"Hm, maybe I didn't describe it well. Every morning I get to pick spells - I get seven first-tier ones, for example, and I might take three that improve my eyesight for a while, three that let me understand any language I hear, and one special healing spell that stops a disease from getting worse that day. I don't take any basic healing spells, because I don't need to - if someone around me gets hurt, I can decide right then that I'd rather have that basic healing spell than one of the others, say the language spell. But if that doesn't happen, I get to cast the language spell instead; I don't have to guess how much healing I'm going to want and fill up on that."

"That makes it sound like you usually do healing unexpectedly? Under some kind of incidental emergency condition, not in a hospital," says Keshkun.

"Oh. Yes. We do have hospitals, but only healing clerics spend most of their time there, other kinds of clerics are usually busy with other things. I'm more likely to use my healing if I have an accident in the wilderness, or if I'm accompanying a caravan and we're attacked, or if I visit a village too small to have its own cleric and someone's been hurt recently - I'd actually lose my magic entirely if I settled down to work at a hospital, since I get it from traveling."

"Why don't people get magic from traveling?"

"I'm not sure! There is a little more to it than that, it might be that you just never thought to try the right things, or it might be that you can only start getting magic in my world or something - we have gods, which might matter. But I'll keep an eye out for anyone who seems like a potential cleric, maybe I'll be able to teach it."

"It sounds like it'd be useful," says the second male.

"Enormously," Keshkun agrees, "sometimes somebody gets hurt on a dig in the middle of nowhere and it takes a long time to get them to civilization, that sort of thing."

"We're good for that sort of thing, definitely. It's also possible to put a spell into a bottle of water to store it for later; that takes special training that I don't have, but once we figure out how to come and go between the worlds you'll be able to buy spells like that - the translation spell says 'potions' is close enough - instead of hiring someone to hang around."

"Huh, you could put those in first aid kits," she says. "You got here by accident? You aren't on a quest to find more planets to sell things to?"

"I'm not! I don't mind, obviously, but I won't be surprised if you have clerics of your own before I have any way to get home, and we won't begrudge them training just because they're from a different world."

"Are you going to bring people with you to the hummun world?"

"Sure, that's what a cleric of travel is for, after all."

"Why's that what you're for?" asks Rays.

"It's sort of - travel is the best, most important thing, right? For me, not for everybody, I do understand that, but it's still good, it's important to be able to go to new places and learn new things and see how it might be good for things to be different, to learn the kinds of things about yourself that you only learn by trying something new or being in a new place and seeing what you think of it. That's - what I'm made of, as a person, is that way of thinking and that kind of enthusiasm for life, and that's what lets me be a cleric of travel in the first place. And I see how good all of that is and of course I want to share it, the world is wrong when that's not something people can have."

"-people at home think clerics are a little weird too, sometimes. If you were wondering."

"I was," confesses Keshkun. "And your mate's all right with this? Does she travel around with you normally?"

"I don't have one, which is pretty common for clerics - everyone knows a partner will come second to our calling."

"Oh, I suppose that makes you pretty ineligible, then," says Keshkun. "Unless you had a very tolerant mate - Bav does, Soramu's very modern -"

"What about Soramu?" asks Bav, entering the apartment with a young boy.

"Very modern," repeats Keshkun. "Picked up your friends at your request, that sort of thing."

"Mother, please, just because you liked Grishaumi better -"

"I'm just saying she's very modern," says Keshkun. "You're going to magic on home now? We'll be there for dinner."

-whoops, family drama. "I'm ready if you are," he tells Bav.

"Ready, Col?" asks Bav.

"Yes Bav," says Col.

"All right, we just need to hold hands-" and shortly they're back outside Soramu's burrow. "That went well, I think. I'm not sure what I stumbled into at the end, there, though."

"Oh, I left my first mate and my mother didn't approve," says Bav. "It's not actually that unusual, she's just old-fashioned." He unfolds the door. "Soramu, can the hummun come in?"

"Sure, all right," says Soramu's voice.

"Thank you!" he calls, once he's in.

"Should I cast the food spell now, give your co-mate a chance to get started with it?"

"Yeah - Sek! Are you ready for a lot of meat to appear - I've invited my family, we've got neighbors too, we don't have to eat it all today, but if you want any of it cooked -"

"Oh - give me a few minutes, I want to get a dressing whipped up for tartare if nothing else - and rearrange the freezer -"

"Leave the freezer, it doesn't last, it'll disappear if we don't eat it in a day or so."

"- well, will our fruitcysts disappear if we gorge ourselves -"

"I can eat a lot!" cries their daughter. "Oh it's so funny looking - it doesn't smell good though -"

"We're not going to eat the hummun, we're going to eat some spren the hummun'll make by magic," says Bav.

"Yes, please don't eat me, I wouldn't like it," Raafi attempts, not very successfully, to deadpan. "Your fruitcysts will be fine; where do you want it, and what kinds of cuts?"

Apparently everyone favors different cuts; Sek comes up with a list, for their family, and a less confident list for incoming in-laws, and for their closest neighbors.

And Raafi casts.

It's quite a lot of meat, and, yes, wild, when they check.