"Well, you're about the size of a male, so that's not hard to remember, I suppose," says Bav. "Soramu's a geologist, she wouldn't've been able to help you at all." The door opens again and Bav scurries out of the way to let his mother by without her stepping on him. "Mother! This is an alien called a hummun."

Raafi scurries, too, moving much faster than is really plausible for a second or so. "Hello, ma'am."

"A hummun," she says. "Why is there a hummun in my apartment?"

"Bav brought him, Keshkun," says Rays. "Said he wanted to talk to you."

"What about?" says Keshkun.

"Well, it seems like I might be stuck here for a while - my best guess is that I got sent here in a magical accident last night, that happens sometimes in my world, and my friends may or may not be able to figure out how to get me back once I tell them about it. But if I am stuck here, I'm going to need to know how things work, and it seemed like an anthropologist might have some idea of where to start with that, or at least have a colleague who did. And I can tell you about my world in exchange, of course."

"I'm mostly focused on old civilizations of people," says Keshkun. "But figuring out what hummun are like does sound interesting and I can at least get you common knowledge. You can come in. Don't go in our nest or touch that." She points at a weird sock with a lot of holes in it that's hanging on the wall.

"Yes ma'am."

"You're wearing a lot of... stuff. What's that for?"

He can explain it again. "Humanoid cultures vary a lot from place to place, but it's common for us to cover up at least a bit, mostly for privacy but also to show off and to signal what kind of person we are or what we're doing - this is pretty typical travel gear, it's the pendant that would let people know I'm a professional traveler who gets magic from it. I have some fancier clothes with me too, if you want to see."

"A professional traveler? How does that work?"

"Well, I get magic from it, like I said - there are a few different ways of getting magic, in my world, but a personal devotion to a concept is one of them, as long as I'm living my life for exploration and learning about new places I get magic that I can use for myself or sell. The word for the type of magic-user is a cleric, and clerics of travel tend to be more independent than most kinds, other clerics usually live in groups and do things to help the people around them use their concept well. Travel clerics help people, too, we just don't stay in one place that long, we'll help people we find on the road or go from place to place doing things."

"He's planning to magic up a feast of wild spren, after taking me and Col home also by magic, I was thinking I'd leave him here and bring Col over?"

"Col's one of your boys?"

"Yes, Mother, he was staying with Soramu's brother who offered to teach him to whittle."

"Sure, why not."

"-I expect I'll get wild spren, I won't be sure until I do it. That spell's finicky sometimes."

"Well, if you don't get wild spren, you'll get domestic, right, not a pile of wooly corpses or a tree or something?" says Bav.

"Yeah. That spell always makes food," he explains to Keshkun, "and always the right sort of food for the species I'm casting for, but it won't do anything very unusual and it can be hard to make specific things for a species that eats lots of things. It does make wild game, so I'm pretty sure it'll do wild spren for you, I just haven't tried yet."

"Sounds exciting. Rays, what's for dinner here?"

"- oh, I was going to do sausage with herbs?"

"You haven't started, though? Right, then, we're going out to Soramu's to eat magic food. We'll go to a restaurant if it doesn't work, I suppose," says Keshkun.

"I'll be back in a bit," says Bav, and he lets himself out.

"That seems like it might be a good way for me to make money here, if it does make wild, am I right about that?"

"Oh, absolutely, wild spren is heinously expensive," says Rays.

"Well, that's one less thing to worry about, hopefully. Not that I'm very worried; the main kind of magic clerics can do is healing and there's always demand for that."

"Will that work on us?" wonders another male, poking his head in from a different room.

"I'll be shocked if it doesn't, it works on any species back home. Do you have something in mind?"

"Rays can't sleep in the nest with us," he says.

"I'm not injured," says Rays. "I just have a condition."

"Tell me more about it? My simplest healing does only fix injuries, but I have more complicated sorts that do other things."

"Oh, my spine was squished oddly in the egg," Rays says, "and now if I sleep in a normal position my back hurts so I sleep in that sling there." He gestures at the sock-thing.

"I'd expect a Regeneration spell to fix that right up. It's one of the more powerful ones, though, you might have to wait a few days for me to have room to prepare it. How that works is, spells come in sizes, and I get a certain number of spells of each size per day, in the morning, whichever ones I want from the spells a cleric can cast. There are nine tiers of spells in total and I can cast eight of them right now - that's a matter of experience and aptitude. But Regeneration is a seventh tier spell and I only get a couple of those a day. And then when I say 'simple healing', what I mean is that I can turn any spell I have into one that heals injuries."

"You can - turn the spells into healing - but you get whichever ones you want at the start of the day?" says Keshkun. "That seems redundant - I suppose perhaps it wasn't designed?"