"Do you mind if I come in and pray? To see if Freyja's blessing extends beyond this earth. It's a considerable factor in whether I wish to travel."

"Go ahead," calls Evangeline from behind her desk.

Marit bows politely to her. "You must meet the most fascinating people, hm? A substitute for seeing the most fantastical places, perhaps. Can we close the portal for a moment, to make a proper test, miss Thorn?"

"Alright!" 

Thorn closes the portal.

Eva nods. "I'm too important to be allowed out from behind a desk, unfortunately. This is the closest I can get to the front lines."

Marit nods. "I'm familiar with the concept. Good old Captain Olsen the Loud faces the same thing!"

And then she clears her throat intones a poem about the glory of storms and the power of nature in a high, clear voice, almost a song, with her arm passing through various gestures.

A breeze picks up and there is a faint smell of ozone.

"Oh, excellent! I'd give much better odds that the seals will work properly in other worlds now. Do either of you want a quick blessing? We can do luck-blessings in addition to seals, but they're more temporary. A few weeks, I'd say."

"I'll take a blessing."

"As will I. Thank you very much!"

She bows dramatically. "Ahem. Blessings comes in a few different flavors, each calling for a different benefit from the gods. The effects can be subtle, and will not significantly oppose a... Strong fate, is how I would put it. Several of them are farm-flavored. My apologies. Peace and safety, weather and plants, disease and animals, love and friendships, learning and craft, and... Fulfillment, contentment, I suppose? The last one is the most variable and general."

"Learning and craft, please."

"Love and friendships for me," says Thorn.

Giving a blessing involves walking in a circle around them while reciting another prayer/poem, and touching their hands. There's no obvious sign it worked, but Marit seems satisfied.

"I'm told I should ask about morphological freedom and a crash course in all the everything?"

"With Thorn's recommendation I can put you on the waiting list. It might take a few weeks for you to see an instructor/examiner; they'll contact you when your turn comes up in line."

"Well, I am certainly interested. Is there a book about it I could read, perhaps?"

"Certainly!" 

A heavy manual appears on her desk, entitled "OTC Basic Training." There's a hex pattern all across the front page and little fingertabs cut into the pages marking sections.

"You'll want the morph guide, section six. It's a listing of all forms in common use by the OTC. I particularly like the Scylla for when I'm not doing interface work; having extra limbs I can tuck away when I don't need them is a tremendous benefit. You'll also want the atlas of known planes, section four, particularly the subsection on Trade planes." 

She opens the portal again. "Anything else you need?" 

Marit starts breaking Ka, and sighs, satisfied. "Not now, I think. I'll have more shopping to do later. What a wonderful thing this is. It's even getting past my naturally grumpy disposition."

Eva smiles. "We ought to have an office set up for that by the time you want to shop again. I'm glad we could brighten your day."

"I'm going to have great fun looking like my same old baggy self but outlifting my grandson. Just picture it. Old lady performing feats of physical prowess. Fare thee well!"

She hefts the book and heads out the re-opened portal.

Did she have another appointment after this one? No, just the office setup. 

She follows Marit out of the portal with a wave over her shoulder, and goes and relocates the beacon to her new offices. Then she goes in and starts getting to work. 

There are half a dozen letters in the office's mailbox by the day's end. An ad from the cleaning service, a letter from that naval captain asking about a robot cheaper than the Sundowner, two people offering to buy Ka for Kroner at very high rates, one from some random soldier gushing about the cool armor, and someone named Jonar Bjerre offering to quit the army and work for her if he gets to read books from other worlds. He's a train driver now but he was a secretary, cleanser, and waiter at various other times and his address is such-and-such!

Later that night, a slight woman carrying a tablet directs a fleet of small robots into the office. They carry a large, chunky piece of statuary that looks like the smaller beacon writ large, a flat-pack full of holocomps, a heavy chest full of Ka crystals, and another two bigger-on-the-inside chests full of basic stock. 

Lily watches as the robots set up the room properly, tapping away on her holocomp. "And you want me to stand guard over this for the night with the robots to back me up?" 

"Yeah, at least until I can get ahold of Jonar Bjerre and a few others like him. I've placed an ad in the paper for receptionists and security guards with some fairly generous terms - since they'd be OTC employees the standard healthcare plan applies, which is better than anything they can get in this world. We'll need a Clematis here to examine the new hires once they come in, but..."

"That's getting ahead of ourselves."

"Exactly." 

Thorn gets an actual bed moved in and sleeps in the office overnight. She'll look for replies to her ad in the morning.

There are two more applications! Lindis Ingrasdottir has decided she HATES boats with a passion after coming here and has been living on Oresund base for a while and would appreciate steady employment. She's been working odd jobs and knows many of the usual merchants by now! Irene Hedström has sent a professional-looking resume advertising her accounting and management experience and saying she is excited to be part of a new venture with such great potential.

Also, someone is asleep leaning on the wall outside the office. He has white hair despite looking young, is wearing furs and has a bulky travel bag in his lap, and seems unwashed.