"Your females are smaller? Don't they have to produce babies?"

"They do. I'm not sure what the difference is that lets it work that way for us - maybe we reproduce less often? We do only have one baby at a time, and it's not really safe to have a baby more often than every two or three years."

"Huh. I guess maybe ours have more kids, but not more at once, it's one egg at a time every case I've heard of."

"I suppose that could be it. I can talk to your scholars about it, if it matters; it's not my specialty at all but I know a few things."

"What kind of scholar?"

"Whatever kind wants to talk to me, I guess. About that or whatever else - I don't really have a plan yet, I figure I'll let people know I'm here and see what happens."

"Soramu's mother is a writer? My mother is a paleoanthropologist."

"Your mother might have a better idea of what to ask, if you want to introduce me."

"Well, she lives in town, we can swing by there after we pick up Dos."

"That sounds like a good plan."

"So what are trains like, anyway? I'm not getting much from the translation magic, just that they're a kind of land vehicle."

"Oh, they're a bunch of connected cars that run on rails."

"Huh! We don't have anything quite like that, it sounds a bit like a dwarven minecart. That's another species from my world, dwarves, they live underground and do a lot of mining and metalwork. Anyway, it should be easy enough to follow the train if there's tracks the whole way."

"Sometimes there's an empty men-and-children car, this far out in the sticks, so maybe you can get on no problem. Station's over there, see? We'll have a little wait for the train."

"All right. They'll want to be paid, though, I assume? I don't have any of your money."

"They don't check at this station. Or I could buy something magic off you, I have spending money."

He thinks this over. "What do you use for money, anyway? It's all metal where I'm from, and I do have some on me, it'll just look foreign."

"I have scrip connected to Soramu's account, mostly, but I also have a regular twenty-hoof bill I picked up off the street the other day and haven't remembered to deposit for her yet."

"- I might need an explanation of how any of that works, actually."

"...I have some pieces of paper that are money. Some of them would make it clear that you got them from somebody in Soramu's family but I also have one that wouldn't and I'll trade it to you for a magic thing. It'll cover a train token and then some."

"Huh, okay. I think I want to wait, though - I get my own spells back every day, but anything else magical I can't replace here."

"You can't make things be magical by casting a spell?"

"Oh. No, I can't; it's possible to do, but it's a special skill and I never learned it, it takes a workshop and I'm on the road too much of the time. All the spells I can cast myself will stop working after a while."

"It's only a twenty, maybe something temporary'd be worth it."

"Sure, let's see - I'm always partial to flying, just for fun, that one lasts fifteen minutes - I have one today that'll improve your eyesight for a couple of hours - the translation spell I mentioned, that one will last about five hours - object-finding spell - I have a couple of divinations, those don't really make good demonstrations of magic but I can spare one if you like the idea, they give information or advice about something you're thinking of doing... I wish I'd prepared a smaller summoning spell, those are fun too but the only one I have today I want to keep in case I need it. Or we could see what my food spell does for you, I took two of those for today just in case but I'm pretty sure I'll only need one."

"What do you mean, see what it does for me? Do you not decide?"