"I mean, the only thing anyone knew for certain was that Levron, Jori, Ora, and Sixtoes saw you come in late one night, eat some pizza, and walk off with the Hearthkeeper. Then the library had some new math books and no one saw you again, which was fairly unusual, so when we asked the Hearthkeeper about it, she just said you were in time dilation while she solved a problem related to you. Obviously there was a ton of speculation about what that problem was, but nothing concrete. And like, I think everyone knew that all the ideas floating around were just speculation for fun. I'm pretty sure no one took any of the theories seriously, but I can list some of them if you want."

Okay, the cats were definitely also people, and the older guy and snake person weren't just humoring them with cards. That or the older guy and the snake person are actually two people each, or one of them is three.

Also, if he's honest, he has no idea whether Tasha is being accurate when she says everybody knows it's just speculation, even if it seems like she believes it. "I'd appreciate it, though given that context I understand if you didn't bother committing any of it to memory."

"Uh, some people said you had a horrific terminal illness and Ton'guni needed extra time to brew a cure—a theory that rapidly lost any plausibility after day twenty or so, it never takes him that long—some people said you had some kind of magical curse that demanded human sacrifice and the Hearthkeeper had to figure out how to make the pantry supply human hearts that were still alive—I think you can see what I mean about people inventing theories for fun—some people said that you were a powerful wizard with a great sensitivity to magic, and since the refuge has so much of it you were getting a headache, and the Hearthkeeper had to stick you in the secret magic-free part of the refuge—that would clearly be taken as a joke, by the way—while she enchanted a mighty bucket hat to shield you from it... some people said that on your home world, cats were lethal predators, so you were terrified of them—I guess the idea was that you bravely overcame your fear of Ora and Sixtoes to eat pizza, or something—and since there are so many cats here, the Hearthkeeper had to figure out how to cast an illusion that would make cats appear to you as adorable giant centipedes, so you could lead a normal life. That kind of thing."

He doesn't mind cats, but now he's thinking about adorable giant centipedes and kind of wishes he could have one as a pet. He has no idea how the angel would react, though, or what he'd feed it. He thinks centipedes are the ones that are carnivorous?

"Fair enough. I guess...I don't know." Normally he'd be happy to take being mysterious, being mysterious was how he got away with skimming the extra off of a bunch of different small-time gangs back in the city, but he doesn't know whether that sort of tactic is really necessary here, or if it'd really even help him at all. "Do either of you think being mysterious be helpful?"

He tests his pizza again and it's still pretty hot but cool enough that he can takes bites as long as he alternates with sips of cool milk.

"Well, it depends on how you want people to perceive you. If you treat it as a bit, you know, if you're good-humored about it, it could make for a good-conversation starter and joke and endear you to people. If you treat it like you think no one deserves to the answer, people would be annoyed and think less of you. If you treat it like it's just something you don't want to talk about, people will accept that and overlook it. If you tell people the truth, I think they'll be curious to know more about your guardian angel—I'm definitely curious, especially given you sound American—but it probably won't strongly influence anyone's opinion one way or another."

"Yeah, I was kinda joking about being mysterious and interesting, to be clear. I don't think it will really matter very much one way or another. Just do whatever you feel like doing."

Oh, huh. He doesn't normally think of himself as having an accent, but he guesses everybody kind of thinks of themself that way, other than people who actively train their accent. He wonders whether James can tell he's from Chicago specifically.

"Fair enough. Honestly it sounds like telling the truth would have almost the same effect as, uh...making a game of it, I guess, maybe. In terms of being a conversation starter, anyway. But yeah, what do you want to know about it? I don't know everything myself, but I'm happy to share what I do know."

"Uh, what is it, how does it work, what kind of things does it do, how common are supernatural things in its general reference class where you come from..."

"Point by point: I don't really know in detail other than it's sort of attached to me, or at least is pretty committed to not leaving for good, and that the Hearthkeeper said it 'looked like part of me'; I have no idea, and don't really know where to start with figuring it out; it moves stuff, or sometimes pushes or pulls me if I'm about to running into something or something's about to hit me, and sometimes does stuff like knock stuff out of vending machines or picks things up off the ground for me, and apparently snoops around quite a bit; and I'm not entirely sure since like I said I don't actually know exactly what it is, but I know at least a handful of supers who can conjure invisible spirits or whatever, and if it is part of me and I'm just, like, doing telekinesis or astrally projecting without realizing it, that's also definitely a thing that people do sometimes. There's probably other possibilities that aren't coming immediately to mind."

James clicks his fingers and makes a finger gun.

"Supers. What are those?"

"Uh, superhumans? Like there were in comic books before they started being real. People with superpowers."

"Yep, definitely don't have those where I come from. Whatever weird shit we have is well-hidden."

"I wish we had more comic books in the library. It's just a few. And if we wanted to write any new ones, there would probably only be one copy, because setting up to print them takes forever. I guess there's copying by hand, but unless it's one artist drawing all the copies, they wouldn't really be copies."

Arthur is tempted to ask 'You don't have comic books?' initially out of genuine confusion and then as a sarcastic cover for that confusion, but manages to think better of it before his mouth runs ahead of him.

"Yeah. People are still trying to figure out if they really just started happening at the turn of the millennium or if that's just when they started, like, becoming common? Or coming to light? There aren't any solid records of them existing before then as far as I'm aware. On my world anyway, I figure that's probably going to vary."

And that's too bad to hear. He wishes he could do something to help with that, but unless he can increase his creativity and artistic skills by two or three orders of magnitude, and figure out how to coax the angel into copying comic books at an industrial scale...

Yeah, no way.

...or spend a bunch of time figuring out how to build a printer and synthesize ink from scratch, he's not sure what he could do.

Maybe he can change the topic. "It sounds like James's world is kind of similar to mine, historically at least. What about yours Tasha? If you're comfortable sharing."

"Yeah, I'm from an Earth. Austin, Texas, 2018."

"My homeworld is called Vyshoom, in my language. I don't know as much about it as you probably know about Earth, because the tech level was lower, at least where I lived, and I wasn't exactly well-educated. But talking to James, I think we've figured out the most salient differences... it's a lot wetter and stormier. The town I grew up in would have a pretty tropical climate by Earth standards, plus more and worse storms, but the latitude was more like thirty to fourty-five degrees. Much more volcanic activity. No moon. Obviously the flora and fauna were completely different, but the basic vertebrate skeletal structure is pretty much the same, oddly enough. I have four fewer ribs than you guys, though." She smiles for a moment. "The social climate was... not great, but probably not worse than a lot of places on Earth, historically. No magic, at least not that I knew of. I mean, we didn't exactly have much of a scientific community studying things to confirm they were as explicable as I think they probably were, and there were always rumors and superstitions and religious beliefs about things that would be supernatural by the standards of most refugees, but nothing I think was probably supernatural, based on what I remember."

Huh. "2018 when you came in to the refuge? Or 2018 now?" he asks, then thinks some more before adding, "I guess with the time dilation and the fact that no one can go back, there's no way to tell for sure. It was 2024 when I got the green door."

Oh, wow, lots of interesting near-parallels with that. "I guess, given the tech level, that you don't know much about what your evolutionary predecessors were like?" he asks Tasha.

"2018 when I came in. I've lived here for... about three years, I think."

"No. There are animals that live near where I grew up that I think aren't that different from Earth primates, so there's probably a common ancestor there, but the first time I heard of evolution was after I got here."

He nods along, and continues working his way through his pizza. He's run out of questions, at the moment at least, and was never all that good at small-talk.

"What do you think you're going to do, now that you're in the refuge?"

He shrugs. "I haven't really figured it out. I guess it mostly depends on what there is to do? Given it's all around us here I'm kind of hoping I can learn more about magic, but I don't really know if it's a thing that people can just, like, sit down and read a book about."

"There are plenty of books you can read about magic. Actually learning how to do magic is much more difficult. I don't think anyone in the refuge right now has teachable magic besides Ton'guni, and he won't teach humans. Apparently it takes fifty years or so to reach a basic level of skill, and we don't live long enough for it to be worth it. There are a few books that could maybe teach magic, but I don't think anyone has gotten anywhere with them."