some reason that's what makes it fall into place, the – she can't call it an incantation – the words that are realer than real, and the raiment likewise – she's looking at a goddess's avatar.

Shipwrecked, fallen, built herself a body from nothing, possessed of powers beyond the ordinary yet not a prophet... she really should have figured it out before Cameron explained. And even after Cameron said she was a goddess, somehow it still didn't really click. But this, this unearthly woman cut of a fabric not like the fabric of this world, and with her declaration of such a narrow purpose— it's vividly, unmistakably clear that she really isn't human.

"If you're interested in gathering local worshippers," she says, "I think you've landed in a good place for it."

"I'm not..." Blink. "Wait, what?"

"For some reason people outside Gesland get weird about sex. – please don't go off on a crusade over them, holy wars never work out well for anyone involved – but if you want to teach people how to follow your religion, I think you'll find it easier to get the early momentum going here than it would be most places."

"Or I'd understand if you'd rather just focus on getting home."

"...what the fuck?"

Cameron shakes her head.

"You, I can't even, and I don't have a religion."

Cameron pauses to reflect on that statement, and winces.

"Technically."

No, a rabidly loyal social media following doesn't count.

"Maybe I misunderstood earlier. I thought you said you were a goddess? Became one, some time before you got shipwrecked? And you definitely look like one, and sounded like one when you did the," – she mimics Cameron's body language from when she recited her aria – "thing, a minute ago."

"Well, yes, but a magical girl is a god like a car is a horse. And you don't know what a car is. Uh. Like... something, that does a thing on its own, versus a machine that does the same thing, but better, and under your control?"

Cameron throws her hands up in exasperation.

"It may be that I am being unduly swayed by the similarity of sound, but – would a car be similar to a cart?"

"Are you saying you're a machine? You seem... more like a person, than I would expect." But her tablet is also nothing like any machine she's ever heard of, so who knows.

"Well, what is a machine? In the sense you mean, no, I'm not a machine. On the other hand, you are a machine, if you want to use the enlightened definition. My spells wouldn't work on you if you weren't."

Cameron taps on her tablet a few times, frowns, taps some more, and finally manages to find a cached video of a car being visibly controlled by a driver, rather than driving itself. Let's not mangle the metaphor any worse than it already is. She turns the tablet around and shows the Doc.

"A horse has a will of its own, but may still be mostly controlled; a cart has no will, though one may still lose control of it on difficult ground, or if one attempts to turn sharply at speed. You do appear to have your own will, as best I can discern. It is unclear from what you have shown me how a 'car' fares in this analysis. It may be that I am asking the wrong question, however."

Cameron drops her face into her hands and groans.

"You know what, we can talk about this when I get back. If this works the way I hope, it'll only be a few hours. If not, I'll see you after I resurrect tomorrow."

"Very well. Best of luck, and safe journeys."

"Will it be obvious from our end which it's gonna be?"

"Should be pretty obvious, yeah," Cameron says wryly. "I'd stand back. It's about to get windy."

Cameron closes out everything else on her tablet and opens the camera app. She taps record, angles it so Tegan and the Doc are in the frame, then turns around to the array.

"Xio!"

The mana dice light up like tiny rainbow suns, then the light seems to implode, and the mandala on top of the array streaks away into the sky, rapidly diminishing to an invisible dot. A powerful wind picks up, blowing in from all directions towards the array, powerful enough to make Cameron stumble, though its much weaker at even just twice the distance.

She turns, once more putting Tegan and the Doc in frame, then steps backwards onto the array.

The rising air picks her up and hurls her upwards. Holding tight to the tablet, she sticks out her elbows and holds her legs straight, keeping herself centered in the updraft as she picks up more and more speed. She's basically poked a hole in the atmosphere; the air is moving fast and picking up more speed every bit of altitude.

She pans up to the horizon as the town shrinks out of view below, doing her best to slowly turn in a circle as she does.

The landscape spreads itself beneath her. Town, fields, other towns, forest rivers hills lakes...

Costallow is still directly underneath her.

Yeah. She should've had to correct her course by now. Is this planet not rotating?

She continues to rise. The ride gets smoother as the air gets thinner. She keeps her healing spell active, and stops breathing. She'd be slowing down by now if gravity had a say in it, but instead she's still picking up speed. Nothing like true escape velocity, but still enough that she should be able to look at the planet as a whole.

Those aren't Earth's continents. Hardly surprising. She already knew this isn't Earth.

Those aren't Earth's constellations. She suspected she wasn't anywhere in the solar system, but seeing it is another matter.

Her tablet continues to record. She pans the view across the stars.

After a few minutes, she's out of the atmosphere and no longer accelerating.

She drifts (hurtles) into space.

A little less than two hours in, a halo of bluish-green haze emerges from the starry blackness in a ring surrounding her.

This is booooooring. But she knew that already. She switches her camera app into time-lapse mode, recording at one frame per second instead of sixty.

She alternates between watching the planet recede and looking out at the stars for nearly two hours, until...

A quick tap sets her camera app back to sixty frames per second.

...what is that?

Whatever it is, it's getting stronger, brighter, and wider, though the edges are still blurry.

It's oriented perpendicular to her trajectory; it might be thickening faster and farther on the prograde side of the line.

Oh shit. It's not getting thicker. It's coming towards her!

That's a wall! A surface! She's on the inside of a shell world!

Emerald Bliss!

Four glassy orbs, sparkling with inner emerald fractals, slide into being around her right wrist. Cameron doesn't stop to think before she launches all four with four quick punches.

The orbs streak away, adding their own speed to hers, so the first one, having more time to accelerate, hits the hardest, but all four strike with immense force.

The orbs impact with a force measured in megajoules, comparable to being hit by a semi truck at highway speed: massively overpowered in hand-to-hand combat, but woefully insufficient to the task at hand. Their net effect on the mile-thick glass wall is to slightly increase the size of the crater she'll leave when she hits it a second behind them.

Fuck fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck!

Cameron THROWS her tablet into her Pocket and INVIOLATE STAND.

The fabric of space itself shrieks. PAIN.

Cameron snaps awake some minutes later, choking on the vacuum, and instinctively reactivates her healing spell. She's intact, but with a screaming headache and the literal soul-deep ache of going way over her mana capacity.

Wait, that worked?

That should not have worked.

Inviolate Stand should've error'd out, at that relative speed.

Cameron files the weird behavior of her spell away for later and shakes herself. She looks around. She pulls her tablet back out. (It's still recording.) She's falling away from the crater her orb blasts made in the glassy underside of the shell. Something must have knocked her out of the gravity shade. (It's probably going to fail soon anyway, she didn't put that many dice into it.)

A copy appears, boot to boot, they spring apart, and the extra fades back into light as she hurtles downward, and the real Cameron shoots back towards the shell. Mental reorientation, because even after that boost she's still falling, and she throws down a shield under her, landing on it hard, but not hard enough to break any bones.

She stands, and looks up, getting a good shot with her tablet, then leaps up, springing from shield to shield until she reaches the lip of the crater. She makes a big shield to stand on and stares at the surface above her. What now.

Yep, that's a bigass glass ceiling with a crater in it, all right.

There's a – stirring, around her, as though a breeze were picking up, except that she's definitely still in hard vacuum.

And a ...form...coalesces... those are definitely the wrong words, there's still nothing there, but somehow a particular region of the nothing has a weight of meaning behind it, like the difference between her Raiment and a mundane outfit tailored to the same specifications.

The shape is indistinctly, but recognizably, humanoid.

And it ...speaks? There's no identifiable movement from the place where its mouth should be, and no sound; but something wordless is definitely being communicated to her by the figure.

[location/landscape/view : the expanse of the glass ceiling] – [[Cameron] – [human]]

vibration/earthquake of the glass – the crater

unfamiliar/unusual

[similar/analogous and dissimilar] to

• [location : near the glass]
  a human [forming – being formed]
  the human falling toward [the earth, as seen from the glass ceiling]]
• [first-person view traveling toward the earth]
  [location/landscape/view : on the surface of the earth]
  many humans
  selecting one
  • interacting with the human
    communicating with it
    building magic [around – attached to] it
    building magic informed/influenced by
    • own nature/preferences
      its nature/preferences
      communication/conversation/negotiation/discussion/[mutual [truth/[moral-good]]-seeking]
• [location : near the glass]
  magic [naturally-occurring – large/complex – poorly understood]]]
  the magic [falling toward [the earth, seen from the ceiling] – falling from [the sky, seen from the earth]]
  the magic attaching to a human

request/offer : communication

 
She could respond in the same way, if she so chooses.

...that's not a god. It's something like a god, though. Something in the same thaumological niche but based on different means?

It takes her several moments to untangle the knot of nested imagery it is projecting into her mind, and even then she isn't sure what its trying to say.

[impression of many images]
[request : purpose]

[location: outside-context]

orange red swirls across a sphere

[uncertain causality]
fabric of space sharding apart [uncontrolled transportation]

[region bound]
sol, mercury, venus, earth, mars, jupiter, saturn
vast machinery of golden light [conceptual tracery of volume : omnipresence]

the local 'earth' [contiguous space] --- [not within region]
an image of [the solar system] --- disparate --- an image of the 'local' earth and crystal shell
[information request : spacial relation]

human[Tegan, Doc] and human[many, defined region bound]
[information request : causal relation]

Cameron has practice projecting bundles of sensory impressions at Eelesia when words fail. She puts the question together and makes it 'louder' than her other thoughts in the way she's used to.

[many images – purpose] [comparison – communication – seeking to understand]

spatial relation : unknown
causal relation : unknown
conclusion : outside context

information request : [intentions – desires/values – relevant [assumptions/beliefs/epistemics] [framework/context/paradigm]]

offer : information reciprocal to previous request

offer/suggestion/proposal : conversation/[mutual [truth/[moral-good]]-seeking]/cooperation

Alright, Cameron can work with this.

That... Oh. The prophets Tegan talked about. It's comparing her to them. Does it, or others like it, send those prophets on purpose like Tegan believes? Are they all the same, or do all of them bring outside contexts?

Cameron imagines a formless unknown entity looming over the planet-in-a-snowglobe, at it, along with a questioning sense of what traits might be in that unknown. Just in case it has any clues to the nature of the creator of this habitat. She believes it that it just lives here and isn't responsible for any of this. Is there more space outside the crystal or are they in a closed loop?

As for Cameron's intentions, she doesn't know if it'll understand her undiluted core drives, but she doesn't try to translate them. She wants people to flourish such that they are freely enjoying their carnal urges, and all that entails. Her native physical environment is... raw-er. Less cultivated, magically. More cultivated, culturally. Endless layers of cleverly exploiting natural phenomenon in unaccustomed ways and equally endless layers of trying to fit people to one's vision rather than visions to one's people. (The former: pride. The latter: disgust.)

Reciprocation is unobjectionable. Cooperation is tentatively unobjectionable.

Also, can it manifest a visual form easily? For the sake of her visual recording device. Don't bother if it would be difficult, its not that important.

[A visual form should be fairly easy, though a physical form would be somewhat more complicated.] The space it occupies refracts, the view of the stars beyond seeming to distort and compress, until nearly the whole sky is visible as a shrunken image filling its cut-out silhouette.

[Some prophets are sent on purpose by its conspecifics; this one in particular has never done so. Some form naturally. Making an existing human into a prophet may likewise either be done deliberately or occur naturally. She is the only example of an outside context person that it knows of.] For prophets, it echoes the concept from Cameron's question back to her; it seems to be trying to understand the way she construes the category, and handling the concept with the same attentive deliberation as a human trying to pronounce a foreign word for the first time. (Its own understanding of the category might be better summarized as allies, or perhaps spellcasters, or celebrities.)

[There is more space outside this shell, and further shells; it does not know whether there is an outermost shell or what may be beyond it if so. It does not know whether there are other types of beings living in the outer shells. It is not aware of any indications of an overall creator or watcher. It indeed just lives here.]

[It values [communication – discussion – commingling of minds – coming to [agreement/compromise/cooperation]] in general.] This appears to be a single concept, to it, not quite corresponding to any single human concept, but partially overlapping with several. [Cameron's values seem to be closely entangled with physical bodies; how would that interact with, or analogize to, beings (such as itself) whose bodies are not physical?]

[Proposed compromise-value: following one's nature and natural desires; the union of flesh with flesh and spirit with spirit; unrestricted access to these.]

Cool special effects.

Her own concept of prophets was very broad and probably inaccurate. She will adopt its understanding of the category. This is good, in that it rules out a possibility. Bad, in that it confirms that the prophets and she herself are separate puzzles.

Those are inoffensive values it has, instrumentally compatible at the least. Non-interfering compromises are best when positive-sum combinations are not viable.

Cameron wants to know if there are reasons not to make this here crater more itself until it becomes a passage to the other side of the shell. She would like permission to do that.

[It does not claim authority to permit or forbid, but it advises and requests caution; it doesn't know what's on the other side, or if it might be dangerous.]

That's reasonable.

If it has reason to suspect the danger will be to them, Cameron will risk it herself after giving it time to vacate the area. If it suspects the danger might be on the scale of, for example, a small hole causing the shell to crumble and destroy the planet below, she will of course refrain.

[It would expect any damage to be localized. If the shell were fundamentally unstable, then surely it would have crumbled before now.]

Sound reasoning. Cameron agrees.

Before it leaves, Cameron is curious if this individual has an identity known to the humans on the planet below.

[It does not. A being of its type usually only becomes known to humans through a prophet.]

And it leaves.

What a nice god-thing.

Once it has departed fully. Cameron tips backwards and dispels her platform shield, letting herself tumble backwards into space. She counts in her head as she falls, as the crater above her recedes, so she doesn't let herself fall too long. No such thing as terminal velocity in space. Then she casts a large shield below herself and slams down on it hard enough to make it ring and make her bones ache for the split second they can before her healing spell fixes it.

That should be enough room for her orbs to accelerate.

Cameron resummons her weapon, and fires the first of many orb blasts at the apex of the crater.

The crater is now slightly bigger.

Yup. This is probably going to take long enough that she's going to be pushing the time frame she told Tegan and the Doc.

She leaps off her shield, repeating the same move again, to double the distance between her and the crater. Once she's standing on a shield again, she settles in to start firing orb blast after orb blast into the middle of the crater.

The crater grows, gradually.

It's not like Cameron is going to run out of orbs.

She sets her tablet down next to her and keeps at it, using both arms.

The crater gradually grows into a tunnel, as shards of glass fall around and past her.

And then the stream of falling glass begins to accelerate, rapidly—

Well that's convenient. Right? There aren't cracks spreading across the sky in all directions, right?

(She casts a shield above her, twice as big as the one she's standing on and at a slight angle. It holds up to the impacts of the falling glass easily.)

RIGHT?!?!

No cracks.

But as the stream turns to a river, something else seems to be coming with it, not quite physical but numinous and profoundly alien, even more so than the distinctly inhuman mind of the not-god was, and it passes through her shields like they're not there. It doesn't seem to be affecting them, or her, though.

Or maybe it is affecting her. Are the stars eyes – had they always been eyes – is the glass singing –

Alright. This is more like it.

(Also, whew. The sky is not falling.)

Hello, eldritch sky thing, are you why Cameron is here.

There is no response. Either it can't hear her, or can't understand her, or can't answer, or doesn't care to.

Around the edges of the crater above her, the glass (music, water) seems to be undergoing a sort of crystal growth (blossoming, awakening), but in strangely organic (inhabited) shapes like coral or (writhing) vines or (shoaling) tentacles.

It's healing.

Well. That's probably objectively better than the alternative, but it kinda kills her plan to look around on the top side of the shell.

The way she sees it she has two options and the time to make a snap decision.

Push on and possibly pick a fight she could very well lose.

Or.

Run the fuck away, wait and hope Eelesia can find her.

She only has one more gravity shade, and she doesn't have enough mana dice on her to power it for more than... a day? If there are more shells outside this one, getting through this one right now doesn't actually matter. Without an atmosphere to accelerate her, she probably won't even make it to the second shell, let alone any shells after that.

Fuck it, she can still get a glimpse.

Cameron snatches up her tablet, holds it up over her head to frame the hole, and leaps, bounding from stepping-stone shield to shield, throwing herself upwards, racing towards the crater with all the speed her healing-boosted legs can muster.

The river of glass and magic doesn't seem to be slowing noticeably, yet. And as she gets closer, she can see that the tunnel (throat, eye, hiccup) isn't noticeably narrowing, either; the occasional attempts at inward growth are broken off by the torrent, leaving only a slight unevenness on the surface (skin) they grew from.

It's a long tunnel (story); it takes her over twenty minutes to reach the upper end.

And then she emerges (hatches) onto the outside of the shell (shell), surrounded by a rushing (whirlpool) of
(truth), the (eyes) twinkling serenely overhead.

Cameron lands on the lip of the hole and lets herself be still for a moment, lets her tablet focus on the whirlpool the hole in the endless expanse of glass.

She pans slowly in a full circle, just in case there is something to see, and just to get a sense of the space up here. Then she looks up at the eyes stars, meeting their gaze for a long moment.

The shell is a green-blue ocean, shimmering and faintly luminous. The eyes overhead regard her with somewhat more interest. They cannot see her. They sing to the ocean above. The ocean loves her. It does not know she is here. It is laughing.

This is like the fluffy bunnies and butterflies version of an eldritch Horror's backyard. It's actually kind of neat.

She kind of wants to shoot an impromptu sex scene against this backdrop to make the trip worthwhile, but there's no way any of this will come across in video. It feels like it should, but all the screen of her tablet is actually capturing is empty featureless glass.

Cameron stands there for another few seconds, then returns to the hole, and dives in.

She swims downward, and eventually emerges into a cavern where she started. The barnacles along the walls of the throat are gathering more thickly, now.

With no air to slow her down, she plummets out of the throat tunnel in moments, and soon leaves the shell and the surreal atmosphere of the ocean far behind her.

She has a long way to fall.

She falls (swims), and the (river) falls (pours) along with her.

Long minutes pass, the earth growing (blooming) beneath her.

And the first thin whispers of atmosphere begin to suggest themselves around her.

...did she accidentally unleash this effect on the whole planet down there.

Oops? Tegan and the Doc are probably freaking out right now. (And also everyone who is less endeared than her by creepy surreality, which is most people.)

Tablet stops recording and goes back in her Pocket. It is not rated for reentry.

Cameron's landing strategy involves steeply angled (very very very large, the largest she can make) shields, alternating in sequence. (At this speed, even the smoothest real materials would rip her arms and legs off with the friction at even slight contact, but her shields don't have that problem, and she can lean into them pretty hard.) She kicks on her hoverskates and skids from one shield to the next, bleeding off momentum in a long boxy spiral as she enters the atmosphere, until eventually she spots what she hopes is the right town, far below her.

The effect fades quickly once she's no longer directly underneath the hole, except for things seen through the column, which still appear as they did when she was inside the effect.

The landscape below seems to match what she remembers, except... as she approaches, something about the town itself seems – off.

And then she gets closer, and she sees. Half the town is consumed in a wild overgrowth of – something – mirroring the crystal growth of the glass ceiling. It's a tangle of organic and manmade shapes and materials: a red brick tree, with shingles for leaves; hinged brass vines, with chitinous chimneys in place of leaves; a fence whose slats are – enlarged human fingers?

The sounds of screaming, from the intact part of the town, gradually become audible over the rushing wind of her descent.

Well fuck.

Cameron descends out of the sky, orbs blazing.

She'll blast anything out of her way that encroaches on her while she... hmm... First, she'll try to use her healing to rip an intact person out of the finger fence?

Nope. This finger belongs to an organism that naturally grows in the shape of a fence.

Also, when she gets low enough to see the ground (womb) in the gaps in the overgrowth, it becomes apparent that the whatever-it-is has spread out over the surface: objects in the distance look normal, but anything within about a foot of the ground has the (truth, metaphor, joke) distortion apparent.

Cameron skids to a stop on top of a shield, rather than set foot on the crazy directly.

Maybe the fence isn't a person. She's going to assume the fence isn't a person, for now.

She casts her Scanner Pulse spell, a radar snapshot of all (conventionally) living things for miles around, in perfect fidelity.

There's plenty of living things in the area. Some of them aren't shaped like it. That windowframe made of linen and straw, for example.

The crazy doesn't extend for miles, though it does seem to have spread out some way beyond the falling column. Within it, three of the living things – all relatively close to the edge of the affected area – are recognizably human in both form and composition, though they have strange things growing on, in, and through them. None are likely to survive without help, though only one is urgent on a scale of minutes.

There are also a few dozen dead humans, recognizable by the shapes formed by their not-yet-dead individual cells; most of them appear to have died of something growing through a vital organ, or of being crushed under something heavy.

That wooden torso full of vinegar and organ-sized beets, half-buried in the earth, was probably never human.

At least it is localized. Still annoying, but not a disaster.

The three survivors come first. Cleansing Aura, out just far enough to cover the warped area. She floats three orbs down and burrows them into the warped terrain to reach the trapped townsfolk. Her weapon is part of her. Touching someone with an orb counts the same for her spells as touching someone with her hand.

Combined with Cleansing Aura, Perfect Incarnation is truly comprehensive, amplifying the cleansing effects to macroscopic scales. Anything outside the body that's not supposed to be there is severed with prejudice. Anything inside the body that's not supposed to be there is shoved out of existence. In half a dozen seconds, all three are in perfect health.

She switches from Perfect Incarnation to Inviolate Stand. Each of the trapped townsfolk find themselves suddenly floating, their limbs able to cleave noisily through their surroundings without sensation or effort.

Then she withdraws her first three orbs, and sends out all four, shoving them down to the closest four corpses. She repeats the process, restoring those bodies to life and health, then leaving them protected by Inviolate Stand while she moves on to the next set.

Miraculously, none of them have deleterious brain damage, though that one woman with tiny jellyfish in her cerebral-spinal fluid came damn close.

Cameron withdraws her orbs from the last of the restored townsfolk and brings them back into range of her body.

This next part is going to push her limits. Inviolate Stand is almost free when the target isn't moving or being affected by outside forces. She is about to affect them with a whole lot of outside force. But it should be within her capacity, if barely.

Cameron casts another Scanner Pulse, shoring up her mental map of where exactly she needs to clear away enough crazy for the townsfolk to get out, and then fires all four orbs off at the horizon. Concentrating, she forces the path of the orb blasts to curve upwards, loop back, and streak downwards into the warped terrain on top of the tightest groups of healed townsfolk.

They are protected. The terrain isn't. Cameron's mana screams in protest but she doesn't drop any of the spells.

And now there is an area of blasted barren earth (lid) with a few dozen frightened naked people variously on and above it. The ground tries to regrow, slowly, but there's no sign of the riot of forms and materials from before... no, that's not quite right. Near the victims, the ground occasionally takes on slightly more human characteristics: an outcropping of bone (bedrock) here, an elbow-shaped mound of earth there. The growth is somewhat faster (though not particularly more human) around a few of the victims (friends).

Cameron re-summons her orbs and sends another volley of blasts out, freeing the last few townsfolk and clearing a path to safe ground.

She dispels the Inviolate Stand spells and shouts, "Run already! Go!"

Horizontal shields appear in front of them, quickly followed by more shields forming low bridges over the more stubborn spots of warped terrain.

Perfect Incarnation doesn't heal mental trauma; a few of them need some further encouragement to get up and start moving rather than curl up in a ball on the ground and cry. Those that do run don't have her experience with running on the slippery surface of her shields, and there's more than a little falling down.

Soon enough, though, everyone's out. There are people who hadn't been caught in it distributing heavy blankets and hot cider, and some of the victims are being led away by family or friends. Not everyone is talking; of those who are, some are pointing at Cameron.

Cameron leaps down and hauls the stragglers to their feet herself.

She figuratively grabs the first blanket-distributor who looks like they know what they're doing and asks, "Who's keeping a headcount? Is anyone still missing?"

Even as the asks this, she casts another Scanner Pulse and looks for where everyone is congregated.

Most people are gathered a little ways past the border on the side toward the busier part of town. A few stragglers are trickling in, victims who came out of the area on the other side and had to go around, and volunteers helping them along.

"We don't know yet who-all was in the area, but we're putting the word out. If anyone's still missing, we'll know in a day or so. What was that?"

"A day or so?" Cameron repeats incredulously. "If anyone else is still in there, they've already been warped beyond recognition, beyond my magic's ability to detect. Only three of the victims I pulled out were even still alive when I got here. In a day there won't be anything left to recover, let alone revive."

Cameron is already moving as she says this. She rushes ahead to the gathered crowd, leaping up onto a shield to stand above their heads. Is anyone obviously in charge? What about familiar faces? Are there any of those in the crowd?

Nobody's obviously in charge. Doc is among those helping; Simon is among the victims. Tegan is nowhere to be seen.

Cameron sends an orb floating over to touch Simon, and heals him. She sends orbs all through the crowd, healing everyone who's obviously injured or mutated, in sets of four.

"Doc!" Cameron calls from above him. "Do you know who'd know who's still unaccounted for?"

There is a certain amount of apprehension at the unfamiliar magic flying around touching people, but it becomes clear soon enough that the effects are benign.

"Cameron! We have almost everyone who lived in the area or we knew to have been there, but we don't know who might have been passing through. The only person we're sure is still missing is Tegan."

"Shit."

Cameron dispels her shield and drops neatly to the ground next to the Doc.

And she starts casting Scanner Pulse in rapid succession. Closing her eyes, she focuses on the mental image of the surreal area, picking over it more carefully this time. She's not looking for human shapes. She's looking for active nervous systems. Anything that could be a brain in function if not in form. If there's anything left that she can save, that'll be it.

"I'm looking. I already got everyone out that my magic detected. If I missed anyone, it'll be because they're warped beyond recognition, but I might still be able to find them. Was she close enough? That it's likely?"

"Yes." He swallows. "I went home, after you – left – but she wanted to wait there for you. She would've been near the – center."

There are nervous systems. Most of them were probably never human; several are recognizable as cats or goats or insects; a few seem to have grown in no recognizable pattern. There might have once been someone at the center of that fleshy kudzu.

Scanner fucking Pulse. The center. The center.

That... those are neurons, connected, and there's enough of them to make a human brain, maybe.

"I'm going back for her."

Cameron turns away from the Doc, leaps into the air, and runs across a series of shields back to the crazy.

She crosses the warped terrain, homing in on the connectome tangled up in the center of the chaos.

Inviolate Stand is more than enough to rip apart anything in her way, flickering the spell on and off. Move, then break stuff, then move, then break stuff. Until she reaches what's left of Tegan.

PERFECT FUCKING INCARNATION!

Yep, that's Tegan. Alive, even. Her newly restored eyes are filling with tears, and she reaches up wordlessly toward Cameron.

Cameron scoops her up.

Tegan is... raw and fragile. Like a hairless clone fresh from the tube. It's the best the spell can do, building a body from just genetic information without an image template to follow.

Cameron carries Tegan out of the surreality zone at a steady walking pace.

"Tegan. Do you remember who you are? Do you remember where you are?"

"...camr'n? hiii. yeah."

"...thinkso. yeah. knowuyam. whoyam."

"where? m. ...under. you, were, up. 'nthen, ehh, evvythn – wibbly?"

She stretches her jaw, a motion a little like yawning. "Talking. I know who, an' where. You got me."

"I've got you."

And now they're back with the rest of the townsfolk.

And there's the Doc again. Hi, Doc, here's a Cameron with a super-naked-and-bald Tegan in her arms.

"I got her out."

"Hii doc." She seems to be checking him out.

"Thank you," he says sincerely to Cameron.

To Tegan, "I need you to stay awake while I check you over. Are you hurting anywhere?" He doesn't reciprocate her gaze, but neither does he make any move to discourage her.

"Nahh. Not hurtn. I feel," she pauses to think about it, "...Hard t'. Focus. I feel okay. You gonna make me feel real good?"

"We shall see. Try to watch my finger..." and he proceeds through a series of mundane and magical field diagnostics.

Does he want Cameron to set Tegan down somewhere?

He has a cot ready.

"You can rest now. You're going to be all right." He helps prop her up using a folded blanket as a pillow. (She smiles up at him.)

To Cameron, "Do you need anything? You seem... up and about; but I don't know what you've been through."

"I'll show you---actually, I should show everyone. Later. When a distraction from all this would be more helpful than not helpful. Right now, I'm going to go back into the eldritch reality-salad and make sure Tegan was actually the last one trapped."

Scanner Pulse. Scanner Pulse. Combing this mess for anything else that could have once been a human brain...

Over there. There's not much left: most of the head, one shoulder, and maybe a third of the brain.

Shit.

And she was this close to being able to flip off the universe and crow about being unstoppable.

Cameron digs her way down to them, restores and revives them, and carries them out, back to the Doc. She doesn't bother to ask any questions this time. Not only does she already know that the answers wouldn't be good, but she's also pretty sure this person does not currently know any languages.

"Last one," Cameron reports solemnly. "But, there wasn't much left."

"I understand. Thank you."

The victim seems more lucid than Tegan. He says something gibberish in the tones of a question, frowns, says a few more nonwords, and looks at Doc, gesturing at his mouth and ears.

Doc looks at him sympathetically, and touches his own mouth and ear, nodding. After wrapping him in a blanket, he starts running through a slightly different battery of tests than he gave Tegan.

Cameron makes a small shield to sit on and plops down on it. She's not tired. But she feels like she should be.

"What's the damage elsewise?" Cameron asks once the Doc finishes his tests. "I remember at least one building closer to where I took off from than, that."

"There are many people who lost their homes, I'm afraid. Some of the buildings closer to the edge may be salvageable. But we will be some time rebuilding."

"I'll help with that. I wish I could say it was worth it. But it wasn't worth it. I gained little."

She looks up, at the region of sky containing the invisible downpour of eldritch chaos. "The breach should close soon. I hope." It was healing. It was.

The downpour does seem to be slowing.

High above, a faint point (mouth) of light marks the location of the breach.

Wait what? That's new.

Um.

It's... getting... dimmer?

Cameron is going to watch until the sky shuts its mouth the breach finally closes.

The flow is decreasing, but the light is increasing.

When the light stabilizes, it's still only a relatively faint dot in the daytime sky, appearing the size of a planet and the brightness of the moon.

At ground level, it's another twenty minutes before the flow ends.

Huh.

Cameron waits, and once she's completely sure the breach has closed, she'll spend the rest of the afternoon with a ring of shields around the affected area to prevent escaping ejecta while she blasts the remaining eldritch chaos back to bedrock.

Unless anyone has alternative suggestions?

None are forthcoming.

While the chaotic growths are straightforwardly blastable, the area of effect (glass) itself responds to neither blasts nor shields. It does seem to pool in the hole she's making in the ground, though. The final effect is a (reservoir) of eldritch, writhing with (optimism) at the bottom and (simmering) with relatively tame growth near the surface. The growth near the top shows no particular inclination to venture from its origin.

Well that's kind of frustrating. At least it's contained?

Cameron is going to build a fence. She asks how far out of town she needs to go before no one's attached to any of the trees, goes that far, and uses Inviolate Stand and her bare hands to make fence posts.

Once she's done with that, she's going to go see about setting up a projection screen---a big white sheet or something, to hang on the side of a building? She can replay part of what happened, and it seems like everyone might be interested in getting an explanation for all this that's worth more than just her explaining verbally. (Some verbal explanation will still be necessary. Editing in subtitles would be tacky.)

She'll see if the Doc can use her for anything in the meanwhile.

It's half an hour's walk for an unladen muggle; is she sure she doesn't want to just buy some lumber? She can totally afford it. (There's a scrip for lumber in Simon's box, even, if she looks.)

Regardless, she can totally build a fence. Someone trying to be helpful comes by with a mallet and twine, respectively to pound the posts into the ground and to tie them together.

The ...illusion-augmented explanation? is a nice thought, but maybe not today. There are some people who'd appreciate a summary, though.

Doc has a couple of patients who escaped the eldritch – apparently the term going around is "exocelestial magic" – before she came back. None of them are in critical condition, but none of them are unscathed, with the arguable exception of the woman who thinks the pedipalps growing out of her arm are totally wicked and is just here to make sure they're not gonna kill her or something.

Any lumber they've already got should probably go to rebuilding houses? She can hoverskate and then carry the load back into town as twelve of herself. It's barely a trip. She will however be grateful for the helpful twine and mallet, even if she doesn't need a mallet it is easier to use one than try to drive the posts down herself without breaking them in the process.

The explanatory video doesn't have to be today, she just wanted to make sure people knew it was on offer, because they deserve an explanation for what happened. That said, Cameron doesn't think she can do it justice herself, and she doesn't want to tell a dozen slightly different iterations of this story to a dozen separate groups.

She will heal all of the Doc's patients that she missed in her first pass, and poke the woman to confirm that she doesn't have additional spider parts about to pierce an artery or whatever.

That's very thoughtful of her.

If she feels she needs visual aids to explain, they're sure they'll be able to figure out a time and place that works for everyone.

Spider woman has some stray fragments of chitin lodged in her muscle tissue, but it doesn't look dangerous, and she claims not to mind the discomfort.

Have fun with that, spider woman. Is that the last of the immediate crises?

Cameron should probably talk to whoever is in charge directly, shouldn't she, about helping to rebuild.

Looks like everything's more or less under control.

There's nobody officially in charge, but in practice it looks like things are being directed by a pregnant woman in a short-sleeved white tunic dress and red rope belt. They're currently working on clearing and leveling the ground, and checking the old foundations, which are mostly intact enough to reuse but will need some work on the surface.

Cameron waits until the woman has a spare moment.

"Hi. I'm the magical girl. How can I help? Do you already know about my abilities or should I explain?"

"Hi! I don't think I've gotten the run-down on what-all you can do, aside from –" she gestures at the blasted area. "Thanks for helping with that, by the way, it woulda been a— well, I guess it technically was a disaster, but." Her voice softens. "It woulda been a tragedy. Lotta folk owe you their lives, today."

"A tragedy is a disaster that can't be fixed," Cameron says in musing tones. "I rather enjoy having the power to say, 'no, this can be fixed'."

Cameron casts a small shield in the air beside them. It thrums faintly as it's hexagonal pattern ripples outward.

"Relevantly, I can create stationary platforms at any location. The edges are fragile but face-on I've never met a force that could break them. I can heal and cleanse, as you've seen. I can give myself or anyone nearby temporary unlimited strength at the cost of being immobile. I can make up to twelve solid illusory copies of myself that can act independently."

Cameron pulls her tablet out of her Pocket, briefly.

"And I can provide designs for indoor plumbing, to include in the construction."

"Platforms could help us not need as much scaffolding. When you say any location – could you make one through a solid object, to cut it? An easy way to make perfectly flat cuts could be pretty useful."

"Strong but immobile – like an indestructible statue? Could be useful."

"Plumbing – oh. We don't use lead for pipework. And we don't have an aqueduct, or a river. Do you have any designs that would work in ceramic or tin, and use a well or a raincatch?"

To answer the first question, Cameron simply waves her hand into the edge of the shield. The hexagonal shape distorts around her hand and then the whole thing shatters into motes of light. "I wish."

To answer the second, Cameron simply casts Inviolate Stand on the woman. For a few moments, she is weightless, even moving her own limbs is effortless, including her feet, which carve through the dirt under her without resistance, but are unable to move her.

And as for plumbing, "Yes, and more. I can show some diagrams to whoever's drawing plans."

"Oh, that's interesting. I'm sure I'm not thinking of all the applications, but the craftspeople will love it. Carving stone with their bare hands, maybe."

"I don't think anyone's at the point of drawing up plans, yet, but I'm as good a choice as any to talk to."

"Alright. Call me Cameron. What's your name?"

Cameron pulls out her tablet, opens her wikipedia app in offline mode, and starts going through piping, plumbing, and water-tower diagrams to show to her.

"Sally."

"The tower's an interesting idea. Don't know if it's worth making the well shallower, though."

"It is probably not reasonable to try to replace what you're accustomed to, wholesale, but if any of this can be easily integrated with the established ways you build, it should be better to have it than not. My guess is that my largest contribution will be providing on-demand scaffolding. I can place them very precisely and they don't move once they're cast."

Nod. "I'm sure we can use this faucet – and this valve – and there'll be some folks who'll want to go ahead and put in the pipework now for if we ever figure out some of the trickier stuff here – is that an enchanted pump? And yeah, I bet those scaffolds'll be a big help."

Cameron nods. "Point me where you need me."

Buildings can go up really fast, when all the builders have to do is point and suddenly there's a sturdy unshakable platform or brace right where they want it. Cameron's duplicates also help with the manual labor where she won't get in the way, and Cameron herself keeps her Cleansing Aura up over the construction sites, also offering healing to anyone who gets tired or injured.

No one acts like her raiment is indecent. It's nice. Not all of these people are young enough for the rejuvenating effects of her healing to go unnoticed, either, so that's going to get around too.

As a duplicate, she can just dispel herself when her hands start hurting and get replaced fresh. And with a dozen sets of eyes to follow the townsfolks' methods, by the time the sun goes down she's learned enough to keep building their way all by herself if she wants to.

Once it becomes clear that her duplicates can dispel themselves, she starts getting assigned to work in tight spaces and other inconvenient locations, on the theory that she can just poof out when she's done. (Someone offers her a chest binder.)

One person has a fall when someone trips and bumps the edge of the platform they're standing on, but other than that there are no injuries.

That sounds like an excellent division of labor. (She's grateful for the offer, but declines. Having to go retrieve the chest binder over and over again would kind of defeat the point. She'll be fine.)

A duplicate sees the fall happen, immediately dispels, but (the real) Cameron is too far away to catch them on the way down. She heals them and lets them lean on her (and hug, fondle, and/or grope her at their discretion) until they're ready return to work.

They're not shy about casual touch, but they show no particular inclination to do anything nonplatonic. They're back to work in a couple minutes.

At some point, rumors start circulating about her making people young again. A little later, the rumors start mentioning Simon. Nobody approaches her about it directly, yet.

Work ends for the day when it starts getting dark. Sally approaches Cameron – "I didn't ask earlier, but are you new in town? Have you found somewhere to eat and sleep tonight?"

"I met Sunny, she seemed keen to have me at her Inn," Cameron mentions.

That was before the eldritch skydrool ate a bunch of people's houses, though. Those rooms are probably all taken. She looks over the construction remaining to be done. She could probably finish it herself during the night.

Maybe she'll go check in with Tegan and the Doc, first.

As twilight gathers, the scar on the glass sky stands out, a moon-bright spark among the stars.

Doc is at his office; he emerges from the back room shortly after Cameron enters. He's not wearing his bowtie, though his collar is still buttoned. "Hello, Cameron. May I ask what brings you back here?"

"Maybe I just wanted what passes for a familiar face around here, and naturally thought of my fellow healer," Cameron says wryly.

More softly, "Speaking of which, how's Tegan?"

A slight smile. "Much improved, I'm happy to say."

And, more softly, "I'm honored to have you consider me your peer."

"Good. The one thing my healing can't do is reach into the past..." Cameron shakes her head and smiles at him. "I think it's more a matter of perspective, than power. It's easy for me. You work harder than I ever have, to keep bodies whole."

He smiles a little at the compliment, almost shyly.

"Our scrying cannot reach across time, either; or at least it is not known to have been accomplished, though many have tried."

Cameron nods and is pensively silent for a moment.

Then she says, "One of the first things I learned to do with important observations was to avoid sharing my conclusions about them before allowing others form their own conclusions."

Pause.

"What do you believe, about how this world came to be? About its structure and its place in the rest of existence? You know where I went. What do you imagine I found there?"

"If we are to take time over the difficult questions, then I think there are one or two practical matters I should attend to first. If you will excuse me –" and he ducks into the back room. The indistinct muffled sounds of soft voices filter their way out. He emerges a minute later. "Would you be willing to continue our conversation in the back room? I trust you will not make a fuss about the way we do things."

"Of course."

Cameron follows him into the back, and puts herself somewhere she's not in the way.

He takes a chair and offers her one opposite; he has not bothered to put down a cover on hers.

Tegan is kneeling on a small rug next to his chair, entirely lucid and with an afterglowy smile. She's wearing a corset, and has a thin scarf wrapped around her shoulders as a shawl, and is otherwise nude. He pets her still-bald scalp absently.

"So. You wanted to hear what I believe about the origin of the universe, and my guess of what you found above."

Cameron gives Tegan an I'm-glad-you're-okay smile in greeting, and pauses briefly before sitting, giving the Doc and the chair a nod of acknowledgement.

"I do," says Cameron.

"The origin of the universe is... the usual idiom is 'debated by philosophers', which is a polite way of saying that no one really knows. It seems unlikely to have existed forever – there are too few ruins, for one thing – but history can be recounted at least three thousand years. Some speculate that the first humans were spirits who formed themselves avatars in order to interact with physical matter; others, that we are the result of breeding animals, as we in turn tamed cattle from wild oxen."

"But I digress. The structure of the universe is generally held to be due to a sort of cosmological buoyancy; as the air rests above the sea and the boundary between them is waves, so one space rests above another, and the shell forms in the boundary between them as a result of their interaction. The earth beneath us, for instance, is a shell of stone formed by the interaction between the liquid fire beneath and the air above, and this process may be observed firsthand – if one is brave or foolhardy enough – in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption."

"Why each shell should be twice the diameter of the next smaller one, I cannot explain; it is one of the symmetries of the universe, just as the moon and sun appear the same size from earth despite being of different distances and true sizes, or that the surface of the earth is half water and half land."

"I know of no credible accounts of the universe having been created, and I suspect that it simply happened; it seems more like the simple sort of thing that arises from the physical natures of dead matter, like a stone sinking in water, than like the chaotic tangle that is characteristic of organic life."

"As for what I think you found above... I assume you reached the celestial shell, but what – fell – from above does not seem much like divine magic. The popular rumor is that the strangeness is from beyond the celestial shell, but what you might have done to reach through it – and return with what you found – I cannot imagine."

It's a relief that what she recorded isn't going to overturn anyone's cherished beliefs by itself. Probably. That, at least, is good news.

The rest of it... the trouble is, Cameron has never heard of a creation mythos that err'd on the side of materialism. That alone lends it more weight. If they know about the shell, but think it's a natural phenomenon...

Well, it admittedly could be. An accident of Horror biology, rather than a constructed artifact... but then why would there be humans inside? Who speak English and do not look three-millennia ethnically divergent.

Cameron nods neutrally at the Doc's words.

"I reached the shell," Cameron confirms. "I broke through the shell. It... I can only describe what was on the outside in relation to things you have no context for, and I can't show you because it wasn't... visual. And the recording is only visual. But I'm familiar with similar phenomena, this, warping of space and mind, just, never on this scale. I didn't expect it to... drip all the way down here and start finger-painting on your firmament."

Cameron pulls her tablet out of her Pocket and fiddles with it on her lap.

"As for the other details, I'd rather you see them for yourself and tell me your conclusions before I tell you mine. Both of you, even."

"Very well."

Tegan nods.

"...actually," she says, "if it – dripped – fell – then that would seem to argue against the buoyancy theory of the spheres."

"So it would."

Cameron brings up the video, the first frame showing Tegan and the Doc standing outside the gravity shade in 4k HDR. She turns the tablet around and sets it on her knees.

And frowns. The screen is pretty small.

A pair of duplicate Camerons briefly appear on either side of her, pick up her chair with her in it, and move her forward until her knees are just barely touching the Doc's.

Then she hits play.

(She commentates during the part where she meets the godish, summarizing the key points of that conversation: that she is confirmed not a prophet, that prophets are a known but not completely understood phenomenon by the godishes, and that the godish didn't know what would happen when she broke through the shell either.)

After the time-lapsed ascent and the near-collision, there's not much happening onscreen: there's the view from under the crater, and then the starscape refracts into a humanoid outline, and then a couple of relatively visually uninteresting minutes pass while Cameron narrates.

"I think," Tegan says softly, "that I had imagined gods as being somehow... grander, than that. More. From that conversation, it sounded... it didn't sound equal to what I know of divine magic, or of prophets."

"Most religions make the world better, in some clear way, and even those that go wrong aren't malicious, and they're not obvious mistakes. Prophets, and gods as the prophets describe them, aren't... petty, the way humans are. Not like kings and emperors. I don't claim they're perfect, but they're consistently wiser, and more good, than the human norm."

"I don't understand how that comes from what you described."

Her voice is starting to hitch.

"There's no reason to think I met a particularly remarkable, example of these beings," Cameron offers. "It told me that it had never interacted with your world. The ones you've heard of, would be the ones with... altruistic ambitions and accomplishments. They don't have human-shaped minds and human-shaped concerns, and did seem... positive-sum-inclined on a more basic level than humans are. That much was obvious from the thought-sharing."

She shivers and pulls the scarf-shawl more tightly around her. "Maybe."

"You're going to be okay," he murmurs, resting his palm on her scalp. "You're going to be okay. Everything you know is still true. The world still has good people in it. The sun will come up tomorrow, and you'll see that the world is full of light, and we have those we can lean on when we need."

"And if you still need reassurance in the morning, you can go to the temple and give service, and you'll remember."

        "Yessir. Thank you sir."

He smiles, warmly. "Good girl."

That's sweet. (Cameron kind of wants to give Tegan a hug, but the Doc seems to have it in hand.)

The video continues, now, to the part where Cameron breaks through the shell.

"I find," he says, "that it is difficult to see this without thinking of what came of it, below."

Cameron winces. "At least it is not a mistake I or anyone who hears of this will ever make again. Because now we know."

(In the video, the shell begins to break apart, large shards falling onto a suddenly-there shield in front of the view.)

"...does quartz normally look like that when it breaks? The cleavage seems – off, somehow."

(It promptly becomes obvious that they aren't looking at quartz. The video pans around as it ascends through the shell, showing the eldritch fecund crystal in stark detail. A lot of it is same-y, so Cameron skips through it to focus on the clearest, most stable views, cutting twenty minutes of ascent down to just a few.)

Cameron does her best to describe the whimsical, nonthreatening Horror aura of the upper expanse without actually using either of those words. "It was like everything was a metaphor for something else, like the fabric of reality was suddenly in a really symbolic mood... like stuff that's normally inside your head was instead outside, painted on space... and the stars were eyes that were laughing at me without knowing I was there... or something."

"Sounds like a cross between divine magic and the ravings of a madman. The ravings of a mad god, maybe."

"I heard a theory, once, that more distant spheres are progressively less hospitable to human life. Considering this in that light, I find it interesting that the inhospitability is less – physical – above than below."

(The video concludes with a spectacular view plummeting down towards the planet.)

Cameron closes the video and sits back in her chair.

Doc leans forward, hands clasped under his chin, looking thoughtful.

There is a silence.

"I think," he says eventually, "that my first impression is that this – show – was originally conceived in a different spirit than it would now be seen, and that there are signs of that origin in it still. I would suggest that, rather than trying to adapt the original show to the new circumstances, it might be better to begin by considering the circumstances and asking what sort of show would be appropriate."

"It's... your point of view," says Tegan softly. "And you didn't know what was going on, until after. But the audience knows from the beginning. So that changes it."

Cameron groans under her breath, and sighs.

"I agree, but, the alternative is worse, isn't it? A bad thing happened. It was no one's fault, but it was less not my fault than anyone else's, so talking about anything beyond the simple facts of what happened is inherently suspect."

Defending herself just validates the blame. "I can't ask people I've hurt to trust my word."

"I... understand the impulse. But this," he gestures at the tablet, "is not mere fact. It... leans. Perhaps it was meant to lean, originally."

"It could still be used to present the facts. But I would suggest that, when you narrate, you might do so in a way that leans in the opposite direction, to counterbalance. Let the audience know that you don't still feel as you did when..." he gestures at the tablet again.

"I would suggest that you acknowledge what happened, because the image does not."

Cameron isn't quite following the Doc's intended logic, here.

"Well," she says, in tones of thoughtful resignation, "it wouldn't be the first time I've had to paint myself as the villain."

"...I don't think that's necessary." He pauses, to collect his thoughts.

"You said that you want to present the facts. The truth of the matter is that you made a mistake, and that you regret it. I only mean that you should let that be among the facts that you present."

Cameron's expression darkens momentarily at what it seems like he's trying to pull, before she stops and realizes, "You... actually think there's a difference."

Heh. Wow. That kind of faith in humanity is actually kind of refreshing.

"I don't believe for a second that everyone who lost their home today would take any sort of... apology... from me as anything but self-serving, if not outright insulting or even possibly threatening. It would be like standing up and declaring that, that I made a decision to destroy their homes and might make the same decision again, and they'll just have to trust me not to 'cause I'm powerful and they're not. That, that what happened to this town is a fact about me rather than, than about your bizarre cosmic fishbowl planet."

"This sounds like another cultural difference, perhaps," he says diplomatically, "like the deceptive contracts."

"...In both cases, it seems to me that we have more – trust, than you do. An expectation of good faith, even if that is not always upheld. It is not considered normal, here, to be callously selfish."

Cameron did not mean to start ranting. Oops.

"Sorry. You can imagine what a society like mine does to someone who works in a profession that it is political suicide to admit is inhabited by real human beings."

Pause.

"And callously selfish really isn't the problem with it. It's almost the opposite. Callous selflessness. Whoever is most correctly outraged and righteously offended gets their way, even if it destroys innocent lives... even if the supposed beneficiaries are among those lives destroyed... Public opinion doesn't care about what you meant to do; they only care if they can twist what you did do to in any way resemble evidence that their pet cause is right(eous) and that it is their moral imperative to permanently silence all who disagree with them. I spend time in places where the culture is not like that. I should really know better."

She sighs.

"Maybe I should just leave it alone, wait for people to ask, or figure out how to leave the information accessible somehow..."

"Making the information available seems a perfectly reasonable approach." He pauses; then, more softly, "I wish I could say that we were entirely free of that sort of – false righteousness, but... there are many people here who like to take performative outrage at one thing or another. They would condemn me for taking sexual advantage of my patients, for example."

Cameron starts giggling.

"Oh fuck. My country can't ever be allowed to make contact with this place. You would literally be invaded. And probably killed. By at least three different factions of social justice terrorists. It really isn't even funny." She's still giggling.

"Shame. Woulda been nice to get some trade going, learn how you make stuff."

"In more ways than one, your country sounds... not so much like Burners, as like a dystopian story invented to satirize them."

One eyebrow. Massive altitude. "I can hardly argue the dystopian point, but I do feel a sudden urge to get a Burner's perspective, here."