Abruptly, it contains a bewildered teenager falling out of thin air!

Sploosh.

The water glows gold.

"Aaagh!" cries the splashed water-collector.

"Gaaaaahh??" splutters the bewildered teenager, rolling haphazardly to a stop on the floor next to the fountain.

The woman puts her jug down and runs away.

Pretty reasonable of her, all things considered.

Ruava takes a minute to lie on the floor catching her breath and waiting out the aftershocks of a bad nerve pain episode. When she's pretty sure there's not another flicker coming, she sits up and looks around.

Some people wearing grey uniforms with gold adornments are watching her. Murmuring to each other a bit. In a language she doesn't speak.

"Hi," she says, in a language they probably don't speak either. "I'm a little lost. Sorry I landed in your, uh, discount Lake of Gold over there."

They super do not speak that language. One of them goes over to the abandoned jug and pours a little water on Ruava's knee. It glows. They resume talking to each other about this.

Probably that's very significant if you are from around here. Probably if she had more context she'd be just as intrigued.

Do any of them seem interested in talking to her? She glances around hopefully.

They are sure looking at her but seem to expect that if she cannot speak the language talking to her is a futile exercise. One tries to gesture for her to get up and follow them.

She can do that.

This is apparently some sort of village all up and down the slope of a hill - mostly down, the spring is near the top. They are watching her REAL closely while they escort her. People are gawking out of windows. Nobody here looks like her ethnicity, or indeed looks like they've ever seen someone of her ethnicity. The escorts shoo away a little kid in a uniform like theirs except with red instead of gold accessories who gets too close for them, which is to say several yards away. They let a little kid in a green-supplemented robe get much much nearer than that though.

Being watched this closely is a little disconcerting but all things considered she can't really blame them. She takes note of the colours, and hypothesizes that there are people who when they touch the water make it turn red or green instead of gold. As for what other effects the water might have, she is concerningly short on theories.

There are also white-sashed and blue-sashed persons about.

They take her to an office with a green-person sitting behind a desk. The green-person listens to an explanation and produces a map of a world and asks Ruava a question.

She looks at the map and shakes her head.

They are confused and puzzled. Eventually after they confer further with each other the green one waves some of the gold-people away, leaving two by the door watching Ruava very seriously.

The green one starts pointing at things and naming them.

Yeah, learning the language seems like a very good place to start. She pays close attention; she'll name things back in Eivarne if they seem interested, but otherwise she can focus on picking up whatever they speak here, which seems totally unrelated to any of the languages she's heard of.

They're not all that interested in Eivarne. The person starts adding colors once a few nouns are down, and then says that Ruava is a gold [something] and those people in gold sashes are also gold [somethings] and she's a green [that thing]...

This does appear to be so. As for what that means, well...

"[something]?" she repeats back questioningly, hoping they will find some way to elaborate. She can get creative if they seem lost.

"[Something]," repeats the greensomething, nodding, and she reaches into her glass of water on her desk and dips a finger in; it turns green. Then she drinks the glass of water; it doesn't glow going down her throat but it does in her mouth.

"Green water, green [something]; gold water, gold [something]...?"

The greensomething nods. Produces the map again. Points at an island, gestures around them. Points out five dots on the island. "Green gold white red blue," she says, at each one. And then at some other dots on other continents. "No gold, no gold, no gold, no gold -" Apparently there is only gold at these five island dots.

She points to herself. "Ruava."

A gesture encompassing the entire map: "[something]. No Ruava."

A gesture at a point in the air that is off the map entirely, not even on the page: "Ruava. No [something]."

She picks up an invisible object from this location, puts it down on the island: "Ruava, gold[something]."

And then she shrugs expansively, attempting to indicate that she has now communicated just about everything she knows about this chain of events.

The greensomething does not really know what to make of that. Eventually she tells one of the goldsomethings by the door something and one runs off and comes back with a couple of blue-sashed kids. The greensomething identifies those as bluesomething children; everyone else is adults. You can only go from not being a something to being a something if you are a child.

For a moment she's as confused as they are, and then she remembers.

She attempts to get across the concept of ages, pointing at the children and counting off on her fingers how many years she attributes at a guess to each of them, then doing the same with the adults in the room. (Her guesses are imperfect but by and large very close.)

You can go from not being a something to being a something if you are... she starts counting on her fingers again. One two three four...?

Or five but not six, yes.

Yes that's what she thought.

She points to herself and counts one two three four five.

They look fairly nonplussed at this.

She shrugs acknowledgingly. Yep, it's weird! She has had a weird life.

...well. The greensomething would like to instruct her as laboriously as necessary to not do ANY goldthing. No goldthing at all till she's had lessons, okay?

She makes every effort to comprehend this message and, in return, puts in the effort to get across that she has no idea how to goldthing and doesn't intend to try until she has a clear idea of what goldthinging even does and how to do it safely.

Good.

They have some spare rooms. The goldsomethings show her to one. Okay?

Okay!

She is left alone in the spare room to collect herself or whatever.

Well that happened.

Yes it did.

What do you suppose a goldthing is?

Dangerous and important, whatever it is. Hopefully I can learn the language fast enough to figure it out before we accidentally thing a gold and it turns out their safety warnings would've been very important if only we could've understood them.

Agreed.

She can spend a while collecting herself, or whatever, and go to sleep if it's dark out by that point, or if it isn't, poke her head out of the spare room and see if anyone is interested in feeding her.

A servant is just coming by with a tray of food, actually! The servant is dressed in a completely different uniform, but is carrying a goldthing uniform in Ruava's approximate size.

She accepts both of these things, smiles, wishes she knew the local version of 'thank you', settles for saying it in Eivarne instead, and retreats into her room to eat her food and put on her goldthing uniform. They're very keen on their uniforms, these people.

The servant bows and departs once the handoff of tray and clothes has been made. The food is dumplings of some kind full of vegetables and salty meat, with a side salad.

Reasonably tasty. Also fits her impression that she has traveled to a different world with a completely different set of languages and cultures.

(And magic? It's the most obvious candidate for the meaning of goldthing, but she hasn't actually caught anyone doing any so far. Maybe it's dreadfully dangerous and reserved for special occasions, but if so, how do they stop the kids from blowing up everything in sight? She'll just have to wait and see.)

A teenage boy in the servant uniform comes by a bit after the meal to give her more language lessons. They're literate, it turns out, though before her tutor erases the slate he brings it's got much more complicated characters on it than the simple if annoyingly extensive phonetic syllabary he teaches Ruava.

Oh good, literacy.

Ruava turns out to have a phenomenal memory for languages when she's trying. She will pick up their language So Fast. And its annoyingly extensive phonetic syllabary too.

This is impressive to the servant boy! Eventually when they've put away some vocabulary, he asks "How are you four?"

What is a simple way to say this... perhaps she shouldn't bring the resurrection part into it just yet.

"I grew up a year in a season, seventeen seasons, and then stopped."

"- and stopped?" he says, slowly, sounding stunned.

"...Yes? Stopped. I am five years and a season in time, seventeen years in," she gestures to her face and body, "this."

"- stopped and not going to start?"

"Not going to start," she confirms, although she's starting to be a little concerned by how bowled over he is about it.

He is REALLY bowled over about it! "I will be right back," he says, and he leaves her with the slate and bolts.

...welp. Hopefully she is not about to be punished in some fashion for her open and trusting nature.

He comes back a bit later and, slightly nervously, resumes language lessons like nothing happened and he just had to powder his nose.

This is pretty concerning of him but she doesn't push. She will learn so much language.

Eventually there is not enough sunshine to see by. "Do you want me to get a lamp or do you want to go to sleep?" he asks.

Part of her wants to absorb the maximum amount of language immediately right now this minute, but perhaps she should not indulge that part. "Sleep," she says. "Thank you. More tomorrow?"

"More tomorrow!" he confirms, and he ducks out.

She is... moderately successful... at sleeping, and in the morning bright and early she puts on her uniform and pokes her head out in search of breakfast.

Breakfast is waiting for her on a tray outside her door. It's fruit compote and rice.

Somebody in a fancy nonuniform is holding hands with a redsomething and exchanging mutually besotted looks is led by the redsomething into a room next door. They shut the door behind them, giggling slightly.

...well that just happened. Hmm.

She eats her fruit compote and rice. Is her new friend—she should really remember to introduce herself—coming back anytime soon for more language lessons? If not, she may have to decide whether it's a good idea to wander around.

New friend comes back after she has eaten breakfast! If she prompts him for his name it's Tsemo.

She tells him her name is Ruava.

Her first question of the day is, "What is a [something]?"

"[Somethings] can do things other people can't do. Different things for different colors."

Score one for the magic hypothesis. Now, how to phrase her other questions within the limitations of established vocabulary...

"Does it—hurt, to do the things? They told me to not do any gold."

"It..." He doesn't seem sure what to say. "It's dangerous... you should wait for a lesson with a goldmage."

"I am waiting!" she promises. She can stop pestering him about touchy subjects and go back to soaking up the language like a well-educated sponge.

He came with a vocabulary agenda today since she's going so quick. He seems to be concentrating a lot on time words and things to do with speed and travel.

That's... well, there are a number of things that could mean. She learns it all and waits to find out.

He doesn't focus exclusively on those, anyway, he also covers things like "instinct" and "love" and "queen" and "disease". He goes and gets them lunch at lunchtime and chats less directedly with her over lunch. "You're very quick at Cefaxi," he says.

"I'm trying very hard!"

"I can tell! I think this afternoon I might tell them that you're ready for an actual lesson that isn't just in the language."

"I'd like that."

"You don't know how you got here? At all?"

She nods. "I..." simplify, simplify "...fell down and hurt myself, so I wasn't looking. And then I fell down again and I was in the water."

"- but from where?"

"Akaiet."

She grabs some of the paper he's been teaching her to write on and draws a respectable rendition of the continent she's familiar with. It looks nothing like any local landmass.

"This is Eianvar," she says, indicating the whole thing. "This," she draws a dot perched amid the peaks of the central mountain range, "is Akaiet, where I live. I was there and then I fell down and then I didn't move but I fell down again somehow and then I was here."

"Why?"

"I don't know! I would like to know but I don't!"

"Okay." He shakes his head. "Well, you're here now. And a goldmage. Because you are somehow four."

"Someone wanted me to grow up very quickly, so she made that happen. She—can do things most people can't, but not in a colours way."

"- not in a colors way?"

"In Eianvar there isn't water that makes people into somethings. We have people who can do things most people can't, but a person either can or can't do those things, nothing makes them that way."

"They're just born like that?" He hasn't said 'born' but perhaps it's clear from context.

She nods.

"Huh... very different. What can they do? Besides grow you."

"Different people can do different things. There are a lot."

"Are you one?"

"...yes but no. I can't do my things; she stopped me."

"- how did she stop you?"

"That's one of her things."

He nods slowly. "- but how, what is the thing."

"She can... do things to people. Stop someone growing or dying or seeing or hearing or moving or doing things."

"Could a whitemage fix you?"

"What do whitemages fix?"

"Whitemages fix people who are injured or sick."

She shakes her head. "I don't think it's the same."

"Greenmage?" he wonders. "They fix it if you can't do something because your head won't let you."

"...maybe. I don't know."

"You - don't get old, right, you are five now but you are stopped..."

"I am stopped. I will not grow any older and I will not die."

"If a whitemage or a greenmage can maybe fix it it's worth it then."

"I don't want to—tell someone to do a dangerous thing for me that might not work—maybe when I know more words and I can say better what she did."

"Maybe," he agrees. "Not today."

Nod. "Not today."

"Why did she have you to do stuff to?"

"...I don't know how to say."

Back to language lessons, then.

Back to language lessons!

And at midafternoon he goes and gets a gold-uniformed person to talk to her about gold magic.

"I'm Tse Avimi. Tsemo says you won't get old and die," she says.

"That's right."

"Can you die at all."

"...mostly no. Not by being old or injured or sick. The person who stopped me from dying could change what she did and then I could, and maybe someone else could change what she did and then I could, but if nothing changes it, then no."

"...okay. There are three kinds of goldmagic. You will be very good at two of them and must never ever ever do the third one."

"Okay. I don't know how to not do it but maybe you are going to teach me."

"Children sometimes do it without really meaning to. I'm not sure... to what extent you are five and to what extent you are seventeen."

"Mostly I'm... someone who has been seventeen for a year. If I know what to not do I can not do it."

The goldmage gives her an assessing look. Finally she says, "Gold magic is time travel. Does that make sense?"

"...yes. Why is not dying—where does dying come into it—"

"If you go back, there are two of you. And if you do that, no one else can go back."

"...oh," she says. "And—when one of you dies there are not two anymore, and then—? Yes, I should not do that."

"The other things you can do but should wait till you have the lessons on how and why and when. Even though you don't seem like you'll have to pay for it."

She nods. "Yes. The other two are... going forward, and...?"

"Making everything stop around you."

Nod nod. "I will not try those until I have the lessons."

"They cost - amount of time you have left to live, but -"

"Yes. I have... forever."

"But can't be killed, so. Don't go back."

"I won't," she says very seriously.

"Good. You're very quick at the language, is that magic too?"

"No, I am just very quick at words and thinking."

"You can wander the Temple-Guild grounds if you wish. Tsemo's been assigned to you, if you want more lessons or anything else."

She nods. "I'll keep learning the language as much as I can."

"I'll send you Tsemo and he can show you where to find him if you want him. Has this room been all right?"

"The room is all right."

Should she ask? ...she's gonna ask.

"What do redmages do?"

"Redmages love people," says Tse Avimi.

Yeah that sounds about right. She nods. A more thorough explanation can wait until she's more solidly fluent. (So, about another couple of weeks at this rate.)

"Greenmages change what things are easy or hard for people to do - not like making them stronger, like making them think things are interesting," Tse Avimi goes on, "and whitemages heal, and bluemages see things long ago or far away."

"And what do they all cost?"

"Greenmages forget things non-mages don't forget - to breathe, if they do too much. Whitemages are sickly and have trouble recovering from injuries too. Bluemages can't think about people normally."

"Can't... think about people...?"

"It's hard to explain even when you know the language very well. You can meet some, if you like."

"I'd like that. I think lessons are more important though."

"Yes. It might make sense to tutor you privately, if you aren't - five in your mind you'd be much older than all the other students of a normal course and also they have slightly different constraints and grew up with Cefaxi."

Nod nod. "Yes, that makes sense. I am not five in my mind."

"We do continue classes past that age but by seventeen most mages have been working for years."

"That makes sense, if they start so young, and have to learn fast anyway to be safe... Tsemo thought maybe a greenmage could help me with—some things I can't do—but if what greenmages do is change how people think about things then I think they can't."

"What is preventing you from doing things?"

"The same person who stopped me from dying can stop other things. It's... do you know the thing where sometimes someone is injured and they can't move their legs, or feel them? It's like that, but with no injury. Things that fix injuries don't fix it."

"...a whitemage still might be able to do it. At least, I don't know for sure they can't."

"Maybe. I don't know. I don't think so, but if someone wants to try..."

"What would you be able to do, if it worked?"

"I can make light. If I try very hard and think very carefully I can make light in shapes that look like things. I know I should be able to do more than that but I don't know exactly what because I was stopped before I found out. It would be—something about other people, like fixing injuries or making things easier—that is the kind of not-mage I am."

"If you might be able to heal people without a cost if a whitemage healed you, it would be very much worth it to the Temple-Guild to make the attempt."

"That makes sense. I don't think it will work but you can try it."

"We'll want to wait a while before having you in a room with any whitemages. They get sick easily and people who've been traveling are riskier than others for the first few weeks. But it's easily worth the try if it may help."

She nods. "Okay."

"Is there anything you need besides more language lessons that you might not be able to get from Tsemo?"

"I don't think so."

"Then I'll give you a few days to settle in and get comfortable with speaking Cefaxi and come back for goldmagic lessons, and if you don't seem sick after a few weeks we'll try the whitemage."

"Okay."

Tse Avimi departs. Tsemo is back after not too long.

All in all, she thinks she likes this place.

She should maybe poke around a little more in search of unpleasant surprises, though. She asks Tsemo about geography and cities and countries and governments, how Cefax is ruled, what neighbours it has.

Cefax has a Queen! She's very popular. It's an island but over on the mainland there's some countries, like Niohain, who the Queen has an alliance marriage with, and Caplare, things are a little tense there, and Mocorne, and he doesn't know of others but presumably there are some.

(And it sounds like Cefax's Queen is very popular in a more legitimate way than Eianvar's Emperor. Good to know.)

What's tense about Caplare...?

Tsemo doesn't know much about it. A now-dead goldmage and her redmage husband were involved but the redmage doesn't remember anything about it. She could ask his attendant? Tsemo doesn't think it's still a major issue.

She thinks she'll skip it for now but she thanks him for telling her. On to further education in basic facts about the world and their relevant vocabulary. Is money a thing? What are the words for food and the things food is made of? Who makes it? How does the Temple-Guild work?

Money is a thing; Cefax uses riaxi. Here is a lot of food vocabulary. Servants make it. The Temple-Guild is a bunch of mage families and their servants (like Tsemo). Mage services are extremely expensive, intentionally, so they can keep up a high standard of living even for mages who have dwindled and can't work any more. There's a pretty high servant to mage ratio so each mage needs to in their working years manage to earn enough to account for themselves, some servants, and some fraction of any mages who don't manage to earn up to par.

"...I guess I will not be like a normal mage that way."

"- I think they will still charge a lot of money for your services, they don't want to drive all the other temple-guilds into poverty. Even if you can do it a lot."

"Yes. I only mean that I won't dwindle. —do goldmages normally stop working, or do they just work until they die?"

"They stop working if it's likely that using magic again would kill them outright; they wouldn't be able to finish a job that way."

Thoughtful nod.

"And redmages keep working their whole lives, they just stop taking new clients when they're dwindled."

"What... is the work that they do...? I only know that they love people."

"- that's what they do. When they touch somebody, they know all about them, and they love them, and the the person they're touching can feel it."

"So people pay to... touch them? And they can keep doing it after they're dwindled—but not take new ones—so touching someone new is where the cost happens?"

"Right. Don't touch redmages."

"I will definitely not touch any redmages!"

"- I mean, you can if one offers, they don't have to sell all their capacity for money, but treat it very seriously."

"I don't think I would like being known like that unless I knew the person who knew me."

"Yeah, it's usual to be more than passingly acquainted first, they can't take it back. You can probably land one if you want one, though, red-gold is a common combination."

"Maybe if I meet one I get along with."

(But she's pretty sure she won't.)

"Do you want me to show you around the Temple-Guild?"

"Sure!"

So around they go, giving white- and redmages a lot of space. There are houses, full of mage families who don't look related and live-in servants, and servants' quarters, and common kitchens, and shrines, and stables, and storerooms, and a wall of names of mages from the whole history of the temple-guild.

She glances at the wall of names and tries to guess how many years of history it represents.

Hundreds, looks like.

"That's a lot of names."

"The temple-guild's been around a long time. Most of the godsprings in Cefax were discovered even longer ago than that, but the temple-guild system emerged later, I think? I don't remember for sure."

"...who decides how many new mages there will be?" she wonders. "What happens when you run out of space on the wall?"

"We could build some more wall. The senior mages decide based on what we can accommodate."

Thoughtful nod. More tour?

More tour! Laundry, garden, classrooms, hospital area.

Things are so interestingly different here than at home. She tries to identify the plants in the garden and mostly fails, but that would be expected even if they were all common in Eianvar, and nothing looks blatantly alien.

The servants in the garden incline their heads politely. The bluemages who are gardening too completely ignore her after looking up to see what the noise is.

At some point she will figure out what is up with bluemages but now is not that time.

"They're like that," Tsemo says apologetically. "It's not worth trying to make them be polite."

"It's okay," she says. "What's 'polite'—?"

"Oh, saying things and acting ways that help people feel like you are paying attention to them and want them to feel okay."

"Oh. Why don't bluemages do that? Tse Avimi said they can't think about people normally..."

"That's why, yeah. Some of them still do some things on reflex, they got very used to saying 'thank you' before they dwindled and kept that, but they can't decide to, they can't think people would rather they thanked them."

"...that sounds... scary. Scary to be, not scary to be near," she clarifies, and then thinks about it for a second, and amends, "...a little scary to be near."

"Oh, they won't hurt you. They might - fix your collar without asking, or not get out of your way, but it doesn't make them violent. Some of them get less violent if they were as kids."

"Really? They don't—push someone who walks in front of them? Close doors on people?"

"I guess maybe one would do that if they dwindled a lot very young. They don't start scheduling them till they have good habits."

She nods slowly.

"I would not like to be a bluemage," she says. "It's... I think that thinking about people is where most of the good things in life are."

"I think some kids hope for it. They live a full life and they're - comfortable in a way greenmages aren't - and don't have clients like redmages."

"That makes sense but I am very thinking about people."

"Well, you're a goldmage so you'll be fine."

Meanwhile,

In complete ignorance of events happening in other universes, Ruava nods acknowledgingly. "People don't choose which kind to be, then? People are sometimes a kind they're scared of being?"

"They don't choose. If a kid can't stand the idea of any kind they don't take them."

"My not-mage thing, people are born with, but we're born with a kind we're - not scared of. I'm very thinking about people and my magic is the magic that is about people and that is... how things are."

"That sounds nice."

How, using her current vocabulary, does she explain...

"...sometimes, someone thinks about people a lot, and should maybe... think about them... less."

"...I guess?" he says, clearly not having any examples in mind but accepting it as the sort of thing that probably happens.

Maybe she can try again later with more words.

"Who has magic there? Are there springs?"

"No springs. We don't know what makes some people be born with magic and not others. Sometimes it's people in the same family—my parents both had magic—but sometimes not."

"Huh. Mages here have magic families but they're all adopted."

"That makes sense if you have the kids first and then make them magic after, I guess... do mages sometimes have not-adopted kids?"

"They're not supposed to. Sometimes it happens anyway."

"Why not?"

"Goldmages lose the baby if they use magic. Blues get - sick of being pregnant, they'll take something to stop. Greens have weird health problems sometimes, whites have, uh, less-weird health problems. Reds could but they don't because the other mages don't. But sometimes a male mage will get a servant pregnant, or a redmage will forget her Seedlessness and her attendant won't remind her, and it's not too big a deal."

Thoughtful nod.

"So you shouldn't get pregnant, just in case. I can get you Seedlessness, we keep a lot around, enough that you can take it even if you aren't planning to sleep with anyone."

"Oh, I can't get pregnant, that's one of the things I'm stopped from doing."

"Oh. If you're sure I guess you can skip the Seedlessness. But if that might ever - stop - then you might want some anyway."

"I'm sure."

"It doesn't taste very good," he says agreeably.

"If there's like a rule that everyone has to take it even if they think they have a really good reason not to, that's okay and I will, I just... really am very sure."

"No, there's not a rule like that."

"Okay then."

"I think you've seen everything in the Temple-Guild now."

"Okay. Thank you for the tour. Back to language lessons while I wait for someone to teach me magic?"

"Sure!" And he teaches her more Cefaxi.