"That's stupid, why not? Do they - not know how? But they're gods." He seems mildly offended. "That definitely wouldn't help them get the good bits that're useful to them." 

He's very impressed by her making water from nowhere, though he keeps his expression convincingly nonchalant; he watches with his magic-sense while trying not to be obvious about it, is she making a portal from somewhere else and stealing someone else's watering-hole...it doesn't seem like it but he can't really tell.

The cows are unimpressed. They placidly crowd around the hole full of water and lap it up, not caring that it's quickly turning very muddy. 

"I think among other things they don't know how. It took our most powerful god to set up afterlives in our world, and there were things about our world that made it easier, like that none of our gods particularly benefitted from not having afterlives. Some of yours are using this system, so it'll be harder to get them to change it."

He looks thoughtful, staring into the distance, wriggling to scratch a spot on his back. It's not immediately obvious to him what to do about this. 

It took him thousands of years to figure out what to do about this. She wants to ask him to show her more magic but she needs to feed him first. "Can we go to your village now?"

"This way."

He scrambles up and starts prodding the cows away from the remaining mud at the bottom of their tiny watering-hole, to head back. It doesn't take a lot of magic, just very tiny lightning-bolts, enough to zap and startle them about the same amount as whacking them with a stick would, it's less effort than all the running around would be. He doesn't even bother bringing a stick anymore. 

The cows prefer being stationary over moving, but they know where 'home' is, and that it has better grass, and they start moving. Ma'ar trots after them, glancing back at Carissa. 

She follows. She worries. Probably they should go to Urtho. They can get an estimate in the city of how far it is and decide whether to try to make it on Phantom Steeds or to get his attention with a Sending. The gods haven't interfered with him so far and as long as they firmly just intend to get Ma'ar magic lessons maybe it'll stay that way. She has her wedding present shield bracelet, to convince Urtho that she knew the other him. It's not proof but it's suggestive. But of course this has to be, what, thirty years before the war, she doesn't know much what he's like - or whether his forming the intention to study other worlds would be very noisy in Foresight -

- Leareth's going to be in a panic, and the fact he hasn't found her yet despite that suggests that something strange is going on...

- presumably Nefreti cannot pull people back in time, that'd be a ridiculous thing for Nefreti to be able to do...

It's about an hour walk back to the camp, at the pace the cows are willing to maintain. The sun passes the zenith; it's hot, and windy, and sometimes the dust blows into their eyes. Ma'ar's clothing consists of a sort of skirt made of skins, and a threadbare cloth scarf or wrap which he had tied into a sort of shirt, but pulls up over his head when the sun is at its hottest.

The 'camp' is a cluster of canvas tents, pitched near an area where the grass is a little lusher than elsewhere. There are a few dozen people around, mostly old men, women and children; the able-bodied adult men seem to be elsewhere right now. There's a firepit, not currently lit, and some dried dung stacked next to it for future fuel. The women are sitting together, sharing the job of mending a collapsed sheet of canvas that's presumably another tent. A toddler runs up, begs for a breast, is denied it and cries. 

One of the woman, grey-haired with weathered skin, gets up and heads over to them. Her hand rests on the hilt of a sheathed knife knotted to her tunic belt, but her expression isn't really hostile, just wary. "Who're you." 

She doesn't prepare Endure Elements because Cheliax is temperate this time of year, and she's not really dressed for any serious travel. She is not going to complain about this to tiny starving orphan Leareth, obviously. She walks, and makes herself a little water to drink occasionally.

"My name is Carissa. I am a mage and a healer; I am passing through this area. I will leave in the morning, but I will pay you in magic for food and shelter tonight."

"I'm going with her," Ma'ar says, chin raised. "So I can learn magic." 

That earns him a look, both weary and exasperated, confused, and perhaps a little affectionate and proud. "I see. What sort of magic you got." 

"I can make water. I can mend broken things. I can make sewing or spinning or grinding do itself."

"Really." The woman sounds neither impressed nor disbelieving; she sounds like someone who's heard a lot of claims and no longer particularly tries to evaluate them until she sees it for herself. She turns, gestures at the collapsed tent-fabric on the ground. "Can you mend that." 

She sits down and starts doing that. It's not one of the instantaneous spells, it'll be a few minutes. 

The older woman just nods, as though grudgingly admitting that she's satisfied; some of the younger women, and the children, gather around, oohing and aahing.

They line up more work for her. Every empty waterskin and earthenware pot in the camp is rustled up to fill with water. People bring her a broken clay bowl, a snapped tent-pole, a steel knife - presumably traded from elsewhere, it definitely wasn't made here - with the blade broken off from the wooden handle. 

Sure, she can do all of those with cantrips. (She could see if anyone can understand cantrips in one night of study, with her headband to help, and then they could do it themselves from there without the headband - but that doesn't get them water, and she could tear a page out of her spellbook but she doesn't actually have a spare spellbook for them, and probably if she's going to do something as disruptive and with as much of a Foresight footprint as teaching arcane magic in this world she should do it for a better reason than feeling sorry for the first people she met -

- on the other hand, baby Leareth is smart, maybe some of them are really smart too, it runs in the blood -

She checks, with Detect Thoughts, in between Mendings.

The old woman is pretty smart, maybe not quite as smart as Ma'ar will be when he's fully grown, but definitely enough that in Cheliax she would've been able to master a lot further than just cantrips. The others are spread in between that and average; the children younger than seven are less smart, many of them look like their development in early childhood might've been hit by a famine, Ma'ar must've been lucky that his toddlerhood years were good ones. 

Ma'ar watches all of her magic intently, eyes boring into her as though by staring hard enough maybe it'll all start to make sense. 

Probably even tiny kid Leareth can keep a secret. 

Probably she's going to do lots of things approximately as Foresight-footprinted as teaching one random herder cantrips and if it's enough to make the gods hate her she'll be dead sooner or later anyway. 

But she should get Ma'ar to Urtho first.

She doesn't offer to teach them cantrips.

"May I trade you for food for our journey?"

It's late afternoon at this point, the sun slanting golden across the camp. The younger women are in a very jovial mood; they have so much water, no one will need to carry any back from the watering-hole and risk running into a raiding-party from the adjacent clans that use it too for days, and they've just caught up on months worth of mending work.

They bring her tough dried meat, and somewhat gunky cheese wrapped in leather, and they get out an earthenware jug of what turns out to be some sort of alcoholic fermented-milk drink. It's clearly something reserved for celebrations and they pour her a cup as though this is a great honour; they're so excited about it, and even offer Ma'ar a little bit (he makes a face at the taste and quickly hides it.) 

Some of the women, especially the older one, shade their eyes and stare out at the horizon, a little concerned but not very. There's no sign of returning men. 

Ma'ar is quiet and thoughtful, and shoos away the younger children when they try to play with him. He doesn't seem inclined to emotional goodbyes with any of his people, and they don't seek him out for this either. 

She can use Prestidigitation to make food taste however she likes and this doesn't solve it making her sick but she'll try to drink as little as she can politely get away with, and save all the food for the road.

"Can you read?" she asks Ma'ar, once there's a quiet moment.

He looks blankly at her. 

"It is possible to assign symbols to all of the sounds people make when they speak, and then make records of speech that way. I want to teach you how to do it but it'll have to wait until we're in a city."

He looks fascinated, stares at her for a moment, nods. 

The sun sets. They don't bother lighting the firepit; it's a warm summer night, and breezy, the smoke would blow all over.

The older woman, somewhat apologetically, offers Carissa a spot in a tent with her, Ma'ar, another woman, and her toddler. They sleep on a rolled-out skin, without blankets, all piled together.