Wow! It's the best illusion Jisa has ever seen. Except for the confusing fact that she can't sense any magic at all from it.

She concentrates, though, and repeats the words after Ahsoka, using a touch of Mindhealing to cement their into her memory before adding the word in Valdemaran. She doesn't get what the weird floating ball against a backdrop of stars is, but she memorizes the syllables associated with it anyway, hopefully at some point she'll have enough vocabulary to ask. On her turn to give the Valdemaran word for it, all she can do is shrug and shake her head. 

During a brief pause, she points at the moving metal creature that has a mind but no life force, and makes a questioning face. 

Ahsoka smiles and says, "Droid," then after a moment, "a-stro-mech." 

Jisa repeats the words. It doesn't really answer her question, what is a 'droid', but realistically she won't be able to figure that out until she knows more words.

Chewing on how to ask for the word for 'life-force', she wonders if they have a word for magic. Making eye contact with Ahsoka, she cautiously raises her hand - she hasn't forgotten the strong reaction to Mindspeech - and makes a tiny mage-light in her palm.

"Magic," she says, and waits expectantly. 

Ahsoka jolts upright from her somewhat slouched position. That's new, she hasn’t seen that before. It doesn't seem like Dark Side energies; it just seems like the girl earnestly wants to exchange words for whatever this is. 

"Magic," Ahsoka repeats. 

Have they never seen mage-gift used? Jisa frowns, mulling on how to specify a question about what Ahsoka used to try to knock her back, when Jisa had the poor judgement to startle her with Mindspeech. If it wasn't magic, what was it? 

She meets Ahsoka's eyes again, points at her, then makes a shoving gesture with her hands, and a questioning face. 

Ahsoka gets the connection. Whatever the girl can do, it's something like her Force abilities. Ahsoka nods and then floats a cup into the air. "Force," she says. She causes the cup to rotate and bounce around. "Force." 

"Force," Jisa repeats after her, smiling, then adds the word in Valdemaran. "Fetching!" It hadn't quite clicked into place before, mostly because she had been too tired to think. Interesting, that they have Fetching here but don't seem to recognize mage-gift at all, and react so badly to Mindspeech. She wonders if it's like Lineas-Baires, where most Gifts are banned. 

Jisa is a fast learner, maybe faster than Ahsoka herself. Whenever the training program goes back to old words, no matter how long the interval has been, Jisa remembers even when Ahsoka struggles.

Several days pass. They make good progress on language learning but it seems likely to take a while longer; learning languages takes time. It interrupted Ahsoka's study- she's been trying to make up for her limited Jedi education, i.e, spending most of the last five years fighting on the frontlines of a galactic war. She has a lot to  catch up on: math, history, epistemology, ethics. Since leaving the Jedi, she’d realized there’s a lot more to know than combat, meditation, and starship repair.  

She's now hopeful to soon speak enough of Jisa's language to start getting some real answers. 

Jisa is already feeling much more able to communicate, but she doesn't have enough of the syntax or vocabulary for abstract concepts to get answers that actually clarify anything. She's able to ask where they are, but Ahsoka doesn't seem to recognize 'Valdemar' or the names of any of their neighbouring kingdoms, and Jisa still feels confused.

On the third day she feels rested enough to attempt a Gate back to Haven. Jisa feels some amount conflicted about this. On the one hand she desperately misses her lifebonded and Companion; on the other end she's discovered a fascinating distant other country and wants to learn everything she can, but if she checks in with the Heralds they'll quite possibly want to send someone who isn't lifebonded to the Kings' heir; on the other other hand, everyone must be worried sick about her disappearance and it would be irresponsible of her not to check in. 

She's a little more comfortable doing magic in front of Ahsoka, and has enough vocabulary to explain that she's attempting to go home- but - it just fails, the spell searches and searches and can't find the Heralds' temple, and she has to drop it. 

Jisa announces that she wants to go home, stands up, and walks towards the door. Ahsoka rises to stop her, or at least find out what she's going to try. She really doesn't know what Jisa will try to do. Tel's continued searching has found no ship or trace of a ship visiting, though increasingly Ahsoka suspected that Jisa doesn't actually know what a ship is.

Ahsoka's confused, Jisa keeps asking where they are– somehow she doesn't know despite being here, nor does she seem to understand "Outer Rim." [Ahsoka has put too much effort into security to be more specific.] This would make more sense if Jisa were from a primitive race, but how did she get here?

Ahsoka doesn't need to run after her. Jisa stops a few paces before the doorway. She seems to concentrate intensely...and fill the doorway with a white-bluish glowing "thing" like nothing Ahsoka has seen or read about. Ahsoka feels the power flowing from Jisa into it.

Ahsoka falls into a ready position. She is confident enough this isn't an attack, but she doesn't want to be caught unawares.

Jisa appears to be growing increasingly frustrated.

Jisa takes down her Gate and heads to sit down, slightly out of breath; she probably held it longer than she should have. 

"Cannot," she says flatly. She seems both upset and frustrated about it, and maybe a tiny bit relieved. 

Suddenly, Ahsoka has a very interesting guess about what's going on. She has seen something like that white-bluish glowing thing. Hyperspace.

It is crazy, but just maybe. Perhaps this strange girl's strange abilities went beyond conjuring lights and exceptional memory. Just maybe, she had the ability to directly move herself through hyperspace – even near massive bodies! Ahsoka had heard legends of gaint space creatures that could do this, though she'd thought those were more likely tales than reality. Could it be something people could do?

Poor Jisa, she looks so dejected. If she never meant to be here, if she never had any idea of where "here" is, hailed from a primitive, yet-to-be space faring culture that didn't even know the basic layout of the Galaxy...how could she be feeling if she's unable to get back, trapped in this alien place she can't even go outside?

Ahsoka walks over to Jisa and tentatively places a hand on her shoulder.

We'll get you home. She couldn't actually promise that.

Everything will be okay. No, she couldn't say that without being flexible on the meaning of "okay".

I'm going to really try to help you. True. She spoke the words in her very best attempt at Jisa's native tongue.

It seems like Ahsoka recognized the Gate? Maybe; she seems confused but intrigued. And she's definitely offering to help. Jisa nods, gratefully. "Thank you."  

She still doesn't understand why it didn't work. It wouldn't be all that surprising if it were just too far; she's gradually managed to pick up - with deepening awe - that the pictures of ball-things called 'planets' are, in fact, entire worlds. But in that case, how did she manage to Gate here in the first place? 

The thing Van would do, if he'd been experimenting with a spell and accidentally done something impossible he didn't understand even afterward, is go over exactly what he'd been trying to do, and start working out a theory. Jisa's magical education is less complete than she'd like, though, and it's uncomfortable to admit but she has very little idea of where to start. 

For the moment it seems like the best thing to do is keep learning the language, so she can communicate better with Ahsoka and her friends, and then she can talk it through with them and get their advice. 

A couple weeks pass and Ahsoka and Jisa have become quite fluent in each other's languages. Jisa more so, but that's quite fine. If she sticks around, she'll be one speaking to people who don't speak her language.

Ahsoka and Jisa haven't just learned each other's languages, they've learned about each other's worlds. Ahsoka's suspicions about Jisa's origins have been confirmed. It would be uncharitable to say Jisa came from a primitive place–they had math, history, ethics, the ability to travel through Hyperspace around their world, and even theories of their "gifts"– they just didn't have droids, ships, speeders, blasters, bacta. Who knows, maybe their lives were better for their simplicity.

Their "gifts" were strange phenomena. In some ways like the Force she knew: moving objects, reading emotions, healing, visions of the future. In other ways, not: not any gifted person could learn any gift, which as far Ahsoka knew wasn't true of the Force; they also seemed to have many abilities she'd never heard of. It'd be unparsiminious (Ahsoka had grown to like this word since reading it a few months ago) if this was something other than a different style of Force use. There was precedent too–the Nightsisters of Dathomir were Force users with very strange abilities. If so...maybe Ahsoka could learn some of Jisa's abilities.

That was a dangerous path, though. Seeking power is a path to the darkside. The Jedi were probably not lying about that one.

Jisa, for her part, is really curious about the locals' abilities! She's now inclined to think that Force use isn't Fetching after all, or isn't just Fetching; other uses she's heard mentioned, either by Ahsoka or in the 'holo' illusion's reading material and lessons, include lightning and something sort of like compulsions.

"I don't get it," she says to Ahsoka. "It's like you're - accessing the same thing that Gifts use, but completely differently." She hesitates. "...One of the things my, um, uncle taught me to do, is test people for Gifts by looking at the relevant part of their mind. I - know you don't do mind-magic here normally, but - I promise all I'll do is look, and it's with mage-sight, there won't be any risk of me reading your thoughts by mistake." 

Ahsoka was now quite convinced that Jisa was not an extremely creative ploy to harm her, but the mind-abilities still made her uneasy. She'd been warming up to letting Jisa try her mindspeech again... and now Jisa wanted to just "read" her.

"Okay."

"I'm trusting you."

Jisa nods, looks seriously into Ahsoka's eyes, and opens her mage-sight wide. 

"This is going to feel a bit odd. It won't hurt and it won't affect anything in your head." And she dives in closer to peek at where Ahsoka's channels should be, if she's Gifted. 

Jisa does not find any channels, as such, in Ahsoka's mind. Instead, her mage sight finds that Ahsoka's entire head and body radiate with not-quite-mage-energy, as though all of her were one gaint diffuse channel.

If Jisa were to place her sight on Tel, she'd find that his entire being glimmered too, though much much much fainter than Ahsoka. DD does not glimmer at all.

Jisa backs off as soon as she's seen enough. 

"That's - huh. That's fascinating. You don't have our kind of Gift at all, but you do have something..." She does her best to describe the results of her Sight, fumblingly. 

"I'm grateful for the things I can do. They let me help a lot of people. I hope." Ahsoka actually isn't sure whether her actions throughout the war overall benefited people.

It would be a lie to say she wasn't envious of some of the things Jisa said she could do. Those were amazing Gifts – the term for them made sense. Her own advantage seemed to be in reflexes, intuition, premonition, and motion. In a purely physical fight, she'd definitely have the edge. Of course, what does that matter if Jisa could shout into her mind and paralyze her?

"I get it. I feel the same way, back home." A pang in her chest. "Ahsoka, I really have to try to get home. They need me." 

Ahsoka nods sympathetically. She and this girl weren't so different.

"If we can just figure out where your world is, we can fly you back home, even if you can't get your spell to work."

"Do you know what the night sky looks like on your world? If you can remember enough of the pattern of the stars, we might be able to find it in the star charts."

Jisa looks thoughtful. She did spend quite a few nights with Kilchas up on the astronomy tower, letting him show her the stars through his prized telescope and teach her the names of all the constellations.

"I can sketch it for you," she offers. "I probably don't exactly remember the placement of the constellations relative to each other, but I could guess that part." 

"Wow, this is really good!" Jisa's memory wasn't just for words it seemed, the diagram she produced was pretty detailed.

"If this is accurate, I'm confident it'll match to our charts."

Ahsoka feeds the hand-made chart to DD.

"Boop boooop" goes DD's sad chirp. "I'm sorry, I'm not getting any match with our charts."

"Beep. Boooooop."

It might have a protocol module, but dammit, DD was an astromech at heart and was going to sound like it!