There's no answer, just a continuous low buzz-hum in the background and the stars.

And at the bottom edge of the window, the rim of a world, blue-green and scattered with white, so far that he can cover an ocean with his thumb.

...what.

He spends a minute looking, trying to figure out what he's even seeing, before breaking off to pack up his bed and try the door. "Fharlanghn, where have you sent me now," he murmurs to himself as he works, more wonderingly than complaining.

The view shifts, slowly, the clouds drifting, the globe turning.

It's like no map he's ever seen - now how to get there.

The answer is probably not in this room. How about that door?

The door leads to a hallway! It has carpet, and more doors, and a couple of posters up between the doors, with text in a foreign language, and some devices mounted to the wall.

He digs around in his belt pouches for a minute and comes up with a translation necklace; what do the posters say?

Dial 999 for EMERGENCY, 411 for STATION INFORMATION, 000 for FAIRY SCHEDULES, and 288 for TECH SUPPORT if your mobile is not working.

This weekend (15/4-16/4) there's a pajama party in the Rotunda! Come on over Saturday afternoon for (pretend) campfire stories and (real) toasty marshmallows (Brad is bringing his demon)! Pillow fight tournament, stuffed animal showcase for the kids.

Hang in there! [picture of a kitten dangling from a tree]

Fairies on schedules and demons in polite company; he's not sure which is more bizarre.

He keeps moving, humming a prayer under his breath; no reason not to start his devotions while he's exploring.

The hallway curves under his feet; he is walking around a ring, feet toward the center.

He makes a confused sound when he notices, but keeps exploring, checking in the rooms he passes more or less at random.

Some are locked. Some are empty. Some are furnished like bedrooms and some like offices. Each has a number on the door, evens on his left and odds on his right.

He takes note of a few with particularly good views of the world below and any other points of interest. He's not in any hurry, and there's plenty of station left to explore when he feels his spells come in.

He stops to rest in the next office, and goes over them; he left space for Fharlanghn to grant him whatever magic is appropriate to the situation, and he seems to have done so, with a few copies of a spell Raafi has only heard of before, never received, for breathing comfortably in bad air, and another few for staying comfortable in extreme temperatures and producing food and water.

He uses the latter to make himself breakfast, and keeps moving.

The place looks like it was abandoned. It's a little hard to get the sense of it because there's so much stuff left, portable stuff, neat-looking stuff, and no sign of urgency, nothing knocked over or damaged, no food left half-eaten, no bodies. The place was abandoned in no great hurry... but by people who value physical possessions almost not at all.

It's weird. Not that that's entirely unexpected, the whole situation is pretty weird, but even for that.

Now that he's less distracted, he starts looking for more details about the place - opening drawers, poking into closets, examining anything that seems out of place, reading at least the first few lines of anything written.

People seem to have mostly packed their clothes but he does find a cardboard box with some sweatshirts and ripped jeans and a crocheted vest; there's a kitchen, and it's picked over but has some stuff left, some molded into nothing and some shelf-stable. There's math homework scratchwork; there's a whiteboard with a few lines of a meeting agenda, partly erased ("Elder sup", "last day of sc", "Federated st"). There's a box on a wall with two compartments, one full of bandages and little packets describing their medicinal contents, the other with some folded-up large sheets of paper with complicated words written all around circles on them if he unfolds one.

He examines the medicines and tucks them away in his belt, and then unfolds one of the papers to read it.

I SUMMON A FAIRY under the following LIMITATIONS: the fairy shall not, outside the scope of the task -

It goes on for paragraphs.

That... might explain the fairies being on schedules? He skims the limitations, to get an idea of what sorts of restrictions they are, and then looks through the box again for anything that might be instructions.

The fairy is not supposed to hurt anyone, pretty much, though he can get a decent idea of the ways in which they expect that to be possible for a fairy.

The other two circles are very similar but for AN ANGEL and A DEMON.

The inside cover of the compartment has a simple diagram showing someone spreading out the paper on the floor flat, and marking with the included pen the spot where there's a break in the circle. Then somebody with wings appears in the final diagram. There is also some writing - "REMEMBER: do not agree to anything your daeva says until you are satisfied with your chosen PAYMENT and ALSO the description of your TASK. Saying 'yes' or 'mm-hm' or nodding counts as agreeing. REMEMBER: you cannot reuse the circle! A demon can make you more circles. Ask for SAFE SUMMONING AUTHORITY STANDARD EMERGENCY GENERIC, latest edition, of whatever type you need. THE SAFE SUMMONING AUTHORITY DOES NOT RECOMMEND SUMMONING DEMONS IF ANGELS OR FAIRIES WILL DO."

Yeah, he's not going to summon a demon. Or probably an angel; they may be less dangerous but they're not much more cooperative, if they're like the ones he's used to. Not that he has any idea of whether they're like the ones he's used to. Signs point to no, really.

He rolls the fairy circle up and stows it in his belt, considers, and takes the other two as well, and the pen. He wants to finish exploring the station before he tries anything with them.

The ring eventually completes; he's back where he started, having seen approximately a small village's worth of living quarters and common areas.

He tries to teleport back to the woods he was in last night at lunchtime - he can always come back, now that he's been here - but he isn't very surprised when it doesn't work. He's just started looking for someplace to sit for dinner when he recognizes the posters by the room he started in. He pauses to close his eyes, looking pained: "Fharlangnh, sir-" he complains, but of course there's no answer.

He returns to the supply of food he made for breakfast to get dinner, and looks over the other two summoning circles while he eats.

They have different implications about avenues of potential harm from angels and demons. Seems like angels transmute and demons conjure, loosely speaking.

These are weird enough powers for angels and demons that he wonders if his translation spell is glitching, and he really doesn't want to mess with unfamiliar magic on the basis of a bad translation. He'll get a spell of his own and reread them in the morning.

He spends the rest of the evening going through his supplies, determining what he might have to offer in trade to whoever he ends up summoning, if he does, and then pacing, looking at the view out the window, muttering prayers.

A few hours after breakfast, he completes the circle to summon a fairy.

A fairy appears at once. He has on leather pants and a long patterned scarf wrapped around his torso so his eyespotted mothwings are free. "- huh, what languages are these?" he says.

He seems a little confused at the question, and considers his words before answering. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"...the languages you know."

"Ah. I know the common tongue of my world - I woke up here a little more than a day ago; I assume I got here by magic - and Terran and Aquan, the languages of earth and water creatures."

"...well that's pretty bizarre."

"Less than it could be; I'm a cleric of the god of travel of my world." He touches the wooden pendant hanging around his neck, grinning slightly. "He does usually ask before doing things like this, but it's not as if I mind. Except for the part where I seem to be stuck here, which I believe you can help with?"

"...I mean, I can get you wherever. In the solar system. I cannot get you to someplace where there are gods of travel. Above my pay grade. Are you, uh, are you all there in the head? Humans sometimes aren't. I hear."

"You don't have gods here? That's interesting. I can't prove that my magic is divine but I can show you that I have it - am I correct in assuming that humans here can't usually conjure, if they need to summon demons for it?"

"They can do parlor tricks but I'm not actually sure if those cover conjuration at all even a little."

He goes to nod but stops himself. "I'm not willing to expend much more than a parlor trick's worth of magic for a demonstration, but I can fill that bowl with water, if you'd like to see me do it." He indicates a fancily decorated serving bowl in the collection of miscellaneous objects off to the side.

"Parlor tricks don't do that."

"We may be using the term differently," he shrugs. "May I show you?"

"I don't mind."

He touches the bowl and chants, and it fills with water. He picks it up to show the fairy.

"That's pretty weird, dude. Sure you're not a demon without wings hiding a human under the floor?"

He seems a little startled at the suggestion that he might be. "- yes. Do you need more proof?"

"What do you even, like, want?"

"Transportation to that world there - somewhere inhabited, if possible. But it's entirely reasonable for you to be unwilling to do that if you think I might be a demon."

"What, just any town on Earth? Demons pay well but I'd want it in hand, considering... I could do that, what are you offering?"

That's concerning, but he doesn't say anything about it. Instead: "Any of this," he gestures at the pile of trade goods - a few bolts of fancy fabric, silver and gold jewelry, cloth bags neatly hand-labeled with the names of spices and dyes, a small basket full of plant bulbs and tiny bags of seeds, also hand-labeled, more pottery in various styles, not more than one or two pieces of each, and more along those lines - no iron, no weapons aside from a few knives, no plastic, no electronics, very little paper, nothing suggesting more than a medieval tech level. "Or I have gold, if coin is useful to you," he adds.

"...might be able to sell it to a museum if it weren't a movie prop. Or if I knew what movie it was from, even. The fabric's kinda original, what's the fiber?"

"The blue is dwarven silkstalk, and the gold and green is gnomish make - linen, they told me, but I'm not sure what they did to it. Lovely, though." He brings the bolt over and offers it to the fairy to touch; it's very soft.

"Huh.

What do the seeds grow into?"

He can describe them! Most of them are medicinal or otherwise useful, but there are a few that are simply decorative.

"I'll take you to someplace on Earth with people for the fabric and the plants."

"Yes, thank you." He hands them over and picks up his pack from where it's resting against the wall. "We can leave whenever you're ready, I'll come back for the rest."

"You want me to rip open the wall or do you know where the exit is?"

"I have a guess of where it is, anyway." He leads the way to the docking bay.

The fairy can figure it out from there. He zwoops the fabric and seeds out of Raafi's possession and opens the door. The air does not whoosh out into space - or, well, it does, but only after some of it has whooshed out in a bubble around Raafi and the fairy.

The Earth approaches very very fast.

The fairy gently deposits Raafi in Piccadilly Circus.

This is a pretty delightful sequence of events and Raafi enjoys it immensely.

"Thank you," he says, when he's safely touched down. "Do you need anything else from me?"

"...you have to dismiss me," says the fairy.

"- how do I do that?"

"You try to? For like a minute."

"Just think about it? All right." And...?

It takes more than a minute and the fairy is kind of impatient by the end but eventually he poofs with his payment.

Well, overall a success, at least.

Time to wander around and see what there is to see.

There are theaters, holograph advertisements projected into the air, fountains and statues, museums, shops and offices, subway entrances, and absolute throngs of people, most of whom are human but that one over there has bird wings, that one over there is another fairy.

He takes his time, gawking occasionally, not bothering to hide that he's a tourist, occasionally stopping somewhere to watch how people interact with each other and the things and places around them, keeping an eye out for quiet out-of-the-way places, pawn shops, libraries, inexpensive lodgings.

There are no obvious pawn shops. There are libraries! And hotels, but they don't advertise prices out front. As he gets farther from the hub of activity there are more irregular little nooks and alleys.

Well, without a pawn shop he has no money, and without money he can't do very much, but he notes some likely looking examples of the other sorts of place and keeps moving, finding private spots to conjure himself lunch and dinner.

When the sun starts to set, he tries to teleport back to the station. It doesn't work, in the same way he'd expect it to fail if he tried to teleport into solid rock.

He spends a minute considering this, and then teleports back to one of the smaller libraries to see if they're still open.

This library is open 24 hours a day and doesn't have very many people in it at this hour. It has a lot of books, though a small proportion of books to mysterious devices.

People don't seem to be paying to go into any of the libraries here. He's not sure he trusts that he won't get into trouble trying it, but he can teleport again if he has to; he goes in and looks around, ignoring the machines for the moment to examine how the books are organized.

Nobody stops him. The books are clustered by the first letters of the authors' names, in this section. In that section it's by topic.

Topic seems likelier. He browses through, not looking for anything very specific exactly; he stops to have a closer look when he finds the summoning section.

History of Summoning, vol. 3

Summoning and Economics

Fairy Bindings (Second Edition)

Forensic Conjuration

Heaven

Daeva in Media

Ganymede

Nurses, Doctors, and Angels

Martian Summoning

History of Summoning seems like a good place to start.

This being volume 3, it's talking about the establishment of the Safe Summoning Authority, the furniture angel, a few other high profile daeva criminals and the updates to law and recommended bindings inspired thereby, and the Federated Stations summoning licensure system.

He skims, mostly, but reads enough to get an idea of things, and to conclude that this falls after getting himself settled here in his to-do list. He puts it back and skims the first pages of the other books in the section.

Summoning sure affected economics. Fairies need some precise allowances to do complex work safely. Forensic conjuration is cool! Heaven is an expanse of cloudfluff caves. Daeva have been cast in human media and contributed their own stories thereto since Revelation. Ganymede is daeva jail. Angels are good at healing. Mars has particular historical uses of summoning.

Yeah, he'll definitely have to come back to this.

He keeps browsing, and comes to the history section next, where he stops on impulse to see if there's anything else about summoning - maybe this Revelation thing that the one book mentioned.

Yup! There's Who Pulled Revelation? and Revelation: Week One and Headlines from Revelation.

'Who' will be a more interesting question when he knows what, probably. He checks the first page of Headlines, uncertain what to expect it to contain.

The introduction is about how daeva are commonplace now but were thoroughly unknown before and the book will consist of articles annotated to highlight confusions and incompletenesses associated with reporting from such ignorance.

Interesting, but maybe not the best format to start with, for him. And - he is getting tired. Best to come back to this. He starts looking more intentionally for the travel section, and once he finds it, for something that describes a patch of wilderness that he might camp in for the night.

There are campsites! There aren't books about them, though. Books about camping recommend the Internet for up to date information on site availability.

He's probably not going to figure that out just now, and someplace more private is a better idea anyway when he's this far out of his element and trying not to draw attention to himself. Any descriptions of actual wilderness?

There are books about national forests!

The idea of a national forest is a little strange but the forests themselves sound perfect, and there are lots of pictures. (He's really not sure what the deal is with these books and how they're manufactured, but he's certainly not complaining.) He picks a nice-looking evergreen forest to teleport to.

Now he is in a nice-looking evergreen forest.

He sets up a hammock in a tree and settles in for the night.

He is awakened three hours later by a fairy. "Hey! You're not allowed to camp here!"

"Wuh- excuse me?"

"You're not allowed to camp in the forest! You'll disturb the ecology and we're reintroducing bears, man!" The fairy scoops up Raafi and all his stuff and whisks the lot of it into the air. "What if a bear found you? How did you even get in here?" Whoosh! Now they are at a cabin with a sign that says RANGER STATION.

"I know better than to bother bears," he objects weakly.

"Good for you, what if bears don't know better than to bother you? How'd you get here - fairy? Hiked in from up north? You gotta go home and my binding won't cover it."

"It's complicated," he sighs. "Give me a minute to think, all right?"

"Bad breakup?" wonders the fairy. He looks over his shoulder at the lodge; a window opens and coffee pours itself and zooms over to the fairy's face to be sipped.

"Nothing so straightforward. I don't suppose I can convince you that it's my own fault if a bear gets me? They don't usually bother humans in trees if they don't smell food."

"Can't let you camp in this forest, mate, get a campsite."

"All right. Do you know how I'd find one?"

"Book it online? I don't know, I work in the outdoors, I vacation in nice hotels with spas."

"I don't know how to do that. - I'm trying not to make any outrageous claims here but if you want me to explain I can, it's just going to sound crazy."

"I can't give you a ride to the mental hospital either. Ranger station has a phone?"

"I don't know what that is."

"...well, with it, I could call the mental hospital."

"I didn't say I am crazy."

"I don't know what you are besides trying to camp out in a protected forest and get mauled by a bear. I can't take you anyplace, I'm stuck in the forest. Tell me who to call for you."

"I don't know. If you want to call the healers I'm not going to stop you."

"I'd call my boss but if I wake her up she'll be pissed, man. What is your deal?"

"I'm from a different world - I can prove it, I have a different kind of magic than daeva do. I woke up here a few days ago, and just figured out how to get down to Earth this morning. I don't know how anything works yet."

"...all right, magic man, prove it."

He chants a few words and teleports ten feet to the left.

"Can you do that through stuff?"

"Sure. Only a few times a day, though."

"One more'll do, can you go through the wall into the station?"

He nods, chants, and disappears.

The fairy enters the station. "Dang! How d'you do that?"

"Magic, like I said. My world has a few kinds, mine is granted by my god." He touches his pendant.

"How'd you get to this world, then, somebody summon you?"

"I have no idea, I just woke up here. I don't think someone on this side did it; the place I started in was abandoned. It might have been Fharlanghn," pendant-touch, "he's the god of travel - he generally asks first, but at this point he knows I wouldn't mind it very much if he didn't, I guess."

"What's a god exactly?"

"I don't have a technical definition - it's a matter of some scholarly debate. But they're very powerful, basically immortal, innately divinely magical beings with connections to particular concepts that they sort of embody - Fharlanghn is the god of travel, Pelor is the god of light and healing, Obad-Hai is the god of untamed nature, Yondalla is the goddess of halflings, that sort of thing. Not all clerics follow a god, but it's nice to have the guidance available and helpful in coordinating with other clerics with similar interests if you're taking cues from the same place."

"What's a halfling?"

"A different species of person. Similar to humans, but much smaller," he indicates knee height, "and usually nomadic."

"Huh. And you were like, hey, Far-whatever, I want magic, and he was like, okay?"

"It's a little more complicated than that but basically, yes."

"And then he dumped you here? Can you be like, hey Farwhatever, what was up with that?"

"He can talk to me whenever he likes; it's more costly for me to contact him myself. I might, eventually."

"Do you have... a guess?"

"A few possibilities, but nothing very firm." He yawns. "-excuse me."

"...you swear on Far-whatever you will demonstrate magic to my boss in the morning so it doesn't look like I'm nuts, and I can let you sleep on that couch."

"I'd appreciate it," he nods, touching his pendant again. "I'll want to do my devotions first, but I can let you use a potion or something if it's inconvenient."

"Your whats? What do the potions do?"

"Different things. Mostly healing, but I'd rather do that myself if you need it. I'll probably give you one of the size changing ones, I don't think they'll be very useful here."

"I don't need healing, I'm a daeva. ...Go to sleep, I can wake you up again when she gets in."

"All right. Thank you." He settles in on the couch and is quickly back to sleep.

A little after dawn the next day there is some bustle and the smell of coffee in the station.

Raafi is already awake, sitting on the couch and quietly praying; he doesn't investigate the sounds immediately.

"- don't wanna wake him up."

"Left him here unsupervised -"

"I was looking in the window every fifteen, twenty minutes."

"Did you do all your rounds?"

"Yeah I did."

He's another ten minutes at his prayers, and then goes to the door. "Is everything all right? I'm sorry to be a bother."

"Lertwee here," says the lady over her coffee, "says you have one heckuva story."

"You could say that, yes. I don't have much of an explanation, unfortunately, but I can tell you what I know and demonstrate that I have different magic than a daeva."

"Let's see it."

He teleports across the room. "I can do other things, too, but I'm not sure yet what overlaps with daeva magic and what doesn't."

"He can do it through walls, I checked," Lertwee says. "He's not just a fairy with a lot of practice."

"Hunh," says his boss.

"That's also how I got here; my longer range teleport can take me anywhere I have a description of."

"So you, what, saw the website?"

"Found a picture in a book, actually."

"And you decided to come... camp out uninvited in a national forest."

"Well, I don't have any money. I have trade goods, but I haven't found anyplace to sell them. And it seemed safer than an unfamiliar city, if I was going to have to sleep outdoors anyway. I wasn't expecting it to bother anyone."

"...okay. I'm going to... call my brother who is a journalist. And see if he wants to find you a place to stay and feed you and so on in order to get an interview. Okay?"

"I'd appreciate it, thank you. I can feed myself, though, I have that much conjuration."

"Food's cheap but he'll probably wanna see anyhow." She pulls out a device and pokes at it and commences a conversation with her brother.

He moves to speak quietly to Lertwee while she's doing that. "Is it all right if I come back to talk to you once I've gotten things a little more straightened out? I have a few questions."

"...I mean, they probably won't let you in the forest, but when I'm on vacation, sure, why not, I have Tuesday in the Herefordshire Spa."

"I can come right to the cabin now that I've been here, if that would be all right. Whatever works for you."

"No you bloody well can't," says Lertwee's boss, interrupting her call, "you are not in fact allowed, I don't care who you are!"

He spreads his hands placatingly. "That's why I was asking."

"Yeah, don't come here," says Lertwee, as his boss resumes talking to her brother. "Probably I'll bring you to meet her brother, whatshisname -"

"George."

"George, by the border of where I'm allowed, and he'll take it from there and can maybe get you to the spa Tuesday if you want."

He nods. "All right. Herefordshire, you said?"

"Yup. That's just this week, I have a bunch I like."

"All right," he nods. "I'll be there if I can."

He waits out the rest of the phone call quietly.

Eventually she hangs up and tells Lertwee where to haul Raafi.

"You ready to go?" Lertwee asks.

He checks that his pack is secure on his shoulders. "Mmhmm."

The door opens; out they whoosh. Lertwee and Raafi meet, at a gate over a trail leading into the forest, the journalist and another fairy.

"Hop him over," the journalist tells his fairy, and she does. "Hi there! I'm George Fanshawe."

"Raafi, cleric of Fharlanghn," he replies, and then turns to thank Lertwee before he goes. "Did you have any questions to start with?"

"How d'you spell that?" he asks, gesturing at his fairy, who lofts them all into the air.

"It might not translate well if our writing systems are too different - I'm using magic for it, I don't actually speak your language. But I'd write it F-h-a-r-l-a-n-g-h-n."

"Huh. How's the magic for it work?"

"The translation? I have a necklace for it -" he fishes it out of his shirt, a golden chain with a round blue jade pendant. "I don't know how to make them myself, though that is one of the spells I can get. But I can only do a certain amount of magic per day, and it'd be expensive to cast my own translations all the time."

"When we get to my office may I borrow it?"

"I'd rather cast my own translation on you, if that's all right. I can prepare one tomorrow."

"Prepare one?"

He nods. "I mentioned I get a certain amount of magic per day; I choose which magic I get when I do my morning devotions. I wasn't expecting to need to cast a translation today, so I didn't prepare one."

"Huh! So this is all attached to a religion. Can you tell me about that?" They're approaching an office building; the fairy throws open the window. In they go. "And what can I get you for breakfast?"

"I'm not picky - something iconic, if that's easy. Or I can conjure food. Religion - Fharlanghn is a pretty informal god, we don't have much in the way of organized worship or church hierarchy. Most of us just do whatever work we find ourselves in place to help with. He doesn't have many specific teachings, either - we're supposed to learn by doing, by exploring and seeing for ourselves what things are like and how to best work with them. All he says is, don't stop, there's always more to discover."

"Easy enough." He doesn't appear to do anything, but says, "That'll be cooked up for us in ten." (The fairy has by now let herself out.) "Go ahead and have a seat. So my sister says you appeared in this world a few days ago?"

"Mmhmm. In a sort of place that my language doesn't have a word for - mostly metal, very high in the sky. It was abandoned when I got there."

"A space station? Yeah, there are lots of those abandoned. How'd you get down?"

"I found the emergency summoning supplies and worked out how to summon a fairy."

"Sensible of you. And then you landed in the forest?"

"I landed in a city - I didn't catch the name but I remember some of the building's names, you might be able to figure out where I was. I keep some trade goods with me in case I find myself somewhere that doesn't take my coin - I have storage magic - and spent the day looking for someplace to sell some of them, but I couldn't find anything, and it turned out that I couldn't teleport back to the space station, so I went to a library and found a book with pictures of forests that I could teleport to, to sleep in. That's usually allowed, in my world."

"What were the buildings? And I'd like to see the storage magic."

He names a few of London's landmarks, taking a folded piece of black cloth from one of the pouches on his belt as he does so. When he opens it up and lays it on the floor, the fabric shimmers and resolves into a hole leading down to a rough stone-walled room, the size of a small bedroom, full of shelves and baskets and a clothes rack all laden with miscellaneous objects.

"You were in London, sounds like. Wow! Can I go in?"

"If you have any storage magic yourself you should leave it outside, it reacts badly to that. But otherwise, sure." He takes off his own belt and sets it safely back from the edge before gesturing for George to go first.

"I don't have any." In he goes. "I'm going to want to get a photographer in here."

"I'll want you to explain what that is first, I think." He climbs down after him. "It's not really meant for guests, I'm afraid - this section is mundane trade goods, this shelf is magic components and that one is mostly potions and scrolls - spells stored to be cast later - and magic items and things I collect for friends are mostly in the back. And then coin and my wardrobe and things, here by us."

"What do the magic things do?"

"It'd be faster to talk about my magic system as a whole, if you want an idea of the types of things it can do. If you're looking for something to try, I have a walking stick that makes it hard to attack you, or rings that improve jumping and climbing skill, or I think I still have a cloak that makes you easy to overlook."

"The rings sound interesting."

"This way, then." He leads him to the back, picking his way through the baskets on the floor, and checks the labels on the dozen or so rings on a stand on a shelf until he finds what he's looking for, identifying them before turning them over.

George tries jumping with the jumping ring!

The intuitions the ring offers are pretty obvious, and he gets about a foot more of height than he normally would.

"Amazing." He puts the ring back and goes out of the storage space. "What can you tell me about prospects of more visitors from your world?"

"I'm sure Fharlanghn is working on it; I have no idea how long it will take him."

"No idea at all, not even - general order of magnitude?"

He considers. "More likely within my lifetime than beyond that - it's unusual that he sent me here without warning, and that might be because whatever let him do it is a rare phenomenon and he can't usually contact you. Having me here gives him more of a connection to the place, and I don't think he would have sent me here like this if he didn't expect it to be useful somehow. But that still doesn't tell us if the next visitor will be next week or in fifty years, even if I'm right about it."

"And - I'd guess your age but I can't begin to guess what kind of lifestyle effects you're looking at. Do you happen to know it in Earth years?"

"Early sixties - the translation should handle it just fine. Clerics with as much magic as I have rarely die of anything but old age, I can expect to live to a hundred pretty easily."

"The magic's good for healing?"

He nods. "Clerics are known for it."

"Do you happen to know how it differs from what angels do?"

"I don't know much about your angels - the translation is giving me a word for a type of being from my world that I think is unrelated - but I think what I do might be a little more comprehensive. I can cure infections directly, for example, or counteract poison. And I can raise the dead, under some circumstances, though it's very expensive."

"- expensive in what?"

"Diamonds, traditionally, as an offering to the gods. It's also a more advanced spell, I can only cast it a few times a day."

"...diamonds, uh, aren't expensive here. I suppose they once were."

"They might not be a suitable offering, then. I'd have to try it and see."

"When you say offering..."

"It disappears when the spell is cast, if the spell works, and some gods will reject some kinds of offerings. Fharlanghn is generally pretty accepting, but it has to be worth at least close to the right value."

"...I'm not an economist but you should possibly talk to one. Uh, there's breakfast," he points at a cart outside the glass of his office, "I'll go fetch that in and while we're eating I'll write up a very quick preliminary release and then we can talk more to flesh out something longform and then I can get you a hotel room."

"All right."

Breakfast is toast and beans and grilled tomatoes, eggs, mushrooms, and a pot of tea. George pours Raafi some and then bolts down a couple bites of his in between staring at another mysterious device furiously while text appears and changes before his eyes.

The food is pretty good. He watches George work with the mysterious device curiously but quietly.

"Okay. Got the initial piece to my editor. Photographer'll be here in - oh, and my editor too - in ten minutes. So. Raafi. Anything you wanna say to a few billion people?"

"Your world is very interesting so far, and I look forward to learning more about it and hopefully introducing you to my own."

"What interests you in the learning more department?"

"I hardly know what there is to know, yet, people keep mentioning things I've never heard of. Summoning's interesting, though - we have a kind of summoning too, but it's very different and I'm not sure it'll work here - and you seem to have a lot more kinds of things than we do - I'm still not sure if that's magic or technology, actually." He gestures to George's computer.

"Technology! We don't have any persistently magical objects. What's your summoning like?"

"Much briefer, lots more options for types of creature to summon, and our summoned creatures are more directly under their summoner's control, for the common type. There are types of summoning spells that involve bargaining and longer tasks, but the beings they call expect to be better compensated than daeva seem to, and we're more limited in what we can summon that way."

"We do have to pay daeva something they'll agree to."

He nods. "The fairy who brought me down accepted a payment worth about a tenth of what I would have expected from an elemental who answered the least of those summoning spells, though, even before I take into account that goods are worth less here."

"What'd you offer it?"

"Jewelry, spices, that sort of thing. He took some fabric and seeds."

"Huh. Material objects are scarcer in Fairyland since they can't summon demons."

"That explains some of it," he nods, "but the difference was still pretty striking. The sorts of summoned beings I'm familiar with prefer to be paid in works, and it's not especially uncommon for someone to spend a month or two fulfilling the obligation they take on."

"Demons are like that, and sometimes angels."

"That makes sense. Any kinds of works in particular? I don't summon like that often, but I'm friends with a druid who guards an elemental portal, I can usually pay it off by helping her out, or getting her to bring through things they want distributed."

"I think the angel at my clinic is paid in extremely specific pornography."

"Huh. I suppose that answers my question about the translation, your angels are definitely a different sort of creature than mine - you do ever hear of half-angels, in my world, but they'd never waste a bargaining opportunity on something that selfish."

"Daeva can't have kids."

"Angels and demons can, but I don't know how common it is among themselves; fairies vary - these are all names for types, in my language, not specific species - and I don't think elementals do, though I'm not sure what they do instead, they're not all immortal. My druid friend is one of the more humanoid types of earth elemental, and she was raised by elves, but she's not half or anything, just adopted."

"Huh. How many sapient species do you know of?"

"All of them, not just mortal ones? The usual estimate is a hundred or so mortal species on the material plane, and then..." he spends a few seconds doing math under his breath. "I'd guess around five hundred, all told. Some of those will be very rare, though."

"- that's incredible. Are they all very different?"

"There's really a lot of variety. The most common species are all pretty similar to humans, though - that's elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings. Those are all humanoids, and there's at least a few more less-common species of us - plus giants, if you count them - and then the animalfolk are the next most similar group, and then the goblinoids, and then it starts getting really exotic, fae and centaurs and dragons and things."

"...wow. Can I get you to draw some of these for me? So I don't lean too hard on what folkloric things they sound like."

"Sure."

George supplies pencil and paper.

And Raafi sketches. He's not experienced at it, exactly, but he's familiar with what makes an illustrative drawing useful, picking out defining characteristics for special attention and adding notes like 'also the women' on dwarven beards and 'scales start dull, become metallic in some types' on the dragon.

George summons the photographer, who takes some candids of Raafi and the drawings as he finishes them. "Can she get a look at the storage room?" George asks.

"This is the photographer? What are you doing, exactly?"

"I'm taking pictures." She shows him the display on her camera.

"Oh, is that how you get such realistic pictures in your books? What are you going to do with these?"

"They'll accompany the articles I'm writing," says George.

"Well, it's kind of a mess in there, but as long as you don't show the back shelves I suppose it's all right." He lays out the cloth again and leads the way down. "This is technically a separate plane, it's not possible to teleport in or out even with a picture, otherwise I'd be a little more cautious about it, in case we make contact with my world again soon. I'd still rather nobody be able to recognize which of my things are magic that easily."

"Why not?" asks George, as the photographer goes down.

"Mostly on general principle, right now. In my world I'd be worried about making myself a target for theft."

"I'll keep the back shelves out of frame," says the photographer.

"Thank you."

He'll show off the other contents of the room as much as they like.

Eventually she asks him to pose for some less candid shots.

He can do that, too, and thinks to ask if she'd like a picture of his holy symbol - "it's not magic itself, but it's an important connection to my god," he explains. "If anyone here wants to try for clerichood, they'll need to make themselves one, it's the only part of the process that you can't just guess at and maybe get right."

She takes some pictures of the holy symbol. "Are you interested in evangelizing here?" wonders George.

"No, it's not that kind of religion and I'm not that kind of cleric. I do think people should have the option available if they feel called to it, though."

"What if they just want the magic?" he wonders lightly.

"Well, it's up to Fharlanghn, ultimately, but I wouldn't expect that to work very well for them. Being a cleric runs on devotion - I was a traveler first, and I'll be traveling 'till I die, and it's nice that I get magic for it, but that'd be true even if I didn't. If it wasn't, he would never have noticed me."

"Can you go into some more detail on how that works? In general, and for - Fhar-lang-hn?"

"Sure. Really any concept that someone is sufficiently passionate about and devoted to can be the focus of their clerichood, though it's harder to figure out how to get started with it without clerics of the same thing around to guide you. Every cleric needs a holy symbol - it's the image that matters, not the pendant itself, though we do generally wear them and a lot of our magic requires that we have our symbol on hand to cast it. For clerics of a particular god, we need to use that god's chosen symbol; clerics without gods have to design their own, and it's possible to get it wrong - it's very individual, copying the symbol of another cleric following the same principles usually works but not always. All clerics spend an hour in devotions every day, usually at sunrise. It's important to do it at the same time every day. The time is spent in contemplation of your topic of devotion, and the details past that will vary from one person to another - prayer is common, but not necessary, and I actually usually don't, I prefer to spend it walking and enjoying my surroundings. It usually takes about a month for a new cleric to get their first spells, that way, if they're doing everything right. It's also important to live by the principles of your devotion - that again varies, in what it means in practice, but for example a cleric of Fharlanghn will lose their clerichood if they ever settle down to live in a particular place, immediately if they do it intentionally and after no more than a year if they're intending to keep moving but putting it off for some reason."

"Now, people here do have religions, and holy symbols, and habits of prayer, but nobody's using them to cast spells."

"That's strange. Unfortunately I'm not much for theory, if you're doing everything right and it's still not working."

"I see. What form might more extensive interworld contact take - presumably it's not like the level of contact with, say, Heaven."

"It depends on what kind of transportation we end up being able to do; if a standard plane shift works, we'll be able to set up permanent portals. Of course we'll need to discuss it with your leaders and ours, first. But I expect that will be easy to work out; everyone likes trade opportunities."

"How are your leaders likely to respond?"

"It depends on where we start - I'll want to consult with some of the other clerics first, it's not my specialty. If we're in a hurry we might try Greens, though, I have friends there to advise me. It's a fairly progressive city, mostly human but they get a lot of dwarven trade; I expect they'll treat you like any other traders, at worst. For magic - the biggest wizards' college is in Hempholme, but their government is more conservative, it might be better to work something out with the college directly than try to start there in general. They won't do worse than forbid us from putting in a portal but they won't be quick about it."

"These are local, not national, government bodies?"

"Mmhmm. I'm sure you'll want to talk to the kings too, but most decisions are made closer to home."

"Interesting. Magic doesn't compensate for the lack of communications technology? - Can you describe approximately your level of technology at home?"

"Magic is fairly uncommon, and limited even for those of us who have it - kings and similar will usually have a wizard or two on staff, and often at least one cleric as an adviser, but that's not enough to stay in good enough contact with the rest of their kingdom to make policy decisions like that. Technology -" he considers. "If you don't have magical items we must be well behind you. I have no idea how you'd make a light like that without magic, or anything like your books."

"Gosh, okay. Why is magic uncommon?"

"Different reasons for different sorts - there's two types, arcane and divine. Divine is easier to pick up if you have the calling for it, but the call is fairly rare; most people just aren't clerics or druids, by nature, and it can't be faked. Arcane magic doesn't have that sort of restriction, but it's much more difficult to learn, progressively so for more advanced spells, and most people don't have the aptitude for more than very basic ones. And that's if they can get to a wizard's college at all; their families can't always spare them."

"But rich bright people should be able to pick it up all right?"

"Certainly," he nods.

"What can the different kinds of spellcasters do?"

"It'll be easiest to explain that if you know a little more about out magic in general; it's divided into eight schools, each with certain general kinds of effects. Abjurations are protective spells - barriers, wards, traps, defensive effects cast directly on an individual, effects that negate other magic. Conjuration spells move or create things; teleportation is a conjuration effect, and healing is conjuration because it creates new flesh. Evocations are like conjuration, but they produce or move energy rather than matter. Illusions create imaginary sensations, usually just sight and sound. Divination spells give the caster information, particularly about distant locations, the near future, or undetectable traits. Transmutation changes the properties of creatures, objects, or the world, usually temporarily. Enchantments affect creatures' minds in various ways; putting creatures to sleep, making them unable to move, making them friendly to the caster, or various kinds of mind control. And necromancy manipulates negative energy to produce undead creatures and related effects. Wizardry can do all of those about equally well, though particular wizards usually specialize; clerics can do some of each, but we're best at abjurations and generally more focused on supporting the people around us than conflict. There are also druids and rangers, who are focused on nature and a little more combat-oriented than clerics, and bards, who are more enchantment-oriented. And sorcerers, who can have any kind of magic that wizards can but are individually limited to what their particular bloodline gives them."

"I'm getting the impression of a high conflict society."

"Well, I'm not sure what you're used to; maybe. If it's only humans and restrained summoned daeva here I imagine that would cut down on some of it. And - do you have magical creatures?"

"Only daeva."

"That explains some of it, too. They're less common than mundane animals, but our wild places are still more dangerous than yours - dramatically so, sometimes, if you consider bears a major threat - and there's demand for combat magic in dealing with them."

"Huh - would we be likely to see those coming in through the portals?"

"It's not impossible but if they're in cities it wouldn't be likely, and I expect you'll want that anyway. We can set up additional defenses, too, if that seems called for - that'd be overkill for most things but you might want to make sure you know about it if any dragons want to come through, for example; some of them can shapeshift."

"And they can pass for p- are they people? Are they particularly dangerous?"

"Yes, they're people," he chuckles. "They vary a lot, personality-wise, but the dangerous ones don't tend to have much to do with civilized places."

"No?"

"If they're going to develop the inclination, that generally happens early, and they don't start out all that powerful. They'll raze a village or two and then get taken down by an adventuring party."

"Adventuring parties that go slay dragons are an institution?"

"Nothing so organized, but they're not uncommon, no. It's one of the best ways to improve your skills, if you don't mind the risk."

"You don't get better at casting spells just by doing it?"

"Wizards and bards do, but more slowly, and casting them under pressure is more educational. It's a little less clear for clerics and druids, since when we adventure it's usually in service of our devotion, and that's how we grow anyway."

"And your devotion is to - wandering around, or something more specific than that?"

"More or less. New experiences, is how I'd usually put it. Seeing how things are in different places, and the different perspectives that gives people. For me personally; not every cleric of a particular god will have the same focus."

"Why is that something that interests Fharlanghn?"

"It's what travel is for, in the end. There wouldn't be anything special about place if everything was the same no matter where you went."

"Yes, but - why is he invested in you having new experiences?"

"Oh. A few reasons - people who understand the value of that are better able to champion it properly, is the main one; it's important to him that everyone have the option to travel. We end up fulfilling an interesting niche as diplomats - we're intrinsically unaffiliated with any one place, but we have a clear interest in the kinds of conflicts that disrupt travel and trade, so we end up stepping in as neutral parties to help resolve them. We work as guides, too, and having lots of personal experience is obviously helpful there. And while it's always better for people to get out into the world and see things for themselves, when that's not possible, having the outside world come to them is better than nothing; we find ourselves acting as advisers in that way sometimes. Plus it's just... right, for us; that's part of what it means to be a cleric of Fharlanghn, that it's something that we need, and he does like us to flourish."

"I'm trying to figure out... why there exists a person who is a god of travel, in the first place."

"You'd need to find a theorist to tell you much about that, unfortunately. It is true that all gods are gods of things that are deeply important to at least some people, though - not necessarily many people, and not necessarily any humans, but that is a constant. And there are species and human cultures in my world that are nomadic."

"The gods don't know, or don't say?"

"I haven't asked. I'd be surprised if no-one knows, it's just that I don't. It doesn't have any practical implications, as far as I know - we do get new gods sometimes, but it's very rare, the youngest I know of is over a thousand years old."

"What's that one a god of?"

"Pleasure. Lastai, is her name. Relatively obscure, but she's got a good message, I like her."

"No non-compete agreement, huh?"

It takes him a moment to puzzle out the meaning of the phrase. "Of course not; he wouldn't ask us to cut ourselves off from part of the world like that. Not that any god I know of objects to their clerics calling on another god for aid in their domain, if they don't have some kind of feud going on. Some don't allow dual dedication, but even that isn't so rare."

"Do they feud much?"

"Not especially. The patrons of various species more often than the rest, I think because they're more likely to have the kinds of aesthetic disagreements that can't really be resolved. Disagreements that don't quite reach that level are more common - the god of justice and the god of thieves aren't friends, but their followers aren't forbidden from associating with each other, necessarily, it'd just be a very uneasy alliance."

"Can one assume of anyone with the symbol of the god of thieves on that they're a thief?"

"That wouldn't be my first question about the situation; it's rare for them to wear it openly, and he's the god of trickery more than theft exactly. But it's fairly safe to assume that if you know you've got a cleric of Olidammara, yes."

"Huh. Would you be interested in a television appearance?"

"Explain to me what that is?"

"It's a moving picture, with sound - millions of people would be able to watch you answer questions and demonstrate magic. I can show you an example." He pulls up a segment where someone's talking to a musician about the concept of her new album.

He watches with clear interest. "Certainly. How long will that take to set up?"

"I can get you set up with somebody who does that right after lunch, if you like!"

"Sounds good. I'll want a couple hours to myself afterward, I think, I'd like to take some notes about all the new things I've seen in the last few days."

"Totally reasonable. Do you have any unusual accomodations preferences if I get you a place to stay?"

"Not especially. Maybe make sure I won't disturb anyone if I'm up early, but that's not usually much of a problem."

"All right. I can do a hotel or a rental house, but either fits that bill."

"I'd assume the hotel is the more common option? That'll be fine."

"Uh, hotels are typical for business travelers and houses for recreational travel."

"I'm sure I'll end up trying both eventually, then. Whichever is convenient for you, or the house if it's all the same."

"All right, hotel it is. Saves picking out a specific house. I'll get you that interview and start writing up my article. Can I get you anything besides lunch in the interim?"

"Something to read? If you have a traveler's advice book that'd be ideal but I'll take something about summoning if that's easier."

"Little short on physical books. Might have an old Latte I could wipe and reload for you." He rummages in his desk.

"I can find something to occupy myself with if it's any trouble."

"Found it - it's no big deal." He pokes the rectangle he has found and after a moment hands it over. "You tap the button there in the lower right to turn the page, the one on the left to go back. It's aimed at people from other planets, not other universes, but maybe it'll help."

The title page says A First-Timer's Guide to Earth.

"Oh, excellent, thank you." That's him sorted for the next while, then; what's the book say?

The Earth has native life and oceans and weather! Here are some places you can go look at those things. Here's how and when to see eclipses! Here are things to do in the sea like scuba diving and whale watching. Here are places to see the nature. These are places with nice weather; these are places with interestingly extreme weather. Here is a whole chapter about getting used to the gravity. Here are historical sites you might want to see! The Earthly fairy shuttle system works like so.

He has a notebook out almost immediately, filling it with reminders of things to look into and little sketched copies of pictures of interesting places.

Lunch arrives and is fish sandwiches with fried potatoes.

He puts the notebook away and sets the tablet aside before eating, and waits to see how George handles the sandwich before taking a bite of his own. "Tasty," he concludes quickly.

"Glad you like it!"

"Is there anything else I should know about the television appearance?"

"It can be edited after the fact," George says. "So don't worry about it if you flub an answer and want to start over. They'll want to put some makeup on you because they use very bright lights that would make you look washed out. If you do a magic demo you'll need to have a care for the area the camera can cover."

"All right. I do have some magic that I can demonstrate and none of it needs to be in a particular place, that should be fine. Is there anything you think would make a particularly good demonstration?"

"I'd talk to the video people about that, I'm a writer."

"Fair enough." He'll make small talk about the contents of the Guide to Earth for the rest of the meal.

And then there's somebody at the office door to prep him for video!

He'll go where he's led, then, and see if he can find a better opportunity to ask about the magic demonstration.

His interviewer-to-be discusses this with him while he's getting makeup on! "What've you got that's really neat looking? I'm also going to want to filter for relatively hard to fake but wouldn't expect you to know what things those are."

"I have a few low-tier spells that might work - Resist Energy keeps the person it's cast on safe from a small amount of fire, acid, cold, or electrical damage for a few minutes, Entropic Shield offers minor protection from ranged weapons and looks very interesting, Helping Hand creates an illusory hand that tries to lead a person who fits a description I give it to me, Darkness makes an object radiate shadows for a while, and Air Walk lets the person it's cast on walk on air for a while. I also have some divination spells, but it's harder to prove to an audience that you aren't helping me fake them, and a summoning spell that's very different from your summoning but that I'm not sure will work here. And if none of those work out I do have some higher-tier options, but I'd rather not use them if it's not necessary."

"...well, I'm not planning to shoot at you. I suppose I could throw juggling balls. Darkness and Air Walk would both be fun as long as we get this up online fast enough that it's implausible we got the special effects together that fast, or maybe the boss will spring for demonic confirmation. - though I guess demonic confirmation might not work, I'm not sure if they can make magical things."

"I haven't had much time to read about demons yet. I do also have healing magic, if that would work - it goes without saying for clerics from my world, is why I forgot to mention it." He considers - "and a casting of Mending, which will repair an object; it's not flashy, exactly, but it might be easier to demonstrate - I'm not sure how well it'll do with your technology, though, something wooden or ceramic would be best."

"That'd require we get someone injured or something broken on hand, but maybe we can scare up something."

He nods. "Whatever you think best."

"What would you be summoning?"

"-if you don't have magical creatures here, do you have giant ones? One of the options is a celestial giant beetle. I can also get a celestial dog, monkey, badger, or owl."

"Oh, wow. We do have some giant prehistoric insects but they have to be kept in special environments. If yours would be recognizably a different species, and it moved around pretty well so it definitely wasn't just an angeled specimen, that'd be very neat - let me look up a high-oxygen zoo's image gallery."

"It'll also glow, a bit - not magically, they have patches over their eyes like a lightning bug. And any of those will look metallic, usually golden or silver."

"Then maybe the others would also do but the beetle's probably the most convincing, especially because they'd be hard to train - can you get it to do what you want, I was just assuming -"

"Mmhmm. Celestial animals are smart enough to understand language, but not quite smart enough to speak. It'll only understand me, though, I have translation magic going."

"What do you need to pay them?"

"This sort of summoning doesn't require it. It's also very short; it'll last about a minute and a half."

"Besides casting spells, and what you're wearing, anything else visual we should plan on?"

"That's probably it - I let them take a picture of my magical storage room for the article, but they agreed to keep the back shelves out of it and I imagine that's harder for a moving picture. And it's kind of a mess in there."

"Yes, I saw the pictures - maybe no cameras pointing into it but you could put it on the floor and stick your arm in and then pick it back up?"

"Sure, that's easy. Or do something like that with my belt, it's got the same sort of spell on it."

"Show me?"

He extracts one of the rolled-up summoning circles from the space station from a pouch clearly too small to hold it.

"Amazing! What's that, a circle? Where'd it come from?"

"Mmhmm, it's from the abandoned space station I appeared in. I wasn't sure how hard they were to come by - something like this would be magical in its own right, in my world, and probably very rare, so it didn't seem wise to just leave it."

"Ah, emergency circles are mass-printed, not magical at all. Do you know what the station was?"

"I didn't find a name, and I haven't been able to teleport back to it for some reason - that can happen if a place changes too dramatically, or if I'm trying to do something like teleport into solid rock. I can draw a picture of the general layout, though."

"It's probably moved, most stations are in orbit relative to the Earth. A lot of them may have the same layout but we could ask a forensic demon to get a model of yours and read the name off the side."

"I don't expect it moving to matter, I can teleport onto a ship at sea just fine. I'd appreciate the name, anyway - I left some things there that I'd like to get back eventually."

The interviewer pokes a device. "Demonic fact check is on it. George's article will probably want the name too."

"-how important does that make it that I get there soon, if I want my things back?"

"Uh, d'you want me to send the staff fairy so it doesn't matter if someone loots the place?"

"There's nothing very important, but I'd appreciate it, yes."

The staff fairy is brought in to receive a description of the stuff and where on the station it is.

He gives it. "The spices are the most important, everything else I can replace eventually even if I'm stuck here."

Off she goes. She's back ten minutes later with the spices and everything else.

"Thank you. Did you see anything that would explain why I can't teleport there? If something happened to it, or if it's dangerous in some way now, basically."

"Oh, it depressurized. Door was wide open."

"-I don't know what that is," he directs at the interviewer.

"All the air escaped."

"Huh. That would definitely explain it. Thank you," he tells the fairy.

"You're welcome," she says, and shoos.

"So for our interview, anything I shouldn't bring up or ask about for any reason?" asks the interviewer.

"Nothing that I would expect you to. I did mention Lastai to George, that's the goddess of pleasure; that is actually what it sounds like, among other things, but it's easy enough to talk around. -one moment-" he stares off over her shoulder at nothing in particular. "I have no idea, sir, I thought it was you. ... Of course I am, sir. ... Yes sir. ... Yes sir. ... Any time you like, sir, thank you."

"That was Fharlanghn. He didn't send me here; it sounds like it was a freak accident. He's figuring out how to repeat it now, and he'll be stopping by when he does."

"- in person?"

"Of course. He might not do anything more than look around, though, he didn't say anything about plans."

"What does that imply about travel prospects, George can still sneak in an edit -"

"Good time for it, once he's here. He's less likely to notice travelers who don't pray to him, but it's not strictly required, and he does bless journeys - I'm not sure what that will look like with fairies around, at home it's usually favorable weather, fortuitous meetings on the road, vehicles not getting mired or broken as easily, things like that. You might see some obvious magic from him, too; he makes and repairs roads, in particular, if he happens to notice a need for that - I can put in a request, if you'd like something in particular done, though most of the time he uses his own judgement - he does bless construction efforts, too."

"Let me call George real quick." She does this on her phone and updates him on the situation.

He waits patiently, still obviously delighted.

When she's done, she says, "Does he, uh, know how modern roads work? Since you're lower tech."

"I'm sure he'll figure it out before he makes anything. He switches to new building techniques as they're developed, in my world, unless there's some reason to use the old ones."

"All right. Well, if he wants to join us during the interview I for one would be delighted and you can tell him so."

"I don't think he'll be quite that quick, he just now figured out how to make any contact at all. At least a day or two, would be my guess."

"We can book him another day then. Any questions before we go on the set?"

"No questions. You'll have some trouble getting him to stay still long enough for something like this, though, it's very unusual for him to stop moving. But he'll talk to you if you find him on the road."

"We can follow him around with a camera if we've got to. Set's this way!"

The set has a glass coffee table supported by a glass sculpture and some soft chairs and lots of flower arrangements and very bright lights. She sits in one chair, points him at the other, points out the cameras for him to make occasional eye contact with.

She beams at a camera. "Hi there, I'm Brooklyn Windhouse and this is a very unusual guest, Raafi. Say hi, Raafi!"

He chuckles, but answers quickly enough. "Hello. It's great to be here."

"It's my privilege to welcome Raafi not just to the studio, not just to the Earth, but to the universe. Unbelievable though it may seem, he's here via magical accident from a world as different as Fairyland or Heaven, with a lot more types of people. What were you up to when you were transported, Raafi?"

"I was on my way to the mountains; I'd heard about some interesting collaboration going on between the dwarves and the goliaths, and I wanted to see if there was anything to it. I was just getting to the foothills, fell asleep under a tree, and woke up in one of your space stations."

"We've tracked that station down; it was Saratopia Station, abandoned in 2023 along with many others of the era since they were put up hastily in the post-Revelation chaos without all the design care we use today. Luckily, it wasn't flung out of the solar system since it's not in a contested orbital, and it kept all its air. And then what happened?"

"I spent a couple of days looking through it and trying to figure out where I was, and found the emergency summoning circles and figured out how to summon a fairy to get me down. Luckily I'm in the habit of keeping some trade goods with me - my world has magic items of various sorts, and I have a couple that let me keep more things with me than I can carry. The fairy dropped me off in London, which is very impressive, good architecture."

"You got very lucky, not all abandoned stations still have their emergency circles. What sorts of things did you bring with you?"

"Oh, a variety of things, you never know what's going to be valuable in a new place - pottery and jewelry and some fancy clothing and spices and so on. I gave him a few bolts of rare fabric and some seeds I'd been collecting for a friend."

"Do you think the seeds are of plants we don't have here?"

"I can't be sure, but we do seem to have some things you don't; it wouldn't surprise me."

"Like the dwarves and goliaths you mentioned."

"Mmhmm. We have dozens of mundane kinds of people. And I hear you don't have any magical beings at all, aside from daeva; they're not especially common, where I'm from, but there's lots of types, and plenty of them live on the material plane with everyone else, and some of those are people too."

"When you say material plane, what does that mean?"

"The kind of place you'd consider normal - where the humans live and things are basically like Earth. We also have realms that we call Heaven and Hell - I'm not sure how similar they are to yours, my translation magic is behaving a little strangely with your daeva terminology - and things like the elemental planes of earth and air and fire and water, and the ethereal plane that overlaps with the material plane and is where ghosts get stuck. Most of those have people living on them, too, but they're mostly not safe for humanoids without magical protection."

"Ghosts! What can you tell us about ghosts?"

"I don't know much of the technical details, I generally call in a specialist when I find a ghost that needs more than a bit of conversation and favor. But they're people who've died and not moved on to their afterlife for whatever reason, and gained some magic in the process - they can be dangerous, especially if you try to take their grave goods, but more often they just need some help with whatever's keeping them there."

"So typically people from the material plane have afterlives?"

"Universally, as far as I know."

"What's known about that?"

"The afterlives are particular planes - heaven and hell are two of them; there are nine in total. It's possible to physically go there, though as I mentioned before it's dangerous for mortals. Sufficiently powerful clerics can resurrect people, though they usually don't remember their time in the afterlife, and we can't resurrect people from other planes who don't get afterlives - our demons and angels don't, though they also don't usually die in the first place. Certain powerful magic can also interfere with the process."