"As long as he does not use it on me, I do not mind that he could."

"Good." She asks Izakin to bring Ezra along and then tells Kyeskei she did that.

After a thoughtful pause she writes. "The portal you came through must be world. And I wonder if your people met the precursor civilizations. Or are themselves that."

She thanks Sovie for the information.

"Precursor civilizations? What do you mean?"

"A long, long time ago, Elsewhere inhabited by different people. They died out mysteriously. You likely found one of their portals or something."

"That is sad. I expect it would take several towns' worth of people to start a civilization in a new world, and would expect their parent-towns to have continued contact with them and informed everyone else of the other world. It's possible one of the collapsed nations lost several villages worth of people, but I would still expect someone to have found records of it."

"I would've expected someone would've found the portal sooner. Maybe it's something else completely different."

In comes a man in his twenties, looking like he just woke up and put something that wasn't pajamas on because there was a extradimensional visitor around to see him. He says something that sounds like a greeting and hugs Sovie.

Sovie introduces his as Ezra, her stepson.

Well, she isn't going to judge him; the sky is weird here and it might be any time of day.

"Hello, Ezra. I am Kyeskei Tsi-Dyu Mekto" (which comes across as containing some information about her family, her village, and her age) "Have you been informed that I plan to inspect your pattern and compare it to Sovie's? Is this acceptable to you, and if so, do you have a preference about whether the material I read your pattern from is still attached to your body?"

"As long it's just looking, I don't have any objections. Attached should be more convenient than separating anything. Do I need to do anything besides offering contact?"

"No. Oh, may I write down the pattern I see? I can burn the paper after the comparison, if you want." She pulls out one of her own blank pages of soft paper and holds out a hand on the table, palm upward.

"I won't mind," and he touches her open palm.

His patterns are very distinctive from her own.

She looks very surprised for a moment, but this is quickly replaced with deep concentration. After a few minutes, she draws a branching symbol near the center and top of the page, and begins writing out two strings of symbols, with three symbols per row in each string. Eventually, each of these strings branches into two more strings, in different places. By the time she finishes, about fifteen minutes later, the strings have branched into thirty six strings of symbols, ending in different places, across two pages, front and back. She double checks her record, then releases his hand and labels the top of each page with a number, and the first page with "Nezla", which she scribbles out a consonant of to make "Ezla".

They observe this but don't comment. At some point Sovie momentarily leaves the room, but is back before Kyeskei has time to comment.

"Would you like some tea?" Sovie asks once Kyeskei is done.

She did not particularly notice Sovie leaving the room, or returning.

"Yes please, if it is convenient."

They server some tea along side some fruits (they don't know what animal products would do to her).

When it's her turn, Sovie raises a hand.

There is definitely something altered about Sovie's patterns. Some even feel... doubled, or extra. Added on top of others instead of changed.

(The drink and fruits have interesting and novel flavors.)

 She blinks in bewilderment. It feels almost but not quite like reading two patterns at once, but they clearly go together, there's even a section that's not doubled at all. She gets out another two sheets of soft paper and begins writing, frowning in concentration. After about half an hour of writing symbols and occasionally scribbling out strings and rewriting them on the other set of pages, she has a total of sixty five different strings on the two pages, with seven strings branching from the same earlier string circled and the same in both sets, and twenty nine different in each set. She numbers the pages and labels them "Sovi - i" and "Sovi - a", then stretches her hand as she compares them to her record of Ezra's pattern.

After her hand is stretched, she writes and says "It looks like instead of changing your patterns, you might have another set of patterns added? Nothing was changed or added in this section," she points to the circled region of both patterns "which seems to mostly be things about your brain and connections from it to other parts of your body. This-" she taps the two pages that seem more like Ezra's patterns "seems more similar to his patterns, while the other is significantly different. It is possible the first is what your pattern would be without the synth, but I am not sure."

"That makes a lot of sense. Using synth in the brain is possible but rare," she pauses in her writing, "and could be compared to what you called blasphemous."

"I will be sure not to suggest it, then. The other changes seem to be general changes to individual parts of your body. I will need to look at them more closely and compare them to the unmodified pattern to understand the effects of the changes, and to figure out which would be applicable to tinenfe."

"What types of engineering might be useful to trade? I can usually accomplish any effect on a plant, but for any responsiveness or specific chemical effects, it is much faster to use an original plant that already has some of the aspect I need."

"I am not sure what effects you can accomplish? I got the impression you can make them grow in useful shapes?" Pause. "Can you make plants that move? Or have senses?"

"Yes and yes, but- some simple plants have some amount of of reflexive movement or responses to stimuli, and it is much more efficient to modify one of those to move in a different way, or in response to different stimuli. It is easy to get some of them to respond to pressure, or temperature, and to specific substances, but nobody has successfully made a sedentary plant with hearing or vision."

"I am pretty sure no one ever managed to make a synth-modified plant with hearing or vision. Maybe not even with sorcery. Some can resposively move in specific ways, but not as fast as you and me and definitely not as versatile. Do you have..." pause in her writing to think, "trained mobile plants? That you can order in simple ways to do simple tasks?"

"No. Mobile plants are complex, and I could not make a new one without an example. Sedentary plants do not have brains, and can respond in specifically engineered ways to stimuli, but cannot make decisions or respond to orders."

Topher says something to Sovie and then takes the pen. "I think the very different cultural backgrounds might be working against us here. With your permission," he underlines the word three times, "would you accept if I showed you what things we use plants for and some of the limitations? And, again with your permission, would you mind sharing memories of the same?"

She pauses to think, then writes "I accept both, but may need instruction."

"We should take a few minutes to think about what we know about plants and compose a mental summary. Then we touch hands and exchange summaries. Background assumptions would tag along so we would get a sense of things that the other takes for granted on the subject."