She appears to be in the middle of a flat grassland plain, stretching almost as far as the eye can see. In one direction, off in the distance, there's a sort of hump on the horizon, like a stubby melted spire. The grass is damp, some new growth is just coming in; there are still a few patches of receding snow nearby. 

There's a disturbance off in the opposite direction. Distant hoofbeats. 

Huh. Okay. All else being equal she will break into a jog spireward. If nothing else she can climb it for a better view.

The spire is a pretty long way off, apparently, and therefore must be very big; it's not getting appreciably closer. 

The hoofbeats are drawing nearer. 

She glances hoovesward occasionally in case she can see what's up with that yet but continues heading for the spire.

It's now apparent that the hoofbeats belong to horses, with riders on their backs; they're in a knot of around a dozen, and are definitely headed for her location. It's still hard to see much else in the way of detail. 

Oh, if they're coming to her she'll stop and wait politely to meet them, then! She waves with her whole right arm.

They're very fast horses. They draw near enough that she can make out a little more detail - colourful clothing, dark hair in braids flying in the wind–

–and then one of them is brandishing a bow, and seconds later an arrow whizzes past her, two yards to her left. Someone shouts something, in a language she doesn't understand, and suddenly more of them have bows out. 

Um.

"I DID NOT MEAN TO INTERFERE WITH YOUR SETPIECE, I'M SORRY," she hollers. But she is really not sure right at this moment that it's a setpiece.

She would like to run away but she will be less able to dodge the arrows if she can't see them aimed and see them flying.

When they do not seem to find her shouting mollifying she takes a deep breath, draws a sword, and runs toward them, not quite at sprinting horse speed but much faster than a human should be able to manage.

They seem very briefly confused and then they fan out and keep galloping toward her. 

It seems like the first arrow was deliberately aimed to miss her, because the second one flies dead-on toward her centre of mass. 

That's what the sword is for. She swats the bolt out of the air. "I'D REALLY RATHER NOT DO THIS RIGHT NOW! TURN ON YOUR SPIRIT GUIDES SO WE CAN TALK PLEASE!"

There are some returned shouts, still in the language she doesn't understand, and no spirit guides are apparent. The half a dozen riders in the middle are slowing while the others on both sides gallop around to circle her.

They're close enough now for facial expressions to be visible; the people look very angry. It's a mix of about three-quarters men and a quarter women, all young and fit-looking, most armed with bows; several also have swords. 

One of them, maybe the leader, shouts some more incomprehensible things in a demanding voice. 

"I CAN'T UNDERSTAND THAT," she yells in three consecutive languages.

She's going to assume they can't either and her next idea is... charge the nearest rider, flip directly over his horse's head, kick him in the shoulder to knock him from the saddle, land on the horse herself, and try to wheel the horse the fuck out of there.

They are not expecting that at ALL and the rider does not successfully react in time to do anything about being kicked out of his own saddle. 

The others react fast enough after that, though, taking chase after her. They're spread out enough that some are ahead of her no matter which direction she runs, and gallop to try to cut her off; they're all extremely good riders, and on good terms with their horses. Her horse, on the other hand, seemed confused and offended by this turn of events and tries to buck her off. 

She is not bucked off but she is not a horse-whisperer. She apologizes mentally to the horse while trying to kick it into a run.

The horse is not really having this. Instead it's trying to yank its head around and go check on its fallen rider. Who seems to be fine and is scrambling up.

The other riders have cooperative horses and have now circled up tightly around her. They look even more upset. 

Fucking fine then. She will hop off the horse and brandish her sword some more and holler.

Four or five arrows are fired at once from different directions, all with very good aim. 

Swat swat dodge swat and she's going to start cutting bowstrings, sword flashing very close to people's faces in a few cases but never grazing skin.

Someone vaults down from their horse in order to engage her directly with their sword. They're pretty fast, but human-level fast. 

Then soon she will have TWO swords! She is not appreciably hampered by dual-wielding.

These people are now going from 'angry' to 'alarmed and concerned' and backing off a bit. Arrows have stopped flying. They've still got her surrounded though. 

She will try all three of her languages again and then start cycling through more, a bit more haltingly.

There are awkward stares of incomprehension. None of the people seem to have any idea what to do about her. 

She will attempt to gesture a couple of them apart to let her pass.

They do not seem very keen to do this! 

And then there's a voice in her head. It's not exactly speaking a language she understands, but it sort of brings the concepts along anyway. 

:Can everyone please consider calming down for five minutes while we catch up: 

:????? I would love for everyone to calm down! These people started shooting at me out of nowhere!:

A slightly nonplussed pause. :How did you get this far onto the Plains without being stopped sooner? The Shin'a'in attack any outsiders - well, ones who show up uninvited: 

:I don't know how I got here and till you told me didn't know where here was:

Puzzled silence. 

:Well, stay put, we'll be there any minute: 

There are more hoofbeats in the distance, coming nearer. Slightly different-sounding ones. 

The people surrounding her seem a bit calmer, though still uneasy. 

Tarinda is still looking and listening very carefully in case anybody tries anything.

They do not. 

And then some new strangers arrive. Both on horseback; their horses are snow-white, with blue eyes - oddly humanlike eyes, in fact, more forward-facing than usual for horses, their skulls are larger too. The riders, a very young woman and a man who looks to be in his early thirties except for his entirely silver hair, are both dressed in white as well.

:So: the voice in her head says again, not unkindly. :You're not sure how you got here? Well, where are you from?: 

:Mars. I'm increasingly confident you won't have heard of it, I don't think the language they were speaking is even related to any spoken there:

:I haven't heard of it, no. Is that a country?:

...It's slowly becoming apparent, based on which of the new arrivals is making eye contact with her, that the mental voice is coming from one of the horses. The mare that the silver-haired man is riding, more specifically. 

:It's a planet. Can you get them to let me out of their circle? - are you a horse person? Are their horses also people?:

Mental chuckle. :I'm a person. So is Rolan: She gestures with her muzzle at the taller stallion that the girl is riding. :Shin'a'in horses are unusually smart, for horses, but they're not people. I'm Yfandes, by the way: 

:Tarinda. Any joy on me getting out of here without having to kick more people?:

:Give Rolan a minute to talk them down. It'll be fine. They're just, er, worked up, because of the part where a stranger somehow got a hundred miles onto the Plains without their seeing it, and also the part where you're apparently terrifyingly good at fighting?: 

The girl is giving her an impressed look. 

:I don't usually fight people who are actually trying to kill me and could not have guaranteed in advance that it would be the same skillset as fighting for show but apparently it's close enough:

:I don't think Van or Dara will be able to talk to you as easily if we don't share a language, but I can relay: Yfandes says. :Dara wants to know what sort of training you had. Er, that's not an urgent question, it can wait until we've gotten you out of the circle of glaring Shin'a'in warriors: 

The glaring is lessening, though. There's still palpable tension but they're slowly relaxing. 

Finally, the man who seems to be the leader barks something, gesturing, and the various riders peel off, opening up the circle. 

:I can pick up the language if they talk enough: She steps out of the circle cautiously towards the white horse people, still carrying her sword. She drops the one she took off the rider.

No one makes a move to retrieve it yet, but they let her go. Watching carefully. 

:Do you, er, have any idea how to get home?: Yfandes asks her. :I'm guessing not. If you somehow got here from another planet. Did you...fall out of the sky...?:

:I did fall out of the sky but I wasn't in the sky above a planet like this, so I think whatever got me here is related to the problem I had with my spaceship:

:Spaceship? ...Never mind, we can ask all the questions in order. Want to camp with us tonight?: 

:Unless there's civilization I can get to without being shot at within like fifty miles. If there's that I wanna think about it:

:Not really, no. We're about a hundred miles from Kata'shin'a'in and the border with Jkatha, which is the nearest civilization that won't be very alarmed by a stranger wandering around. The four of us have permission to be here, though, and we're headed that way anyway, so you'd be welcome to travel with us: 

:Okay, thanks, I appreciate that:

:Er, want to take turns riding double with one of the Heralds? Companions are pretty fast, we'll have to slow down a lot for you to keep up on foot: 

:Yeah, that sounds fine. Which one?:

:Why don't you ride with Dara on Rolan first? Then we can switch when we stop for lunch: 

:Okay:

She hops up onto the less talkative horseperson.

Rolan's rider smiles and waves and says something which is presumably a greeting.

:Welcome to Velgarth, I suppose: the girl's stallion says, in Tarinda's head. 

:Thanks. I can learn the language. Uh, I'm sort of good at that in sort of the same way I'm good at fighting actually but I do have to hear words and sentences and it'll be fastest if you translate for me:

The two Heralds can talk out loud while their respective Companions relay in Mindspeech, then. 

"Do you have questions?" Dara says. 

:What's the planet called. Uh, and does anyone do precision manufacture:

"Oh, sorry, the whole world is called Velgarth, when that would even come up which isn't often. We're in the Dhorisha Plains right now, next to Jkatha. Vanyel and I are from Valdemar, which is - a couple of kingdoms north of here, Rethwellan's in the middle. Er, I don't know what that thing is." She squints. The direct-concepts-transmission part of Mindspeech is a bit lossy when a language doesn't even have a word for something. "Making things that are very small? Very well-made?" 

:Both:

"There are craftspeople who specialize in jewelry?" 

"Why do you ask?" the man says, curiously. 

:Jewelry's not the right thing. I need to make something we have where I'm from that I don't think you have here:

"Huh, what? Oh, is it a way to get back to your world?" 

:Well, I hope so! Among other things:

"I have to admit, I'm now very curious." 

:When you're good enough at making small things very precisely you can build machines that think, and I know how to make a really smart one, smarter than the one I have in me right now that's working on the language:

She's been whispering almost inaudibly to herself whenever she gets a translation of what's said from the Companions.

"Oh, that's really neat, you built something that learns languages?" 

"You can what?" Vanyel says over her. 

:I'm kind of full of machines! Some of it is biology but it's like, artificial biology. - I also have natural biology but the added stuff is a mix of machines and biology. But anyway some of the added stuff is the kind that can think and it's going to learn the language and guess what I might want to say so I can say it, once you've given it enough words. But I don't have enough of the machinery to hold the really complicated really smart one, and I think you don't have one here, and you should:

"I - um..." Vanyel is blinking rapidly. "What does the really smart one do? I, er, I feel like building a very smart thinking machine might have a lot of implications and maybe you should ask people first." 

:I'm not going to build a random one! I have the code for the right kind written by the one we have back home stored in Page - that's what I named my one. Obviously you don't want a random one! We had a close call with that!:

"What do you mean by 'right' one? Who - built the first one, that you're wanting to copy here? What did they build it to do?" 

Dara still looks politely curious and a bit baffled by Vanyel's reaction. 

:Uh, someone kind of idiotically made it really easy to make new ones and there were a lot, hundreds got made before one managed to shut that down, and then they all had a weird fight and some of them merged into each other and most of them died and the one left at the end was a good one and everything's great. I have the code for it and it'll make everything good:

Vanyel does not exactly look less alarmed. "I, um, maybe want to hear a lot more about that before I would be non-terrified about this plan. Was it just by luck that the one left at the end was good? Can you define 'good' a bit more - what does it actually do in the world?" 

:It wasn't totally luck, there was a guy who was purposefully seeding the field with as many variants on not-a-disaster as he possibly could and he happened to be in space at the time so he got a bunch of them out before any of the ones who didn't like that could interfere. The one who almost won would have been different but probably also okay. But it was an uncomfortable amount luck. Uh, it does post-scarcity, and coincidence management so you never run into people who are going to be bad to run into, and it does researchy stuff, and it maintains ecologies, and it writes software like Page - I usually turn Page off actually but I turned it on here because this is not really a situation where I want less help -:

Nod. 

"I...appreciate you wanting to build that here. It sounds like it would be really good if it worked. I'm - going to have a lot of questions and need a lot more unpacking of all that before I would feel comfortable helping with it, though. It sounds like a very, very big deal. And like maybe it was really good in your world but - I don't know if ours is different enough that it wouldn't be good anymore..." Shrug. "Though I imagine it'd take a while to get the resources you need anyway." 

He looks like he wants to say more but is being very indecisive about it and holding back. 

:Also it makes everyone immortal. I think that's kind of urgent:

Vanyel freezes. Yfandes stops in midstride as well. "What." 

:We're all immortal. - uh, I don't actually know if that's understood to be good here, there was philosophical disagreement historically, it does let people go into stasis if they want or if they want pending certain conditions, I got my girlfriend out of stasis by kinda going on a quest to fulfill all her conditions -:

"I - no - I mean, I think it's good. Just. Kind of - a lot. I think I need a while to absorb how weird this is and then I'll have more questions." 

"I could tell you things about this world?" Dara offers helpfully, when Vanyel stays silent another ten seconds. 

:That would be great!:

It's a big enough topic that Dara isn't sure well to start. "Hmm. Vanyel and I are from Valdemar. It's a kingdom that was founded about eight hundred years ago. We're Heralds, which means that we were Chosen by our Companions," she pats Rolans neck, "and they have soulbonds with us. Heralds usually have Gifts. Does your world have Gifts? Um, like Mindspeech, that's how the Companions are talking to you. I have Mindspeech too but not strong enough to talk to people who don't also have it." 

:We don't have those! They sound cool:

"They are! Vanyel has a whole lot of them. I just have Mindspeech and Foresight, which means I sometimes have dreams about the future - er, there's different kinds, I have long-range, usually months or years in the future. Short range is more on the scale of minutes." 

:Is that how you ran into me, did you see me coming?:

"Not me, but Rolan and Yfandes have a weird sort of Foresight, all Companions do, so they had a - feeling, that something was going on, and Vanyel used Farsight to check it out. That's roughly what it sounds like, you can look at things from whatever perspective wherever you want, up to - I think Van's range is two hundred miles?" 

:Wow, that sounds neat. We've got machines that do that but not a speck of magic:

"Farsight is really useful! Vanyel is also a mage, which is - sort of the most general kind of Gift, you can do all sorts of things if you learn how. Lights, make barriers that keep your camp warm, Gates to travel long distances instantly, wards to sense attacks coming - lots and lots of fighting magic, Van's very good at setting things on fire–"

"What? You are." 

:Gosh. My main hobby is, uh, pretend fighting, most people from my world would not have landed with a sword, and we sometimes have special effects to mimic magic we just made up, but it's still all technological:

"Ooooh! So you do a lot of fighting practice?" Dara lights up. "Can we spar? Um, not now, I mean tonight when we camp. And you might have to go easy on me. Apparently you're ridiculously fast. I had a spirit warrior come spar with me every night for a while before we went to the Tower, but then we got trapped underground for months and I'm kind of out of practice." 

"We can spar!" says Tarinda, this time out loud. "And I can go easy." :I'm used to making it look like whoever the script says is better is better even if that's not true:

"Did you learn that much Valdemaran this quickly! Or, er, I guess your machine did. That's really impressive. What do you mean, script? We don't normally spar with a script." 

"It's quick!" :I usually spar with a script, but the fights themselves are improvised, the script usually just says who wins. Maybe specifies that at some point I have to wreck a chandelier or jump out a window or whatever:

"Huh, neat, that sounds different but sort of fun. Anyway, what else do you have questions about so far? I could finish going down the list of Vanyel's Gifts - he's the most powerful person in Valdemar, it's why he's a hero with songs about him." 

"Dara can you not." 

:I don't need the songs but knowing what all the Gifts are sounds like it might be important. Not his in particular, just in general:

"All right. We covered mage-gift, Mindspeech, Farsight, and Foresight. There's also Fetching, which is moving objects around with your mind - either instantly from one place to another, or just moving normally but without touching them. Healing lets you heal people. Vanyel technically has it but barely. Empathy is like Mindspeech but for emotions. Bardic is...sort of like the projective half of Empathy, but specifically using music? It sounds weird put that way but it's a thing, there's a whole Collegium for Bards in Haven. That's our capital city, sorry." 

:Wow, interesting. We have what's called 'smart music' where the machines invent it to suit a context but it's not magic, it's just really fun:

Vanyel glances over, intrigued. "That sounds fascinating." 

:When Page has more language it'll whip something up for you if you want and I can read it off, I can sightread well enough:

"I would like that." 

After a few beats, Dara goes on. "Trying to remember which Gifts I'm missing. Firestarting is - what it sounds like, it just starts fires. That's it for Gifts Vanyel has, it's most of them but there are a few more. Mindhealing fixes problems with people's minds, I don't know much about it. There's Animal Mindspeech that can talk to animals. Maybe a few more really rare ones?" 

:Wow, what do animals say?:

"I read a book on it once. Mindspeech is a bit of a misnomer because animals don't think in words. Animal Mindspeakers can read their thoughts - which depending on the animal can be mostly just senses and instincts, or closer to what we'd recognize as thoughts - and can tell them to do things, with practice. I don't know what the animals think is happening, whether they hear a voice in their head like we would or if it's something different. Anyway. Birds see more colours than us! An Animal Mindspeaker figured that out. And dogs can hear much higher-pitched sounds than humans can." 

"They can!"

“Did you figure that out with machines in your world?”

:With science but I don't think specifically so much machines:

"Ooh, what other things have you figured out with science in your world?" 

Vanyel is quiet, but keeps glancing at her, looking thoughtful and maybe a bit worried. 

:How to build all the machines, and what all the matter in the world is made of, and how light and sound and heat and stuff like that work, and where species come from, and why weather does stuff, all kindsa things:

"Oh! Why does weather work the way it does? I wonder if it's the same here. We can do magic on the weather - well, mages can - and it's affected by nodes and ley-lines and such even when no one's doing magic on it. I don't think we understand it perfectly because sometimes weather magic doesn't work or does a weird different thing you weren't expecting." 

:We don't have nodes or ley-lines so the explanation Page can feed me won't be accurate to here! I can read it off anyway if you want but I do not actually know that much science myself, I'd just be transmitting what it tells me:

"I'm still curious to hear it!" 

Then Tarinda can chatter about weather in between asking for more vocabulary for Page to chew. :Also it can see through my eyes if you have any books I can flip through:

"Some. We can stop a little early tonight and do that, if you like." 

It's into the afternoon now, and they've just arrived at a well. It's sitting in the middle of a sea of grass, with no particular structures around it, though the remains of campsites are visible. Vanyel suggests they stop, eat some lunch, and Tarinda can swap to riding with him on Yfandes. 

:I need to eat a lot on a timescale of like a week, because some of my added stuff runs on calories, but I can do with less for a few days if you're on short rations, I know you weren't expecting me. Oh, also, I have candy in my pocket:

"The rations we have are very boring but if you don't mind travel-bread and pease porridge we have lots!" Dara says brightly. "I think twice as much as we thought we'd need to get to Jkatha. It makes me nervous not having enough food with us." 

:I'm not picky, sometimes for a long time I'll eat historically accurate food because I'm trying to set an atmosphere for some piece I'm doing and it's that sort of thing:

Vanyel hands her a fairly generous portion of very dense hard bread, and some sort of meat jerky, and a little bit of dried apple. He refills his waterskin from the well and offers it to her. 

She chows down. "Thanks!"

Dara is quiet for a bit while they're focused on eating, then keeps asking questions. What does their science know about how trees work? She's always been really curious about trees and how they manage to grow so big.  

Tarinda can explain trees! She doesn't know if they have all the same kinds here but the general tree concept was evolved more than once on the planet her people are from, it's a good concept.

Trees are a good concept! 

After humans and Companions have both had some food and water (they're carrying grain for the Companions, since there isn't yet very much spring-growth grass for them to graze on, and they have a portable water trough that Dara fills from the well), they mount and keep going, this time with Tarinda up behind Vanyel.

Dara keeps asking questions. It doesn't seem like she's going to run out of questions anytime soon. She's onto geography now. Does Tarinda's world have lots of little kingdoms, like theirs, or one big empire, or something else? 

:There are lots of countries, kind of? Uh, some of the things that make countries important aren't things any more. They often can't collect taxes or go to war or enforce laws, or at least they can't do those things in any situations where the people they're doing it to aren't happy about it, because those people can always be like, 'hey Sing, actually I'm kind of done with this whole country thing, I don't want them to take my stuff or shove a weapon in my hands or put me in jail' and Sing will - not directly, it almost never directly talks to people, but it'll be like 'yeah then they can't do that'. So countries sort of exist but they exist a lot less. On Earth there's more country stuff because there were already people there during the Quiet War. On Mars we're a lot more self-conscious of them being kind of made up and it's all for fun and people wouldn't keep seriously doing country stuff if anything else came up. Like, I'm friends with a Martian Lord, and this just mostly means that he thinks it's tremendous fun to dress up in fancy clothes and pretend to be evil and bossy, and there's a chunk of Mars nobody else was using when he decided he wanted to do that, because when we're playing through a story we sometimes need an evil lord for a villain in the story so I can swordfight him. But like, then we have an afterparty and whoever he was dangling over his shark tank will be laughing, right, it's all for fun:

Dara is finding it mindbendingly hard to wrap her head around that! "That's so strange! Is...everything...like that? People playing pretend with things that used to be real but now they aren't anymore because of - I guess Sing is the very very smart machine who won against all the others?" 

:Yeah, that's Sing! It's kind of a pun in the language it's from, it has other names in other languages but I like to call it Sing. Not everything is pretend though, that's just kind of how my hobby shakes out. My job isn't pretend, when I'm working - and I mentioned my girlfriend? She was really depressed around the time of the Quiet War and one of the smart machines, they're called AIs, was letting people get frozen because a smart enough machine can get people back from frozen. And she wrote a little note to anybody in the future who might want to unfreeze her and she wanted a bunch of stuff to all be taken care of so she wouldn't have to deal with it. So I ran around and dealt with all of it for her and made the world one she'd want to be in and woke her up. That was real:

Vanyel, in front of her, tenses up slightly. She can't see his face, of course, but Dara notices the flash of longing followed by resignation-disappointment, and gives him a concerned look. Neither of them says anything. 

:Are you okay? I usually have Page help me make sure not to say anything insensitive when I'm working with people who lived before Sing but it needs more words:

"...Van, can I tell her? I think we should tell her." 

"I don't - think - even what Sing is could - fix it," Vanyel says dully. "But. Sure. If you want." 

Dara takes a deep breath. "Van had a lifebonded partner who died a long time ago. Probably your world doesn't have lifebonds? It's - sort of like how our Companions bond to us, but - even more - people usually don't survive if their lifebonded dies. He's still very sad about it. But probably even Sing can't bring someone back from the dead." 

:Not unless they're frozen. Not yet. There's a couple things it's still working on that we don't know if it'll ever crack. I'm sorry:

"No, it's all right," Vanyel says tonelessly. "You don't need to be sorry." 

:It's not okay for people to be dead! That's why I need to build a Sing here as soon as possible!:

Vanyel doesn’t answer. 

“How long did it take in your world for people to figure out how to make things precisely enough that you could make a Sing?”

:Uh. About five and a half thousand years after the first time a civilization invented writing? I'm not sure what benchmark to give you here:

“I assume it’d take you less time to show us how,” Vanyel says. His voice is still flat. “Since you have a smart machine that knows all the relevant facts. Assuming that things even work similarly enough here. It sounds pretty different if you don’t have Gifts and magic at all.”

(The existence of another world should...probably feel more surprising and significant than it does right now. Mostly he feels tired and confused.)

:Page still works, so I can probably build something that will hold Sing, but it could be complicated some way and will definitely take a long time if nobody is already doing precision manufacture:

Vanyel nods. He still seems deep in thought about something. 

Dara cheerfully keeps asking random questions about science - does their science know why there are different kinds of rocks? What do they know about animal species? Do they know things about the ocean? (Dara has heard of the ocean but it's quite a lot of kingdoms away and she expects never to see it in her lifetime.) 

Tarinda knows about rocks and animals and oceans, or Page does. She gradually speaks more in Valdemaran as she gets more vocabulary to feed Page. By dinnertime it has limited lyrics-writing capability and she can sing them smart music, tune shifting as she goes through its verses in response to what it can see of the audience through her eyes.

That's really neat! Also unsettling. Vanyel is still feeling extremely discombobulated, and it shows on his face. 

He and Dara keep glancing at each other, too, exchanging Mindspeech-y looks while they set up camp. Rather than light a fire for warmth (there isn't exactly a lot of firewood in the endless plain), Vanyel just sticks a heat-spell under their cooking pot so Dara can make pease porridge for supper, with more dried apples and jerky on the side for variety. 

"I need to think about something," Vanyel says finally, once he's handed Tarinda her bowl. "I'm going to walk around. Dara, you keep her company?" 

"'Course!" 

Page has more vocabulary requests to fill the time if Dara is willing to pause science lessons.

Dara is content to do vocabulary lessons instead! Once she's done eating she also starts setting up their tent. The sun is setting now. 

Tarinda offers her a peanut candy.

Oooh! Dara thinks it's delicious. They don't have anything that tastes like it here. 

Vanyel doesn't wander back until after dark. He still looks very distant, lost in thought. 

"Tarinda, there are some things I should probably explain," he says. "Some - important context that I happen to know, about this world. Relevant if you want to build Sing here." 

:However: Yfandes jumps in, nosing at her Chosen's hair, :it's late and we're all tired and it's probably not so urgent it can't wait for tomorrow? We're still at least a full day's ride from Jkatha anyway: 

"...okay? Do you want a peanut candy, Vanyel?"

"Um, sure." He takes one. "Oh! That's really good. Er, do you need us to lend you a blanket? I think I have an extra still." 

"I won't freeze but if you have a spare I'd appreciate it."

A spare blanket can be provided. It smells like horse. The air inside the tent is comfortably warm anyway, despite the dropping temperature outside. It’s going to be pretty cozy with all of them inside.

Tarinda sleeps like a rock.

This is pretty luck for her, because Vanyel is a very restless sleeper and occasionally whimpers or cries out in his sleep, though not very loud. 

Dara wakes up first and starts putting together breakfast. 

"Good morning! Do you want help?"

"Sure!" Dara is in the middle of trying to light a very smoky fire from a pile of dry or at least drier grass that she's gathered and a hunk of dry-ish peat. She's got a small flame going and is blowing on it. "Want to put some oats in the pot with water for once I have this going?" 

Tarinda can accomplish this.

By the time Vanyel crawls out of the tent, yawning, there is oat porridge and Dara has also boiled water in a kettle and is making two different concoctions, one from some herbs set aside in a travel-mug and another in the kettle itself with the remaining water; she measures in some dark granules from a bag.

Very soon, a smell that is definitely coffee is wafting over them. 

"Want some chava?" Dara says cheerfully. "Van, not you, you gotta have your herbs first. That's the rule. Do they have chava in your world, Tarinda?" 

"They have it but I don't need any, thanks!"

"I don't like it that much either but Vanyel does." Dara starts filling bowls. 

Vanyel downs his cup of mystery herb-tea, dumps out the soggy herbs at the bottom, and gives Dara a look; she serves him some chava. It's one of the styles of making it that leaves the grounds in. Vanyel lets the cup sit for a bit so they can settle and they gets to work on it. 

Halfway in, and with most of his breakfast gone, he finally seems awake enough to participate in a conversation. "All right. Think I owe you an explanation, but - it's going to be kind of complicated." 

"And weird. Van's life is really weird." 

"I'm listening. - okay, I'm reading, at this point, but I'm paying attention."

Vanyel blinks, confused for a moment, then shrugs, not important. "Er, sorry, just trying to figure out where to even start. I guess in chronological order, but sorry if it's really confusing." He twists his hands together around the chava mug. "I started having a Foresight dream almost seventeen years ago, about fighting a powerful mage named Leareth who was invading from the north." 

"Wow, yikes! Are those things reliable?"

"I mean, they can sometimes be averted - and they're known to be confusing to interpret, but this one seemed pretty clear. Um. It gets weirder. At some point I was trying to learn lucid dreaming, from a book about controlling Foresight Gifts better, and I - it turned into a lucid dream and I said something off-script and then it turned out he was there too. And then we could have actual conversations. I don't think anyone's ever heard of Foresight working that way before." 

"Gosh. Okay."

"And - he told me - that he's immortal and almost two thousand years old and invading Valdemar was part of this master plan he had to fix a lot of problems in the world." 

"Sounds, uh... Page doesn't know a word for it." :Megalomaniacal?:

"Overconfident? I don't think we quite have a word corresponding to the thing you mean, but Yfandes knows what you mean. Anyway, Yfandes and the Groveborn - Rolan is the current Groveborn but it was Taver, at that point, he died five years ago - anyway they both had a bad feeling about me telling anyone else. So I kept it a secret. For...fifteen years of conversations, I guess." 

"But you're telling me now and you met me yesterday."

Vanyel glances over at Rolan, who's watching with piercing blue eyes. "Oh, it's not secret now. It came out last year. Long story and mostly not relevant. Um, I should back up. We were talking, for years, and he kept recommending me books and teaching me things and - trying to persuade me of his whole way of thinking about the world, I guess. Which is really weird, but - I think some of it makes sense, in the context of him being two thousand years old and actually knowing the answers to a lot of really hard questions. Not that that means he's right about everything, of course. I - learned a lot from him. He...must've known it would give me a better chance of killing him, me being - stronger, but he did it anyway. I think in hopes he could eventually convince me to cooperate with him, somehow, try to find a solution other than war. Which we weren't making progress on, because I didn't know the actual reason he wanted Valdemar. But we got onto the subject of gods in this world, and - various things they do that he disagrees with, and at least slightly has a point about." 

"What do they do, anyway, we have fiction about gods but no real ones that do things so I don't think I should guess."

"They're mostly pretty indirect. Vkandis intervened more obviously in a war we were having with a neighbouring kingdom five years ago - He was officially the god of that kingdom, Karse - but even then, it was only sending one of His avatars to the rightful heir to the throne and then doing a miracle after we'd already won a big battle the normal way, without help. We just finished learning more than we knew before about the Star-Eyed Goddess - She's the goddess of the Shin'a'in people here - and She did some more obvious miracles after there'd been a big disaster a couple thousand years ago, so their people survived, but She also demanded their service and their descendants' service forever. The Shin'a'in are still in a pact with Her to guard the Plains and keep strangers off, that's why they attacked you." 

"I see."

"Anyway." Vanyel takes a deep breath, lets it out. "Last year he decided he trusted me enough to share his actual plan. Which is to - make his own god. Since he thinks the other gods don't want things to change much, and he's of the opinion that a lot of the problems in the world - including people dying - are kind of unacceptable. That being said he is fine with killing people to achieve goals he thinks are justified. Also making a god in the first place would require killing millions of people for blood-magic. And would be terrifying if he did it wrong. And, um, all that's assuming he's even telling the truth about any of this. We went on this entire mission to learn more and I think he probably is but I'm still not sure. Anyway. He - claims to be trying to work on something similar to Sing, but with magic. So he would be inclined to help you if anyone is - I can try to pitch our King on it but I think he'll need a lot of time to absorb it and maybe be too confused and alarmed to consider it. Also Leareth would be able to get the setup you need faster than anyone else. The only problem is the part where he might be really evil." Shrug. "So I don't know what to tell you." 

"- building Sing does not require killing any people," she hastens to clarify.

"I thought you would probably have said something if it did! So that's an advantage. Also it might be faster since you already know all the steps and that they work. If he's telling the truth about his goals, then I think Leareth really, really doesn't want to kill more people. And would be really eager to help you make Sing instead, if you convinced him it was safe, which probably you can if, er, Page knows all the history on it." 

"Page knows a lot. It may be missing bits for safety reasons but the Sing code is definitely legit."

"Missing bits for safety reasons?" Dara says, confused.

"To make sure nobody tries to build a superintelligence of their own and has it competing with Sing."

"Given everything else you've said, that sounds like such an appallingly stupid idea, but I guess people sometimes do appallingly stupid things, so." 

"Exactly. And Page doesn't report to Sing if I don't want it to, so it can't just tell on me if I start doing something stupid, so it can't have enough information to build anything superintelligent that isn't Sing."

"That sounds like a sensible precaution, then." He's still kind of confused what she means about how it's implemented, but it otherwise makes sense. "Er, so I guess the question is - do you want me to tell him about you?" 

"I guess that's a good question. I definitely want to get Sing up and running as fast as possible. Also it sounds like it might be really bad if he makes a mistake. Uh, maybe you could tell him you met someone with the same idea as him in progress, and not say that mine isn't magic, and see what he says about that. Then if I decide to just go really far away it won't be obvious when I start making things and selling them for money to invent more things with, that this is actually part of that."

"I could do that. If you went far enough away he probably wouldn't find out and investigate– er, we think he has a really extensive spy network and he's interested in a lot more things than just making gods, if he heard someone were inventing a lot of non-magical things fast he'd be intrigued and want to know more about it." 

"Good to know. There's oceans somewhere, I could maybe just get to another continent?"

"I've never heard of another continent! I guess there might be one, though, it'd have to be really far away. Is one of the things Page knows how to make really good fast boats?" 

"Yeah, I could figure that out. It'd still be risky since I can't control the weather."

"Vanyel could!" 

"Dara, I cannot go off on a boat trip across the goddamned ocean. Which is hundreds and hundreds of miles from here anyway." He glances apologetically at Tarinda. "I have no way of contacting Leareth before getting back to Valdemar anyway. My Foresight is blocked for, er, reasons. It's about a fortnight's journey but we can try to be efficient about it, and I can introduce you to the King too just in case he's enthusiastic about helping." 

"Okay. Uh, what if he's not?"

"He won't do anything to harm you or keep you from leaving Valdemar even if he disagrees, and if you do leave Valdemar he can't really do anything to prevent you working on it. I guess he could tell our allies not to help you but that'd be pretty extreme for him. He might try to talk you out of it." 

"I guess," she says. "He's not going to talk me out of it though."

"Figured not. Anyway. We should get going for the day. Want to ride with Dara again until we break for lunch?" 

"Up to you guys, I'm easy."

She hops up on Rolan.

Vanyel isn't very talkative for the rest of that day. 

Dara more than makes up for this. 

Then by the end of the day Page will be able to generate more interesting song lyrics.

Dara thinks that is amazing and even Vanyel is drawn in by it.

They ride longer because some features are now popping into view on the previously featureless horizon. Drawing closer, they can eventually make out a very strange sort of city. A cluster of ancient-looking stone buildings, surrounded by a smallish number of absurdly colourful tents - not camping-style tents, but ones that look build to last a season. 

"Welcome to Kata'shin'a'in!" Dara says brightly. "It's way better in full summer, I wish we could stick around but it really doesn't make sense to." 

"Oh, it's so neat! I love that one over there, in the purple."

Dara squints at it. "I think that's Clan Pretera'sedrin - er, Clan of the Grass-cat in their language. We can ask to camp there if we want, everyone's incredibly friendly here, but they're probably still setting up so it might be rude to make them put up guests. I'll go find someone to ask where we can pitch our tent." She slips down from Rolan's back and runs off. 

"I think we're lucky to be passing through in the off-season this time," Vanyel mutters. "It's so incredibly loud when all the clans are here. And dusty. Also summer is hot here." 

"That sounds really uncomfortable, I'm sorry!"

"Dara loved it, but I think she's more of a people person than I am." 

Dara, in fact, takes a while to come back and show them a tent location because she gets distracted catching up with people she remembers from the previous summer. 

"So, um, pending questions about our world? I wasn't totally keeping track of your conversation today and what Dara's filled you in on." 

"Do you think magic could help make the hardware I need faster? I don't wanna have to spend a hundred years on it."

"Is that what you think it'd take otherwise? Hmm. Maybe. You can do some kinds of metalwork and glasswork with magic - it's rarely worth it in Valdemar since we have so few mages and a lot more non-magical craftspeople, even if it takes them longer to make a given item, but sometimes for making something one-of-a-kind it's the most efficient." 

"I don't know exactly how long it'd take, it'll depend on - mining and economics and stuff, I'm not Sing and neither is Page so I can't just start with building machines that do everything for me, right? I could do it all myself if I really had to but that would take so long to get all the stuff and make the tools to make the tools to make the tools to make the tools. Like - do you ever think about how when there were first people, there was, like, rocks and sticks and that was it? They made all their stuff using rocks and sticks, and then they had the second generation of tools, and then they could make the third generation, and now you have, like, what-all you have, but they started with rocks and it would be very annoying to do that over again even if you know it's possible. What-all you have is rocks compared to what Sing needs."

Nod. "I never really thought of it that way before, but...you're right. Huh. Anyway, once we get back to Valdemar I can do a better job of showing you what kinds of work our artificers and craftspeople can do. But - I bet Leareth is way ahead. He is on most things." 

"I'm kind of worried he's mostly ahead on magic and it could turn out it's not helpful but it'd sure help a lot to start with better rocks."

"It hasn't been his main focus, obviously, but I bet he still knows more than anyone else in our world about non-magical science. He's recommended me some books in the past, although it was years ago and I don't have them with me and don't recall that many details." 

"Science is about learning. I need a jump on building."

"That makes sense. I think he'd still have a leg-up on Valdemar, but - hmm, if you give me a list of key questions, I can ask him when I next get the Foresight dream. Which won't be until sometime after we reach Valdemar so it's no hurry."  

"It'll kind of give away that I'm not doing a magical project."

"...Oh, right, fair. Well, I can show you the books I have already, some of them may be incidentally about building projects, although the only thing coming to mind off the top of my head is some aqueducts system he designed once, which isn't really the same kind of thing." 

"It's really not."

Dara gets back at this point, and gestures to a spot near the communal well where they can set up camp for the night. It's getting dark so they'll want to hurry. 

Vanyel can give them a nice bright mage-light, actually, but he's also tired so hurrying seems good. 

Tarinda can see in very dim light! But she will keep up.

They get the camp set up and some strangers wander over from the purple tent to offer them cooked food, some sort of stew with meat chunks in it. Dara chatters to them in their native language, which Page doesn't know at all, but Vanyel just politely thanks them for the food and then sits down quietly to eat it before smushing himself against one wall of the tent to go to sleep. 

Tarinda sleeps.

Page listens to people talking all night long and if there's enough night owls will have a tolerable grasp of the tongue by morning.

There are! Some teenagers are up well after midnight, gossiping by the campfire. 

The next morning's routine is similar, except that instead of cooking, Dara wanders back over to a different tent, catches up with friends there, and comes back with hot food and chava for Vanyel. 

Om nom nom. "How many languages is Page gonna learn before we get where we're going?"

"Depends how much they need to overhear? Jkatha and Rethwellan both have local languages, although they're closely related to each other, and then there's also the trade-tongue for this whole region." 

"It picked up a fair amount overnight when I was sleeping, though not enough to have a serious conversation unless it happened to be very similar to the conversation the people it was listening to were having."

"Hmm - Page will probably get basic conversational fluency in those three, then, though it depends a bit if we pay to stay in inns or camp, there'll be more people around talking in inns. Van, I think we should do that, we've got plenty of gold left and it's not like we're saving it for anything else at this point." 

"I don't want to strain your budget, so not on my account."

"No, it's not on your account - though I hope you don't mind sharing a room with us both, I'd rather not pay for two. We'll sleep better indoors and you won't have to endure my cooking." 

They pack up for the road. 

"Sharing's fine. Even if you snore."

"...I have nightmares sometimes," Vanyel admits, very sheepishly. "I'm likely to wake you at least once if we travel for a fortnight. It's not like that's better in a tent, though. Sorry." 

"No, no, you won't wake me, Page's patched into my ears. If you're just yelling in your sleep and not saying something important I should wake up for, it'll cancel the sound for me."

Dara gives her a look of startled envy. "Really? That's incredible." 

"I could've really used it in Kata'shin'a'in last summer when they were playing the drums half the night." 

They finish packing up and reattaching saddlebags in place, and Dara offers Tarinda a hand up to join her on Rolan's back again for the first part of the day. 

Hop! "What kindsa things is your king gonna wanna know?" she wonders.

"Hmm. I'm not entirely sure, but probably he's going to ask lots of questions about your intentions and goals in Valdemar. He may ask if you can do some helpful projects or something as goodwill before he's willing to dedicate a lot of resources. He's, er, likely going to be pretty alarmed about Sing and your world's history, mainly because last year he learned about Leareth's plan and it'll remind him. He'll ask a lot about that." Shrug. "I don't know." 

"I feel like Sing having already been around a while and demonstrated that it works right, and also it not requiring anybody to die, are both pretty important!"

"Yes, I know! I think it'll - sink in, and he'll at the very least think it's a better idea than Leareth's version. I do think it's - putting a lot of trust in one person and a world we've never seen and can't visit to check ourselves? And would need some time just for that reason. Hopefully not a lot of time - weeks, not years." 

"I guess that's probably still faster."

"I mean, if you get impatient with us you can just leave at that point, and be ahead because you know all the languages in the region. I can teach Page Hardornen too if you want, Van and I both speak it." 

"That would be cool of you!"

Then for the morning ride until lunch, Dara and Vanyel will talk to each other in Hardornen! They're both not as fluent in it as in their native language, and Vanyel seems a bit annoyed about it, but he complies. 

That evening Tarinda reminds Dara that she wanted to spar.

"Ooh, right! We should definitely do that. ...Actually, there is someone I wanted you to meet." 

She draws her sword. 

:I was informed that I oughtn't speak to you because it might scare you: a woman's dusty voice says in her head. 

"Whoa! Talking magic sword, cool."

:I'm Need. Until recently I was mostly just a magic sword, because I was asleep, but we had some adventures and I woke up. And then these two nearly trapped me in the buried remains of an ancient mage's basement for the rest of time, but fortunately we made it out. I hope you don't consider it cheating for Dara to spar using me?: 

:Gosh, I don't know, what advantages have you got?:

:Well, I can defend her against magic, which isn't applicable, and heal her if she gets hurt, which had better not come up. I can give her better senses and reflexes than humans usually have, which I feel might be necessary because I'm told you're very fast: 

:I am! And yeah, I won't hurt her. Let's play:

And out comes Tarinda's sword.

Dara grins and wields Need. "Ready?" 

"Mm-hm!"

Tarinda's very fast and very acrobatic. Her style is unfamiliar but it's clearly meant for flash and clang more than actually stabbing people.

It takes some getting used to but it's a very fun way to spar, really! 

Wheeee! Tarinda does a bunch of flips and jumping off nearby objects and rolling along the ground.

Coooooool! 

Dara can't pick that up on the fly, but Need is a magic sword with superhuman reflexes who can take over Dara's body (with Dara allowing it) as soon as she's picked up some of it, and now Dara can ALSO do flips! 

It's more fun that way! Tarinda can leave openings for Dara to flip in.

Need can also help Dara not get tired too quickly, and pick up more tricks as they go. 

Yfandes thinks this is very impressive and a lot of fun to watch!   

Dara does get tired before Tarinda does. "All right - that was great - need a rest..." 

"No problem. That was great, you'd be a good combat dancer!"

"Oh, is that what that style is called?" 

"The style is called Seventh Ring but the hobby is combat dance."

"Oh! So it's - not really intended for actually fighting? I guess you probably don't need to do any fighting. If Sing solves all the problems in your world." 

"Yeah, it would be so weird to get into a serious fight back home. I do sometimes injure people because we have healing stuff and some people don't mind! But yeah."

"It turned out to work fine when you got in a fight with the Shin'a'in, though? That's honestly pretty impressive. They're supposed to be really good." 

:Generally not recommended to pick fights with them. But I suppose you had no way of knowing that. And it turned out all right: 

"They shot at me first! Then I was going to steal a horse and run away, I can't outrun a fast horse. The horse objected though."

:Oh, yes, their horses are very clever and they're best friends with their riders, they wouldn't approve of being stolen: 

"The Shin'a'in are a little excessive about guarding the Plains," Vanyel, still watching them, admits. "Though - knowing what we do now about what's underground, it makes more sense that their Goddess ordered that." 

"Oh?"

Vanyel glances at Dara, seems to think for a moment. "Can you promise that you are not going to go around telling anyone else about this?" 

"Who would I tell? I'd... tell Sing I guess if it wanted to know?"

Vanyel nods, slowly. "If we - do build Sing, and it's in fact a good idea and doesn't eat the world or something, that seems fine." He takes a deep breath. "The Shin'a'in guard the remains of Urtho's Tower. Urtho was a very powerful mage who lived eighteen hundred years ago - his tower was a hub of magical scholarship, his era was more advanced in magic they we are even now. He - got into a war. Er, with Ma'ar, who was the same person as Leareth, his first incarnation. Can tell you more about that after. Anyway, Urtho had for some reason built a lot of magical superweapons, in secret. One of them got set off right at the end of the war and caused the Cataclysm." 

He pauses for a moment. "...There are fifteen more. Still buried underground, in the basement of the tower which is somehow intact, the shields on it must've kept them from being set off too by all the magic flying around. I'm sure you can understand why it'd be really, really bad if more people knew that. I think even the Shin'a'in didn't know what they were guarding." 

"Wow! Okay, yeah, I won't tell anyone but Sing."

Vanyel nods. "Thank you. Anyway, the Star-Eyed Goddess ordered the Shin'a'in very firmly to keep outsiders off the Plains, using lethal force if necessary, and that's why they reacted the way they did when you turned up out of nowhere." 

"I wish one of 'em had been telepathic enough to talk to me, I could've explained!"

"Would've been really nice, right! I'm not sure how many of them are Mindspeakers. They outlaw all magic on the Plains - anyone born mage-gifted has to either become a shaman, or leave and go join the Tayledras, Gifts tend to correlate so probably they've got fewer Mindspeakers than us just because their Mindspeakers often leave as teenagers." 

"So only the one kind of Gift is called 'magic'?"

"I think it varies, but - yes, in a lot of places only mage-gift is considered true magic. The other Gifts are called mind-Gifts in Valdemar." 

"Which is dumb because they're not all about minds," Dara points out. "Fetching shouldn't be a 'mind-Gift', I don't think." 

"In Lineas they called everything magic, including Fetching. They had outlawed it even more thoroughly, though, so it might've just been that they didn't know much about there even being different kinds of Gift." 

"Interesting! We use the word Page is translating as 'magic' for basically anything that isn't possible with just plain physics so all the Gifts would qualify but it can be more precise when it's feeding me lines if that's customary."

"Oh, that makes sense - they are all magic, really. My theoretical understanding here is that the ones other than mage-gift are - more specific applications of magic, that are really good at some particular aspect but can't do any of the others. You can use a spell to communicate like Mindspeech, for example, it's just not as good and more tiring." 

"Huh! Does that mean you could get it as good and not more tiring if you were doing it more exactly somehow?"

"Maybe! I learned the communication spell from Leareth, actually. It wasn't a technique known in Valdemar. It's possible he taught me a less efficient version and he has a better one by now." 

"...you can't use that to ask him about me though?"

"I don't think so? Huh. So far I've only used it with people who I'd Mindspoken with before, or at least met face to face, so I recognize what their minds feel like. Mindspeech doesn't work in the dream with Leareth and I'm not sure it'd count as meeting him. Also he's on the other side of the Ice Walls Mountains north of Valdemar - probably, that's where we think he's preparing an army and all - and that's over a thousand miles away, which is out of range for me casting the spell." 

"Oh well. It's just, you know, this is going to take a long time but every hour actually still matters..."

Nod. "I know. I - really do want to help you do it faster." Sigh. "If my magic was working properly I could Gate us back." 

"Why isn't it?"

"I got really badly hurt in the Tower. That's why we were stuck there for a while, I was the only one who could Gate and I was out of commission." 

Dara pats Need's hilt. "Need saved the day, eventually."   

:Had to talk the bloody Scrollsworn into making an exception and using magic first: Need says dryly. :She rose to the occasion, though: 

"And now you can Gate but not very far?"

"Not sure I can at all, honestly. I haven't been pushing it much. Figured I would get back to Haven and then Savil can look at my channels and see what the issue is." Frown. "I'm not sure I can do the comms spell either. I could try it? Savil at least might be in range and she can maybe Gate us in from Rethwellan, though not from here, she needs to have been somewhere before to do it." 

"- if you were stuck because of - oh, okay, I get it, sorry. I wish I could just fix you but all my healing stuff is typed for me in particular, it's even more specific than blood types. Also I don't have a needle to get any out so it'd be messy."

"Huh! It's - inside your body? How does that work?" 

"I could draw it if you want? If you have paper."

Dara has paper! She would love to see drawings of how Tarinda's Healing works. 

So Tarinda can draw schematics of her own body and comparisons of an unmodified body; she's full of pockets of this and that replacing some of her more obsolete parts including what she calls "salve" which does healing for her and is delivered wherever needed thusly.

That is INCREDIBLY COOL and Dara has dozens of questions. 

"We should head for the inn," Vanyel points out. "Unless we're camping after all tonight." 

Tarinda will pack up her drawings and proceed innward.

The inn can rent them a room with two beds in it, and there's a taproom with stew and ale being served and people having conversations in half a dozen different languages, though Jkathan and the trade-tongue dominate. 

"Should somebody share? I can also sleep on the floor okay."

"I don't mind sharing with Van." 

"Okay. I can also share but whatever you're comfy with."

Dara nods. "I might get more sleep if I share with you, if you're sure you don't mind. Van tosses and turns a lot - sorry, Van, you do though." 

Vanyel makes a face at her, but doesn't say anything and tosses his bag down next to one of the beds. "I'm turning in early, I think. Long day." 

"Fine by me," Tarinda tells Dara.

So they can settle down for the night, Need on the floor at the foot of Dara and Tarinda's bed. 

Vanyel yelps a few times in the middle of the night again, enough to wake Dara, but nothing that pings Page as important enough to wake Tarinda, so she can have an undisturbed sleep. 

She sleeps very soundly! And pops up in the morning ready to go.

Vanyel is not a morning person nowadays, and needs to gulp down his herb-tea and then his usual cup of chava before he's ready to hold a conversation, let alone pack up to ride out. They can be on the road by a couple of candlemarks after dawn, though. 

Jkatha is a lot wetter than the Plains, especially in spring. They are caught in a couple of brief but torrential downpours before lunch. 

Tarinda braids her hair about it but is otherwise undaunted.

Dara cheerfully asks more of her questions about Tarinda's body modifications and about body modifications in general back in her world. If they build Sing will everyone here be able to get them too? Dara would really like the ones that make Tarinda ridiculously fast and coordinated and good at dance-fighting. 

Yes, everyone here who wants them can get them once Sing is running! It will need to build things before it can hand stuff out trivially so probably people who are currently old and stuff will get to go first but only by, like, a day or two.

Neat! Dara is very in favour of building Sing at this point! 

The afternoon is sunnier and uneventful and the Companions can move pretty fast on paved roads, which Jkatha has, and so they can cover nearly fifty miles before sundown, more than halfway to the border with Rethwellan. 

"What do I need to know about Rethwellan, since we'll be there tomorrow?"

"They're prosperous and have lots of mages and lots of immigrants from other countries and they hate shaych people," Dara says cheerfully. "Er, shaych means being attracted to the same sex. It's literally against the law in Rethwellan." She glances over at Vanyel. "Shouldn't come up, Van doesn't usually sleep around except that one time at the Midsummer party in Kata'shin'a'in." 

"Dara!" Vanyel turns bright red. 

"Gosh, okay, I guess I'll pretend Cory's a boy if it comes up."

"–Oh, right, you have a girlfriend. Is that considered pretty normal and fine in your world, then?" 

"Sure. People used to be variable on it back when Cory was first alive? But not recently at least anywhere you'd normally go."

"Oh, good! I hope Sing can make our world like that too. Most places aren't as bad as Rethwellan but I think parts of Valdemar still aren't great." 

They can rent a room at another inn and have a hot meal and share a room again for the night, and then get back on the road and ride for the Rethwellan border. 

"I don't think Sing can do it directly, it doesn't mess with people's heads, but it can help you avoid people who're going to be bad about it and maybe it'll make sure they run into the most convincing arguments or something? I'm not sure, it doesn't talk much."

"I'd been curious to hear more about Sing's strategies for changing things," Vanyel says. "If it mostly doesn't talk to you - which sounds like our gods, honestly - what is it actually doing in the background to make everything nice? I guess it can maybe just solve the problem of there being enough food and clothing and houses and all, and that by itself is a lot, but - I don't know, I think some people would find excuses to start wars anyway, how does it prevent that?" 

"Uh, it can talk, my understanding of why it doesn't is that it sort of fundamentally cannot help but be really manipulative when it talks? Because it doesn't have person stuff going on underneath, it is not a person, and it thinks it's bad for people to spend time having conversations with something like that. But it can suggest things to spirit guides, there's that, and it can make lots of stuff so people can do whatever we wanna do, and also - hm - there's a soft metal Page doesn't have a word for, it's pale and bluish if you cut it but goes dark grey in the air, very heavy..."

Dara frowns for a while, thinking. "Lead? Um, what does that have to do with things? We use it in building things, I think, I don't know that much about it." 

"Well, it's poisonous. In small amounts it won't usually kill you but it does especially if you eat it as a kid make you more violent and impulsive and antisocial. Next time we stop I can draw you graphs of the crime rate and how much lead was being used in things at various times - there's an eighteen year delay for the kids to grow up and then - anyway, lead is really dramatic, which is why the graphs would be interesting, but if you're as smart as Sing a lot of things are like lead, and some of them don't have an eighteen year delay and some of them are really subtle so it doesn't make people feel manipulated if Sing changes them, and it can just find all those things and change every one of them, and then pay more attention to whatever's left and kind of micromanage it."

"Huh. That's really interesting to know. Also seems hard to figure out - was it Sing who did or had people guessed before that?" 

"We knew before, that's why the graphs are so dramatic, you can watch the crime rate go up and down depending on whether it was legal to burn stuff with lead in it to make machinery work eighteen years before or not."

"Wow. Well, I don't think we burn lead so maybe we're not as badly off." 

"I had wanted to ask - what are spirit guides? Is that the thing Page is?" 

"Yeah. There's lots of names for them but I like 'spirit guide'."

“What things do they do aside from knowing a lot and learning languages really fast?”

"They make sure you never get lost and you can use them to talk to people far away and coordinate all your other machines and Page can show me books and sing me songs if I'm bored and stuff."

“What would you usually have other machines doing?” 

"Well, in my house I have machines shaped like little imaginary animals that do my cooking and cleaning, and sometimes I want a vehicle to fly to another part of Mars with..."

"You have flying carriages?" 

"Sure do!"

"Everything you say about your world only makes me more jealous. Do you have machines to fix your clothes for you too?" 

"I... don't actually know if they usually get fixed or just replaced, I just kind of never notice my clothes needing to be fixed unless I've indicated it's something I want to take care of myself because, like, I made it during a setpiece and know how and want to maintain it alone."

"Gods! You and I are very different people. If I didn't have to fix my clothes I wouldn't go near a needle and thread ever again." 

"She's already discovered she can make me do her mending." 

"Hey, I do not make you, you offered." 

"I don't do this a lot or anything but I have a belt like that and a cloak. I'm not wearing either one right now."

"Are your other clothes, what, impossible to tear or damage and never wear out?" 

"I don't think so? I mean, I know they can be damaged some, occasionally you wanna be able to dramatically slice through somebody's shirt in a swordfight scene. When I take them off at the end of the day the machines whisk them away and then they turn up in my closet and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference if they were new ones or just really well repaired! Page knows but I haven't asked it yet because I think it's illustrative of how much material scarcity we don't have that I didn't know on my own."

"That makes sense! Can you have as many clothes as you want? ...Oooh, what's fashion like in your world?" 

"Yeah, we can have as many clothes as we want! This is what I happened to be wearing so I guess it's an example but people who get really into it wear much fancier stuff."

Vanyel is of the opinion that Dara is really not very focused in her questions about Sing and clothes is not the highest priority thing to ask about, but that does sound tempting. 

"I just had the thought that a lot of people in our world are sad about not having a husband or wife," Dara says. "Seems hard for Sing to fix though." 

–okay, ouch. Vanyel tries not to wince visibly. 

"I mean, it doesn't just declare people married out of nowhere but it can arrange people to meet people they'd click with. Like, I didn't wander through a rack of frozen dead people and go 'that one, I want her', I got a tipoff that there was a whole quest to be had and her list of demands included that she wanted a girlfriend and I did all the rest of the steps and she'd said it was okay to read her diary and I had, so I'd know how to do it just how she wanted, and I liked her, so when she woke up there I was."