She doesn't know what she expects to happen to her, but brightness and tumbling onto something soft and green wasn't it. She pushes herself up into a sitting position and looks around suspiciously. 

...Surface grass surrounds her as far as she can see in every direction, but the blue sky overhead isn't quite as bright as it was the last time she visited the Surface, and the sun is smaller in the sky and not as bright. 

She calls up to it anyway, her crystals-tumbling-in-water voice calling Correspondence words of query and confusion. 

There is no answer. 

It could be that her voice isn't strong enough to reach a Judgment from farther away than the Earth is from its star, or that this Judgment recognizes her for the amalgamy she is and has no personal connection to induce it to deign to speak with her. 

She is still very confused and not happy. 

She looks down again at the grass she landed on, and plucks a stalk and brings it to eye level. It doesn't look like it would look out of place on Earth, but she can't swear that it's the same species as any she's seen before. She didn't exactly have cause to pay attention to grass before. 

But she's never really been to the High Wilderness before, and doesn't have the discernment to distinguish the earthly from the not. 

She turns around again, more slowly, to see if she can see anything besides undifferentiated plains in any direction, to give her a place to try for. 

Is that a road? Might be. Better than anything else she can see to try for. 

She has made it far enough to state with confidence that it is, in fact, a paved road she can see off in the distance, before her internal grumbling about celestial purity ideals is interrupted. 

By the side of the paved road there appears a girl.

She's gorgeous, like a painting, and she has feathered angel wings in dark red and midnight blue, and a dress in the same colors, spangled with a motif of circles.

And with her, a boy in jeans and a buttondown.

That is probably not a great sign. But, like, not in a way that suggests that either of them is a Seeker or a space dragon or anything else she should be concerned about. 

She walks over carefully. "Hello," she says, in her late-nineteenth-century-London accent. "Are you alright?"

"- I don't think I'm injured. Xander?"

"Kind of stubbed my toe in the, uh, landing? No big. Where are we?"

"I don't know." She kind of double-takes at Lucy.

"I don't know either. I assume it is a planet. I don't think it's Earth. I myself arrived here unexpectedly only a few minutes ago."

"We were eaten by a cryptid, what about... you?" Pause. "Also where are you hiding your mods - sorry, that was a rude question -"

"My mods? I--fell down a well. In the Neath. On Earth. I suppose I shouldn't assume you're from Earth--you speak English, though--"

"We're from Earth and speak English and do you just - oh, it's your teeth - does that count by itself or do you have stuff your dress is covering?"

Her hand goes up to cover her mouth. "My teeth? --Most people don't notice anything unusual about my teeth. I mean, not that I've been very good at lying low, but--anyway I still don't understand what you mean...by...are you referring to modifications made by the Shapeling Arts?"

"I don't know what a Shapeling Art is?"

"Can we figure out where we are and not fixate on her dental mod, Bella?"

"- yeah, sorry." She looks around.

She points at the sky. "I haven't been to the Surface in months but that is not what Earth's sun looks like from there." She gestures road-wards. "I was headed that way for lack of better ideas." 

"Yeah, the sky's wrong. Road makes sense. Not sure I ought to take off, loses fast feedback on who can see us and what they think of that..."

"You could go up briefly, there isn't anyone in view at all right now, even if someone does come within view of this spot it'll take a ways between 'blurry speck that we can perceive' and 'can perceive us as more than blurry specks' and if they see a blurry speck go up and down they might not even notice and probably can't draw too many conclusions based on it even if they do." 

"Yeah, I guess I can bet there are birds on the planet." She takes off.

The road stretches on in either direction, and so do the grassy plains on either side. But there are other things on this planet, and several more of them come into view as she gains altitude. Off to the right, facing the road, a town or village of some kind dotted with what might be trees comes into view. A handful more ?trees? speckle the horizon on this side of the road, and off to the left, some kind of vehicle is approaching from a distance about twice as far as is visible from the ground. 

She circles, she lands. "Town that way, and a truck or something is coming from that direction so I guess we could try our luck at hitching a ride?"

Nod. "If you want. I--don't tire easily--but it's less conspicuous than my fast option and I'd much rather stay with you two at least until any of us have any idea what's going on."

"Yeah, agreed." She folds her wings and hikes roadward, sticking close to Xander. "What's your name?"

"Lucy Whitman." These people sure do seem to be Surfacers so her Neath appelation would probably just be confusing. "Yours?"

"Isabella and Alexander Swan respectively. Nice to meet you."

"Modulo circumstances, it's very nice to meet you too. Would it be indelicate to inquire about the wings?" 

"...they're wings? I don't know what your question about them is."

"--I mean, humans don't usually have wings. I don't think I've met anything that's a person and has feathered wings, although I'll admit that even I certainly haven't met everything that exists." 

"...I'm a - are you not a magical girl?"

"I...am indubitably a girl and I guess it's not like I can claim what I can do doesn't count as magic..."

"Where on Earth did you say you were from?"

"London. The Fifth City. The Prickfinger Wastes. The Neath." 

"London is a real place in England and the rest of what you said is nonsense!"

"...London...hasn't been in England since before I was born." 

"Which was when?"

"February 1879." 

"It's 2006."

...

...

"I guess it's not impossible the Bazaar gave London back," she says dubiously. 

"In... some way that would lead to nobody having noticed it was gone? - also they did have magical girls in 1879."

"Oh, everybody knows it's gone. And I think I would probably have noticed if anyone was managing anything reasonably describable as 'magic' on the Surface, right out where a Judgment's light shines full-force. Curiouser and curiouser." 

"A Judgment?"

"Yyyyyes, um, stars are people. Magic people. Who...enforce the laws of physics a certain way. Whether they want to or not. I mean, there's a way to stop, but I don't think most of them know that. And they'd probably get caught. And that--wouldn't end well for them."

"...so, I think we are not from the same planet."

"That doesn't necessarily explain everything but I think explaining everything might take a bit longer than this, yes. Hm." 

...Pause. 

"If you have a sun and can do things Judgment-light wouldn't allow, that--does suggest an alternate interpretation for this planet's star not talking to me when I tried talking to it. Besides it just being stuck up." 

"You thought the star was stuck up? Uh, anyway, yeah, magical girls can do magic. I thought you were one for - reasons -"

"- but apparently you're something else? What are you?"

"I...am...only half human. I suppose given the givens there's no reason not to tell you the whole story. My mother is human and my grandfather is a Judgment and my grandmother is a Messenger. This...isn't what I was born looking like, I figured out how to turn myself mostly human-looking a little over a year ago." 

"Huh. Okay. Magical girls start out like normal human girls and then gain the ability to shapeshift and if we're pretty enough get additional powers."

"I wouldn't be shocked if something like that happened in the Neath, although I'd be curious what caused it. The reason I thought the star was stuck up is because it wasn't talking to me and, uh, I am multiple generations of Space Miscegenation and most Judgments are Space Racist. If the Space Constables find out I exist my grandparents are not going to have a fun time of it." 

"Space Racist! Okay. Uh, as far as we know our sun is not a person but we don't know how to talk to them - sound does not travel through space and it doesn't have eyes to see sign language and so on - so perhaps we wouldn't know."

"Judgment language is magic, I can absolutely talk to my grandfather from the surface of the planet. But given a lack of anyone who speaks Magic Star Language I would expect you to be out of luck there, yes, although I really am confident that magic working on the surface means that something I don't understand is going on, whether it's the sun not being a person or not." 

"Our planet's had magical girls for centuries."

"So if the weirdness is just that you have a Judgment who figured out that you can do something else besides Consensus-light then you're probably not going to get caught by space constables any day now. Uh, the way Judgments enforce a certain paradigm is by giving off magic light that enforces that paradigm, but if you try hard and believe in yourself you can instead give off magic light that does not do that, and my half-judgment father figured that out and worked hard and believed in themself to give off light that heals people instead, and by default when I glow I do that but I can do Consensus-enforcing light instead. I generally don't, healing people is much better. I'm trying to iterate off that and develop an even better kind of light but, uh, it might take a while." 

"Healing power, nice. Some magical girls get that but mine is stopping things."

"I'm glad to hear anyone does! Can your healers raise the dead?"

"- no. Can you?"

"Yeah!!!"

"That's so cool!"

"I know, right, people not being dead is the best."

"If I had any idea how to get home from here I'd be trying to poach you! I don't know how you do your thing but maybe you could do it faster with 2006 infrastructure!"

"How I do my thing is mostly 'find corpses, convince the people in charge of them to hand them over,' I've plucked all the low-hanging fruit already, the graveyards of London are, I dunno, probably I missed any graves that had lost their stones so probably not empty, but close enough for low-hanging fruit purposes and I've wheedled almost all the mummies away from the University and there's only so many corpses I can smuggle down from the Surface at a time without people being 'hey, you're a graverobber, I'm going to stop you with physical violence,' and it's not like any of those people are getting more dead so it's not really worth it to hurt people who are currently alive, you know? --People who have been dead, and, uh, aren't magic, it's not safe for them to go out in Judgment-light, so they have to stay in the Neath--honestly I'd be happy to be poached if there was a way to go back and forth but I'm also doing useful work in terms of convincing my grandparents to behave ethically, they, uh, outperform their species and they love me but they're not objectively great people and also they don't super work on human timescales, humans aren't magic but I am so much more agentic than my father, talk about hybrid vigor. Also, like, I would be sad if I never saw my family again but never is a long time and raising the dead is important."

"Yeah, that makes sense. But instead here we all are on this third planet. But at least it's inhabited and I don't have to sprout crops out of my arms to feed us probably!"

"Whoah, you can do that?"

"I've never done it but yeah, my shapeshifting can accommodate plants."

"That's neat. I can only go between my natural form and this one. I mean, I can do in-betweens, I just can't do anything that isn't any of the things that I am. Not that I'm complaining, the things that I am are excellent, but if I get hungry and there's nothing around I just have to put up with it." 

"What else are you?"

"Uh, giant diamond space crab thing."

"Cool," says Xander. "Cryptid-y, but cool."

"Cryptids are what happens if a magical girl deviates too far from human baseline. They kind of - lose their personalities and usually fuck off into the wilderness or something."

"That does not sound great. I'd love to see if I could fix one, I can for example mend brain damage, but, uh, I am most certainly not suggesting testing it without regaining access to your home planet." 

"I appreciate that."

"For that matter I wonder if it could be fixed by forcing them into a human form again...something to think about, maybe. I don't know how we got here but forever is a long time, I'm sure we'll find a way back eventually." 

"Some of 'em do it on purpose."

"Well, I certainly wouldn't start with those, then, but if we learn things about what it's like to be a cryptid that suggest it was not an informed choice then we can turn them back the once and let them choose it again or not." 

"Makes sense to me."

"I like you, you're sensible. The first time I wheedled mummies out of the University the ostensible purpose was to do research on what the afterlife was like and what the world was like when they were alive and I was happy about people not being dead and the professor who was helping me was all 'oh yes I guess it's true that some people will no longer be dead' like people stop mattering when they've been dead a few thousand years and you're not like that at all and it's good." 

"How'd they take integration after that long? "

"Surprisingly well, really...I mean, it helps that most of them were from the Second City and the queen who sold the Second City in the first place was still around. Albeit incognito, but, you know, when you kick over the status quo all kinds of secrets float out of the dust." 

"...still not from your planet."

"Right, uh, most people from my planet wouldn't know what I was talking about either, sorry. So, to give the full context--I said my grandmother was a Messenger and that's true, but maybe a little lacking in detail. So, Messengers are giant space crabs, basically, who ferry messages between Judgments. My grandmother worked for my grandfather, and also they were involved, but they were not Space Monogamous and my grandfather sent my grandmother with a marriage proposal to another Judgment, which they turned down, and my grandmother was worried that my grandfather would be heartbroken and decided to be extremely dramatic about it. They made a deal with a space Constable to put off delivering the letter for the span of seven Cities, during which time they would collect as many love stories as possible to present to my grandfather to soften the blow. Each city was a capital purchased from the reigning monarch in exchange for magic, usually to save the life of someone the monarch loved, and then brought down to the Neath. London is the fifth such city. The second was called Akhetaten, and was sold by Ankhesenpaaten ostensibly to save the life of her husband Tutankhaten, who had been bitten by a snake, only it was a decoy capital and this was, for reasons I have yet to grasp, important and obnoxious to the Bazaar's purposes, and they managed to hold off the purchase of the Third City for like a thousand years and even then Akhesenpaaten stuck around and has to this day, she's currently going around in whiteface calling herself the Duchess and she helped the ex-mummies adjust." 

"That's... pretty... wacky."

"I mean it gets less wacky when you find out that actually instead of using the magic the Bazaar gave her to cure her husband she, uh, turned him into a giant supernaturally-poisonous snake and I had to rescue him and smuggle him out of the city so she wouldn't find out what had happened to him. The Neath has any excellent qualities such as not having a mortality rate of 'literally everyone ever' but there is a disheartening dearth of people who aren't me who are even trying." 

"What exactly is 'the Neath' - I'm gathering it's underground -"

"Giant cavern underlying most of Eurasia and a decent chunk of the Atlantic Ocean, sufficiently insulated from sunlight that the people there are safe from the effects of Judgment-light."

"It sounds weird as fuck."

Giggle. "It is pretty damn weird. And I haven't even told you about, oh, the Devils or Parabola or Seeking or any of a dozen other things yet." 

"Did you bring them with you? 'Cause this is getting to be lots to track."

"Just me. And a dress covered in Correspondence sigils--the written form of star-language--I suppose." 

Isabella peers at her. "Is there a particular reason to go legible clothing there or is it just a fashion statement?"

"Magic. It's sort of difficult to handle safely if you don't have an innate grasp of it but the one kind of magic Judgment-consensus doesn't prevent is using their own language to reshape reality. Mostly this dress just doesn't get dirty and hangs like this despite having a ridiculous number of pockets. The sigils that aren't going to one of those are just a fashion statement." 

"It's pretty."

"Thanks! I made it myself. I pretty much had to, what with the bit where it's difficult for humans to handle this many sigils at once safely. It's made of space-spider silk."

"You keep calling stuff 'space' stuff."

"Stuff keeps being from space! I mean, I could say 'amalgamy' instead of 'space miscegenation,' but I think the latter gets across what I mean better!"

"But you live underground! Why is all the stuff from space going underground?"

"Because underground is where the Judgment-light doesn't reach. Also there are no space cops there. I mean, besides the one my grandmother bribed, but they're not going to tell their bosses on anyone. And, like, Judgments and space cops are such that 'space miscegenation' is a thing that exists. Lotsa people want not that. And, like, they don't all know it exists, if everyone knew about the Neath we'd be fucked, but--I don't know all of which was who, but between Father and Grandmother they both brought some space stuff with them when they moved in."

"But like, how does stuff that wants to avoid Judgments get to the Neath from space? There being some intervening starlight. Do they, like, come at night, smuggled inside of a meteorite."

"Oh. Well, a lot of it just exists, like, humans who have been dead can't safely go to the Surface, but if a Devil--uh, they're called that but, uh, despite what the Church thinks they aren't actually minions of an actual Satan, they're space bees, long story--or a Rubbery Man wanted to go to the Surface they might find their abilities curtailed but they wouldn't just die. And they'd be in trouble if a space constable found them but if the nearest Judgment is cool with you and the nearest space constable is on the take then you can probably get from point A to point B, there is any risk but it's not the worst."

"Space bees. Gosh. What is a Rubbery Man?"

"They're squid people who mostly keep their tentacles wrapped around each other in such a way that they can, like, fit into human clothes and stuff, they were created by the Flukes to interact with humanity. Flukes are people from the planet Axile who are very big and also aquatic."

"Our Earth is so much less complicated. It's just humans and magical girls and also swarms which are black shapeshifting things that glom into larger monsters if not killed immediately."

"Yeah it sounds like on your Earth I might spend less time running around waving carrots and sticks to get people to stop being horrible to each other, that sounds nice." 

"I mean, humans can be fairly horrible but perhaps it's worse where you're from, if only because it's the nineteenth century."

"I have yet to completely stamp out the practice of spontaneously stoning Rubbery Men to death on the grounds that they have squid faces." 

"Bleah."

"I'm glad to know that in 2006 things have improved enough that 'because it's the nineteenth century' can be considered a reason for horrible." 

"I mean, not everything's better everywhere, but the average is up."

"Well. Of course not." Sigh. "I mean, you can't raise the dead at all, apparently, so that would put a strict cap on how much better things can get anyway. Well. All that means is we have a lot of work ahead of us." 

"Starting with waiting for that car to have someone in it who can tell us where we are."

She squints down the road. "I think the driver stopped to fix something, is why it hasn't showed up yet." 

"Huh. Hope they get that handled, it doesn't seem densely populated enough here that I'd definitely expect another vehicle today."

"Worst case scenario I turn into a giant crab and carry you two to town." 

"...can you see the person well enough to tell if they're a human or not? Winged human might be less likely to spook the locals than giant crab, even if they don't have magical girls here either, but if they're actually, uh, space mice, all bets are off. So if we can't hitchhike I might want to fly into town and scope it out while you guys park a ways back."

"Human," she confirms. "Or at least about as close to human as devils look when they're piloting humanoid paper bodies." 

"Okay. So plan A, hitchhike, plan B, I descend all angelic into the town and - oh, heck, we are unlikely to be able to talk to them. Sky's wrong, this isn't even an Earth."

"Damn, you're right. Well, at least I'm good at languages, if I can get them to hold still long enough to point at things while saying words we should be able to communicate in better than pantomime in, oh, not quite a month." 

"I am not especially gifted at languages and Xander is worse but I can probably figure it out if it's the only way to communicate instead of just the only way to get an A in a Spanish class without very high expectations of my retention."

"I've played translator before, I don't mind." 

"It'll still be logistically less complicated if we learn. But maybe this person will also improbably speak English just as you and we improbably landed near one another."

"Wouldn't that be a treat--oh, the vehicle's starting again, that's good." 

"Also hopefully the locals are friendly."

"Worst case scenario we leave and find a locale where they are. Or are willing to pretend to be in exchange for magic healing." 

"If necessary I can do pearls and other organic shinies but, like growing plants, this sounds uncomfortable and I haven't done it before."

"You can make pearls? What's the limit to what you can and cannot make?"

"I can make a lot of stuff but inorganics disappear when they leave my person - like if I took off my shoe and put it down it'd evaporate into nothing. So I can wear all the diamonds I want but I can't sell them. Pearls and plants and coral and narwhal horns and stuff like that I can grow, though, and that stays when removed like nail trimmings do."

"Innnnnnnteresting. What's the definition of organic? How well do you have to understand a thing to grow it?"

"The magic can fill in some blanks in order to achieve whatever I am driving at cosmetically speaking. But if I make, like, a - you don't have electronics - if I make a... gun... then it won't fire because I don't know how a gun works and something can look exactly like one without working. This is not actually first and foremost a utility power, it's first and foremost an aesthetic power, our magic cares about how pretty we are and this supports that and merely has useful side effects. Organic is something that a living thing grows but I don't know if having learned that in your universe stars are alive I can now manifest stellar plasma."

"What I was wondering was if you could make this," Lucy says, and her hand turns diamond-clear and starts glowing. 

(That stubbed toe Xander had? Super gone.)

"Gosh. Uh. I think I want to wait to experiment with that because I do not know its point cost and cannot look it up. 'Point cost' meaning - you can assign a number to any body modification and add them all up and if you go over a certain number, cryptid. So I'm willing to try that because it doesn't look like it would be very expensive to grow a little bit of it but I want to go down to one wing beforehand to be extra safe even though I'm well under threshold."

"You always get your coverts wrong. Even with the other wing right there to compare! Every time!"

"Then I guess I need practice, don't I."

"That's fair," Lucy agrees, and then puts the glowy diamondness away as the vehicle pulls up. 

"Hi, please tell me you speak English," she says. 

The man in the...hover-wagon? blinks at her. "Why would I not speak English?" Then he looks at Isabella and does a double-take. 

"We have been having the weirdest day," she sighs. "Can we have a ride to town. We can pay you." 

"Ah...alright," he says, still sort of gaping at Isabella. 

She folds her wings smaller and gets into the hover-wagon with the others. "In pearls," she clarifies.

"Alright," the man says, bemused but not displeased. "Ah...if you don't mind my asking..."

"Yes?" she says blandly, not looking at him, starscaping to see about making a few pearls in the back of her hand and aaahthatfeelsweird but she reaches up her sleeve as though scratching an itch and digs them out and it's over. She pockets the pearls to hand over later.

"Erm, those look awfully real. Where did you find them?"

"They're homemade."

"Oh. You're very good at it." 

"Good craftsmanship is a skill everyone should cultivate!" Lucy interjects brightly. "I made this dress, isn't it lovely?" 

"Oh! Well, it certainly is, I don't think I've ever seen a dress that fancy." 

"The secret is three parts skill, one part love, and one part spite," she says merrily, then shoots Bella an are you okay sort of glance. 

Bella offers her a note which reads I don't really know how to explain being a magical girl and don't know how he'd react. Some people don't like magical girls much and this guy doesn't even know what we are. She has to hold onto the note but she can hold it for Lucy to read.

Lucy reads it and nods, then continues engaging the man in light conversation largely about her dress so he doesn't have time to inquire further before they reach the town. 

"Thank you so much!" she says and hops down once they arrive. 

"Yeah, we really appreciate it!" says Xander, helping Isabella down.

Isabella takes a pearl out of her pocket and offers it to the driver.

The driver accepts it and continues on his way. 

The town is an odd combination of Western and Chinese architecture that does nothing to diminish the almost palpable air of "agriculture-focused small town" 

Lots of people give the three of them weird looks, between Isabella's wings and absurd beauty and Lucy's ridiculously fancy dress. 

Let's give Isabella's fancy dress its share of the credit here! She tries not to move her wings too much and sticks close to Xander and Lucy, looking for any promisingly-labeled buildings. She will settle for a general store but a library or a transit hub of some kind would be better.

If there's any kind of library or transit hub, it's not immediately obvious. 

Lucy spots a general store before any of them spot anything else and makes a beeline for it, only going slow enough that Xander and Isabella won't have any difficulty keeping up. 

"Excuse me," she says to the young man behind the counter, "my friends and I are extremely lost. Could you tell us where we are, and how we might get somewhere" more civilized less backwards where someone can explain things "else?"

The man behind the counter blinks. 

"Really really lost," she elaborates helpfully. 

"Uh, you're in the township of Willowgrove on Beaumont," he says.

"Beaumont is the planet?" 

"...Yes," he says slowly. 

"Can I sell you some pearls for some more normal currency?" asks Isabella.

"Pearls? Uh, sure, but we don't normally get those around here--I don't know what price you could usually get but I don't know that I'll be able to match it."

"Yeah, I understand, I won't unload all of them, but they're not as liquid as I'd like."

"Fair enough. Credits or plat?"

"Half and half," she says more confidently than she feels, handing over two pearls.

He counts out a handful of bills and then a stack of shiny white coins. 

"Thank you!" She pockets these.

"Is there anything else?" 

"Do you know how we could make our way to somewhere more, uh, a city?" Lucy inquires. 

"The nearest city is New Huntsville, ma'am, but are you sure you want to go there? Cities are..." he wrinkles his nose. 

"Cities are what?" 

"The air is terrible, ma'am." 

"Oh." She glances at Isabella and Xander, who presumably actually need to breathe air. 

"What makes the air so terrible?"

"Oh, the factories all spew horrible garbage into the air," he says, waving a hand. 

"All the cities on Beaumont are industrial?"

"Well," he says, cocking his head, "Not New Dunsmuir, but that's way out on the ocean." 

"Do you have a map we could take a look at?"

"Of the planet? Probably, let me see..."

"Thank you."

He finds a large paper map and spreads it out over the counter. "Does this help?" 

"Can I hold it for a sec -"

She copies the map in a quick and dirty fashion onto the inside of her sleeve.

"- yeah that helps, thanks."

"What other maps do you have?" 

"Uhhh, map of the local property lines, map of the continent, map of the local microclimate surveys, map of the 'verse..." 

"The Verse?" 

"Yeah." 

"...Can I see that one?" 

"Sure, if you want." 

"..."

"How about that, thanks -" She copies this one too, other sleeve.

"That is a lot of stars," Lucy hisses under her breath so that Xander and Isabella can hear her and General Store Guy can't. 

"...five?" says Xander.

"I mean, you don't usually see stars orbiting other stars like planets! I think! Maybe it's different for stars that aren't people. I mean, I've heard of binary systems, but..."

"Yeah, I don't know, could be astroengineered that way but that implies a hell of a tech level this place isn't otherwise displaying much of."

"I have no idea what kind of tech level that implies honestly because none of the ways I imagine applying that word correspond to tech level per se, I don't really have a good grasp of how non-people stars would work."

"We're not even close to starting to think that groundwork on the problem might be tractable, in 2006," says Isabella. "But maybe this is just a third universe with weird star systems?"

"Who knows! --I keep wanting to go aww little baby at the protostars but they're probably actually inanimate, this is very weird, imagine walking through the forest and finding a random rock that looks startlingly like a sleeping human infant." 

"Do you actually see stars much? Since you live underground?"

"Admittedly the only star I have ever talked to in person is my grandfather but apparently the instincts are still there." 

"Anyway, I copied all the maps and we have cash now, let's step out and figure out, like, where we're sleeping tonight."

Nod. 

"This would be a great time to be somewhat older," she sighs, outside the shop. "I inherited some structures from my Messenger grandmother that--well, let them impersonate a building pretty well, there are actually people who live inside their shell and don't know that they're not just a weird piece of architecture. But mine aren't big enough for a human over the age of about five to be able to even fit in comfortably. Anyway. Do you want to try to find somewhere around here to sleep or try to see if we can make it to a city tonight." 

"I can probably figure out a tent as long as I don't try to exit it. It might be cramped since this would be an extension of my ability to make clothes, but if we can't find a hotel of any kind we could rough it. I don't like the idea of inhaling factory fumes so noxious that they were the first thing that guy thought of when he heard the word 'city', we'll get five kinds of cancer - like, you have healing magic but it takes a while to show up, cancer, and who knows if you'll still be around us when we're in our forties."

"What's cancer?"

"It's a disease? Caused by cells dividing out of their appropriate proportion. Lots of things increase the risk of cancer including breathing pollutants."

"Huh. Probably it's something we don't have much of in the Neath on account of the ambient Mountain-Light. Even as far away from my father as London is we still get pretty neat watered-down effects even when I'm not directly shining on someone. Anyway, I didn't know smog could do that, let's file it away under horrible things about the world. Do you want to try to get to a different planet or just hunker down here until I can figure out how to get somewhere with magic or what?"

"Maybe we should try to get to, uh, New Dunsmuir, and see if they have libraries or anything?"

"I don't wanna get five kinds of cancer but it's also possible the guy was just, y'know, making cracks about New Jersey."

"I guess? That wasn't my read on it but maybe."

"Maybe we should see if we can find anything else out about New Dunsmuir first, like, I do not prefer to assume that the absence of a specific hazard means an absence of hazardousness."

"I mean, we don't have a lot of guaranteed safe options. What I'd really like is to get on their Internet, assuming that if they have interplanetary travel they've got to have one, but this is a very small town without an obvious internet café. - the internet is a way to store many libraries' worth of information in such a way that it can be read anywhere by anybody with a suitable device."

"2006 delights and intrigues me. I'm not sure to what extent we want to trade off between information gathering and keeping a low profile--I'm sure there are lots of questions it would be really useful to have the answers to that we'd look insane for needing to ask. Whether they have one of those or how to access it seems like one of those." 

"Keeping a low profile is hard. I can get subtler than the wings, if I have to, but I can't get all the way to passing for unmodified human, and I have to be pretty to do magic. People are taking it pretty levelly so far but I think they're assuming the wings are fake."

"I'm pretty sure they're assuming the wings are fake. Fake wings don't especially look more out of place once you already have, uh, us," she gestures between the two of them, "no offense Xander but I'm pretty sure you're the most plausible person here."

"None taken."

"So I think sooner or later someone's likely to be really curious about us, and I don't think asking about the internet makes that a whole lot more likely."

"Okay," she agrees, and steps to the side and taps a passerby on the shoulder. "Excuse me, is there an Internet?" 

"--A what?" 

"Um, a--remotely accessible library?" 

"...Do you mean the Cortex?" the passerby asks, bewildered and suspicious. 

"Let us suppose I mean the Cortex." 

"Yeah, you'll have to go to New Huntsville for that, we don't have a connection here or anything." 

"Thanks!" 

"Can you point us to New Huntsville?" Isabella asks apologetically. "We're a bit turned around."

"Oh, sure, it's down that road," the passerby says, pointing in the direction they came, "we ship produce there every week, the next delivery's in three days." 

"Oh, cool, does the shipment take passengers sometimes?"

"Yeah, if you can pay." 

"How much?"

"Two credits per." 

"Where's it pick people up?"

"Oh, it doesn't exactly, usually there's nobody who wants to go, but I can introduce you to Seymour who drives the floater and he'll tell you where and when to be." 

"Cool, thanks!"

She beckons for the three of them to follow her as she makes her way towards Seymour's place, pointing out a few local landmarks along the way. There isn't a library as such, but there is a schoolhouse and a church, both of which can be presumed to contain books. 

(Lucy facepalms discreetly when the church is pointed out.)

"Hm?" Isabella asks in an undertone.

"I cannot believe these people have Jesus and not Judgments. Judgments actually exist."

"Did you try to resurrect the Shroud of Turin?"

"Well, no--I mean, I'm not saying that there didn't exist a person named Jesus who ran around telling people to be nice to each other and got executed by Romans, but every single factual claim the church makes about the nature of reality that's checkable is false and I think probably if there was an omnibenevolent creator being then the single most powerful form of life would probably be less obnoxious on the population level."

"We don't know what kind of Christianity this is. Or for that matter whether any form of Christianity might be true in this universe. We do however know that the star overhead is not a person, so it is not, evidently, locally the case that Judgments exist."

"Yeah. I'm--irrationally annoyed because normally I know that I'm right and they're wrong and the possibility that here it's reversed makes me feel--like it's unfair because all my beliefs about how the universe works are because of evidence." She shakes her head slightly. "It's unproductive, I'll get over it." 

"Fair enough." She follows their local guide, vaguely wondering if Seymour will be the guy who gave them the lift in the first place.

Seymour is not that guy! Seymour is a different guy, with a much bigger vehicle. 

"I leave pretty early in the morning. Is that all right with y'all?"

"It should be fine." Do these people even have 24-hour days???

"But if we oversleep we'd appreciate a reminder - speaking of, can you recommend a place to stay -"

"Josie has rooms over the bar she rents out, when there are strangers in town or somebody's wife kicked him out." 

"That'll probably do, where's Josie's bar?"

"Back down the street three blocks, turn left, go another five blocks, turn right, two blocks." 

"Thanks!" She writes that down with just a brief unfocused look.

"I'll meet you in front of Josie's at sunrise, howabout, and Josie will wake you if you pay her a little extra." 

"I think that works, thank you."

"Not a problem, ma'am," he says, tipping his hat. 

Okay so they can try to navigate the process of getting a room at Josie's - "or two or three depending on the price I guess."

Josie, it transpires, only has two rooms available right now, on account of how being the closest thing the town has to a hotel isn't nearly steady enough to make keeping many worthwhile and old Pete is on the outs with his wife again. 

"Two is fine, thank you!" She hands over whichever kind of currency Josie wants.

She takes plat and hands over the keys to the rooms. "Meals not included," she warns, "you pay for those separately." 

"Understood."

"I assume it's you two in one room, me in the other?" 

"We could do me alone! She talks in her sleep and I've somehow survived this long but God, at what cost."

Giggle. "Is that such a hardship? My brother snores and it never bothered me much." 

"I'm a light sleeper. If she falls asleep first, or has a dream, I'm in trouble. I take naps about it but I was looking forward to college."

"Aha. Uh, he's my half brother, strictly speaking. On the human side. Seems like it might be relevant later or something."

"We're twins. I'm the older twin."

"He's a couple years older. And very protective. Which is a little silly, considering that I'm an immortal starchild and he is not, but big brothers are like that." 

They reach the top of the stairs to the second level where the rooms are. 

"Do I get my own -"

"I don't mind if Lucy doesn't."

"I don't mind but, uh, I am a highly tactile person and have been told I snuggle in my sleep. If that bothers you." 

"That would only matter if -"

She opens the door to their room. There is one bed.

"- if, uh, I couldn't manifest a sleeping bag around myself on the floor, but, I can do that."

"Oh, uh, I can take the floor, it's fine, I am or at least can be literally made of diamond, most things are more comfortable when you're harder than they are." 

"If you're sure?"

"Give me the blankets and do the sleeping bag thing on the bed? But it's fine, I spent a lot of nights outside as a giant crab with no bedding at all before I learned to shapeshift." 

"Okay." Isabella gives over the blankets and flops down and bags herself in a puffy red and blue sleeping bag.

Lucy turns transparent and rolls herself up in the blankets like a crab roll that would definitely break a tooth. Apparently the glowing is optional even like this, which is convenient. 

"I'm glad I met you, even factoring in that it involved me falling down a well to a strange planet with a silent sun. I mean part of that is the opportunity to raise the dead of more worlds but not all of it, I like you." 

"I like you too," says Isabella. "This has been... interesting... but you've been really good to have along."

"I try. Good night." 

"Night."

Isabella does, if Lucy takes more than fifteen minutes to fall asleep, turn out to say a lot of words.

That's kind of adorable, actually. 

Lucy wakes early and watches the dim sunrise. 

Isabella sleeps a bit later, then stretches and sits up and disappears her sleeping bag. Her hair fixes itself by magic in a blink.

"Good morning! I was thinking of going to the school or the church to investigate local books today."

"Sounds like a plan if we have to wait around here anyway!"

"Taking local transit is probably a better idea than going by Crab Rail, even if the latter could leave today. Information gathering is never a waste of time anyway." 

"What, never?"

"Well, diminishing returns and emergencies aside."

"Misleading information, confirming things you already know, burning resources better spent on exploit rather than explore..."

"At that point I'm not sure it's time that's being wasted."

"Time's a resource! ...this is a silly argument though. I agree that we should look at books in town."

"I may have overgeneralized," she admits, giggling. "Let's see if Xander is awake and get breakfast, I don't want to get too separated." 

"Yeah." She knocks lightly on Xander's door.

"Mmmrgh go 'way."

"We can bring him something," Isabella suggests.

"Okay." 

Breakfast appears to be porridge. Lucy collects three bowls as Isabella pays. 

"I keep trying to come up with contingent plans and then realizing that I probably don't even have the hypothesis space to usefully do so," she sighs, setting their bowls down and Xander's aside. "I wouldn't have guessed about the Internet." 

"What kind of contingent plans?"

"If power is centralized in one group, how to approach them if they look approachable and how to veer around them if they don't, if it's not, how to weigh different factions against each other; how to react to possible laws and power structures." 

"Huh. Is that sort of maneuvering usually necessary in your London? Sounds like, uh, spy novel stuff to me."

"In London I do what I want and demand what I need and give people what they want for what I demand and heal everyone I can. But in London, everyone knows I'm powerful and generous, but very few know exactly how powerful; few who care what happen to them would piss me off on purpose. Here, I have no reputational protection and I can't be sure I'm one of the strongest things around."

"Okay, less spy novel more, uh... one of those modern fantasy urban fairy tale things. I mostly expect that staying in civilized areas and not doing anything blatantly stupid will keep us clear of... the need to be known to be strong? I don't know what things are blatantly stupid around here, because those things can vary, and it could be that dressing up and having wings could be in that category. - oh, also, the amount of fame you need for strangers to know who you are goes up in a larger population and there are multiple inhabited planets here, everybody's celebrity slots are probably full of hundreds of famous people from all over the system map."

"Well, that's fair, but--I mean, what you can do, lots of people can do it where you're from, right? It might be more dangerous to be the only one who can make stuff like that, if someone can kidnap you and coerce you..."

"If someone can kidnap me and coerce me then at any time I can turn into, like, a dragon or something, and then I'm not there, I'm a cryptid. Of course, people here won't know that, and if they catch Xander it's a different story. But so far this reads to me as a reasonably civilized little village."

"Well, yes, here, I'm more worried about in the city." 

"I guess we'll see what it's like. I don't have any reason to think my genre expectations are a much better guide than yours so if you think anything I'm considering is really dumb I'll listen."

"Likewise. Um--do you have any expectations about what going forwards is going to look like, in broad strokes?"

"Uh, sort of depends on what we're trying to do? Like, you and I have unique magical powers, if we want to sign on with some sort of large institution about it we probably can, and I'd lean that way if I see an institution I like the look of."

"I wasn't thinking of signing on, but--if cities, where lots of people live, aren't safe to live because the air makes people sick, then that means something needs fixing, and probably lots of things need fixing, so in order to fix more than just whoever I can personally shine my light on I need to know what the levers of power are to pull on them." 

"I say 'signing on' sort of loosely to refer to, like, letting someone else handle annoying logistics in exchange for letting them capture some of my value, not, like, swearing eternal fealty, to be clear."

"That's fair. It may be that's necessary, I don't know. It never came up in London; there were people who knew to bring things to my attention and people I trusted not to do anything awful if I paid them to handle something for me, but I never had to affiliate with any one faction unless you count the Bazaar itself. Which--is complicated. Anyway, I was mostly trying to--imagine levers, and think about how I might handle them." 

"Levers like?"

"Important people who have dead loved ones."

"Oh, that makes sense. How hard is it for you to do your magic, anyway?"

"Not very. If the corpse is very damaged, I might need to use a word of Correspondence, but just to glow is no more effort than opening or closing your eyes." 

"But you do need the corpse?"

"The soul works too, but I need something of the person." 

"...how do you normally handle souls?"

"Either I temporarily kill myself to find them before they cross with the Boatman, or if their soul was taken pre-mortem and is in a vial I can use that. The latter doesn't work if they're still alive, though."

"The boatman. Wow. It's something of an abstract question whether people in my world even have souls."

"Not all people in my world do. Cats don't, or rattus faber. But humans do, and Rubberies, and Devils--although Devil and Rubbery souls are different in some way it hasn't been worth my while to deeply investigate so far. Souls--at least human souls--are--well--they're sort of..." she drums her fingers. "They're kind of--they let people persist after death, unmolested, but that's not what they're for. What they're for is being part of how Judgments reproduce. Every soul has the potential to ascend to a Judgment." 

"...cats are people? What's a rattus faber? Also by what... framework... are souls assigned a purpose?"

"Rattus faber are rats that are people. I don't know if all cats are people or just some of them, they won't say. Souls are assigned a purpose in the sense that they are created, in a process involving a Judgment, and then implanted in a population, after which their descendants will have them. I'm not saying people continuing to exist isn't more important than the creation of baby Judgments, I'm saying that souls are a thing which was done, on purpose, and baby Judgments are the purpose that they were on." 

"Okay, so we probably don't have them and people here probably don't either."

"Probably, yes. Which makes raising the dead here and in your world much higher priority." 

"How well do you scale? There are probably billions of people in the system. Live ones, with a commensurate number of dead."

"...I will scale better when I have my iterated improved light worked out." 

"And then, what, you co-opt the big star and be a star and shine on everybody?"

"No, I--keep in mind that I don't have it finalized yet, but--the idea, as it currently stands, is that the light shines on plants and the plants produce fruit that does immortality and resurrection, I know it's possible in theory because there are gardens that grow near my father and there's cider made from the apples therefrom that if you drink it, not only does it prevent aging but even if you've died in the past you can go out under Judgment-light on the Surface without going back to being dead."

"Oh, I like that idea! Can you make the trait of the plants breed true the same way having a soul does?"

"--You know, I hadn't thought of that but probably yes!" 

"Happy to help!"

"You are so helpful! At some point we should sit down and go over my long-term goals in general and see if there's anything I've overlooked that's obvious to you in other areas, probably after getting our hands on paper though, actually maybe we should do that before going to investigate books so we can take notes."

"I did try growing papyrus bark one time but it's not comfy. I have a real notebook though."

"That is good and probably solves the immediate issue but it would be a little silly not to at any point check the general store for more notebooks probably." 

"Yeah, good idea." She knocks on Xander's door again. This time he wakes up and accepts porridge.

"We have agreed to investigate the local book situation, unless you can think of anything more urgent," Lucy tells Xander.

"I mean, we could see if they have any really nice duck decoys for sale, but I guess we can do books." Om nom. "So, was there only one bed in your room too?"

"Lucy graciously slept on the floor."

"Aha."

"I can turn into literally diamond and most things are more comfortable when you're harder than they are." 

"That so? Wow." He slurps porridge. "Wow, this isn't great."

"It isn't terrible either," she shrugs. 

"Yeah, I dunno, I was hoping for futuristic x-treme flavor blasts or something. This is like something you'd get at a no name diner off a state highway in Nebraska."

"You've never been to Nebraska."

"Well, maybe I'd go if somebody advertised their amazing oatmeal, but nobody does, because it's like this, probably."

"What's Nebraska?"

"It's a state. We're from a country called the United States of America and it has fifty states in it."

"Oh, I knew that country existed but I didn't know many of the names of the states. There's...New York? Virginia, I think?"

"Yes, those are two of them."

"We live in Washington. The state not the city."

"There's a city and also a state?"

"Yup. Washington D.C. the city is the capital of the whole country and Washington state is a state. In the Pacific Northwest. People like naming stuff after George Washington."

"Huh. --Not entirely salient right now I admit." 

"My C plus in Geography may never be useful again."

"Yeah, it's plausible we won't get home."

"I will definitely figure it out eventually."

"How long is eventually?"

"...I don't know, but like, separately, I don't plan to let you die of old age? And even if we got separated long enough that you did I'd bring you back." 

"Oh. Okay. Xander, if you die try to leave a corpse."

"Noted."

"My light may not scale well enough to cover billions of people yet, but I can certainly get the people I personally like." 

"I appreciate the endorsement."

?

"- school first or church first?"

"Uh, check the school first, if they're in session go to the church and try again later?"

"Sounds good." Off they go.

School is, thankfully, not in session. Lucy picks up a social studies textbook and starts skimming it. 

Isabella goes for science.

Xander grabs a little kids' book on All The Busy People Of Beaumont with cute cartoon animals.

Science is definitely more advanced here than in Isabella's 2006, but since this is a textbook for children who are likely to grow up to be farmers, it doesn't have that much more actual scientific detail than a 2006 high school textbook. The atom looks different; the structure of the cell is more detailed. 

"Whoakay, there's a reason they speak English here," Lucy says from her textbook. 

"Did they colonize this system from an Earth?"

"Yes. They call it Earth-that-Was and apparently it was evacuated. Whatever humanity fled to come here, they don't talk like they think it left any survivors there." 

"My guess would normally be "extra large kaiju" but they don't seem to have magical girls. I guess maybe magical girls would stop activating off of Earth even though I still work fine here? But this is probably overapplying my world's heuristics."

"Probably, but we can look it up when we get Cortex access. Apparently the evacuation was mostly headed by the States and China and it's only a coincidence that we haven't heard any Chinese yet..."

"I don't speak a word of Chinese. Any dialect of it."

"Neither do I. At least we speak the same language as each other and the other locally dominant language, but I do believe I'll put in the effort to pick some up." 

"I hear it's a difficult language but it may be worthwhile here, yeah."

"I'm good at languages. I don't know if it's a me thing or a Judgment thing or a Messenger thing, but I picked up Latin and Rubbery remarkably quickly. And the Correspondence uses ideograms too, and that's innate; I have vague memories of my mother teaching me to read and write English when I was very small and I had a hard time grasping the concept of a phonetic alphabet." 

"Then you can be our translator, I guess, if we need to go some Chinese-speaking area."

She salutes in agreement. "Yes ma'am. Translating for people is fine, it was never worth my time to actually focus on it but translating for Rubberies ever came up, their vocal apparatus can't entirely handle English and they're too low-status for many Londoners to bother learning their language." 

"Can human vocal apparatus handle it?"

"Not, like, perfectly? But intelligibly. And of course my vocal apparatus is not strictly human." 

"Of course."

"--Can you do things to your larynx? It wouldn't be visible but what sounds you can make is an aesthetic too." 

"I can but I won't be any good at it without references, especially since it's not visible."

Nod. "I don't think Rubbery language is important enough to put effort into experimenting with right now, even if it is beautiful to my ear...and the Correspondence isn't simply a matter of the larynx. Not important right now, probably." She flips to another chapter, frowning at her book. 

"They've got spaceships," reports Xander. "I'm seeing the Chinese thing in this book in places but the main text is all English. The bunny rabbit city doctor has some very fancy looking stuff but the cat cop has a normal looking gun."

"I guess it's sort of hard to improve on 'tiny explosion propels a chunk of metal down a tube at speed' without getting into destructiveness you don't really want to hand out to random police officers." 

"I'd been hoping for fancy stun weapons."

"Can't you just hit someone over the head for that? I guess it's hard to do at range."

"Also that kills people and causes brain damage?"

"Oh. I might be miscalibrated about how much harm various amounts of violence do in the absence of ambient mountainlight." 

"I guess try not to injure anyone then? We have fiction where people get bonked over the head and wake up fine later but in real life it doesn't work like that reliably."

"Better for me to be miscalibrated than someone who enjoys hurting people, I suppose."