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companion, who will be with you forever
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There is a park in the middle of a suburb. It's a small park, a loop of paved pink sidewalk around a play area with a jungle gym rising from springy ground. Around the outside there are benches and flowers, a single bird feeder, a drinking fountain, a little free library with books in a language that feels like it should be Indo-European, maybe Germanic. The skyscrapers of a nearby city are visible in the distance.

It's just past noon on a school day and there aren't, at this moment, any children in the park. There is one adult, though, sitting on a bench with a book and a notebook, alternating between reading the former and writing in the latter in three alphabets.

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Two young women standing back to back, one in white, one in red, holding swords, appear.

The one in red - collapses - the one in white spins when she feels her companion slump, alarmed, and pulls her ring off her finger, transforming it in the process into a glowing white bauble wrapped in aesthetically unharmonious black wire, and waves the bauble around, squinting at it. "San Niang?" she says urgently to her fallen friend. "San Niang -"

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She's not in great shape. "Too - too far -"

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"- your gem? Your gem's right on your hair like it always is -"

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San Niang shakes her head. Gives a shudder. "I'll - be all right. Where - are we?"

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"I have no idea. It doesn't seem like a witch..."

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Well, that seems like something that needs dealt with urgently. She shuts her book and turns to a fresh page in her notebook. "Hello. What brings you two here and do you need anything?"

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"We're magical girls. We were fighting a witch, and a familiar appeared out of nowhere and attacked us, and now we're here, and San Niang doesn't seem - well."

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San Niang has sat up by this point but still has not assayed standing.

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She has a lot of questions about that but the medical emergency should really come first. "There's a payphone not far over that way." She gestures over that way. "I can go call an ambulance if it's urgent - I can try laying on hands but that's never worked that well for me before - is it urgent?"

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"No. I'll be fine."

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"San Niang, you can't even stand up!" She checks the condition of the glowing red jewel on the end of San Niang's braid. "You look like you have plenty of magic, can you heal yourself from whatever's wrong?"

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"I will be fine, jiejie."

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...And no sooner does she get to stop worrying about the medical emergency than she has to start worrying about the magic. Which might be fine; omniglossia only goes so far and some languages don't distinguish miracles from witchcraft. And it's a good sign that they're talking about it openly either way. "I'm glad you'll be fine. Um, would you mind clarifying what you mean by 'magic'?"

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"...the kind magical girls have." She squashes her bauble back into a ring on her finger and taps it.

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"I don't know what a magical girl is and haven't seen jewelry do that before."

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"...I can't demonstrate very much, most of my powers are sealed away."

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"That's... I have no idea what to say to that so let's go with 'that's fine'. I was just wondering where you get it from, I'm not great at checking that kind of thing on the fly."

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"These days there's a form you can fill out online? We weren't doing things that way when I made my wish though. I got - headhunted, you could say. San Niang, what's your story -"

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"Oh, San Niang would not want to bore jiejie."

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"That is... probably illegal here? I think. I don't recognize it and even if I did I'm not going to go run to the authorities about it right now, but you should know evil magic is illegal."

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"...what do you do about witches without magical girls, if you think magical girls are evil?"

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"...I... am not sure how you divide up the supernatural in - um, I'm an omniglot and never actually learned whatever this language is. Supernatural abilities are legally classified based on whether you get them from, say, a devil, or from trying to impose your will on the world, and they encourage you to be more selfish and angry and petty, or if you get them from, say, meditating on wanting to have compassion for the whole world, and they encourage you to be in a state of mind where you remember other people's inherent worth. It sounds like you're talking about something orthogonal to that?"

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"It's English, but I know others if that would be better? I've never heard of an omniglot though. Magical girls get our powers from making wishes? I do meditate a lot but it doesn't give me magic."

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"That... sounds evil? Maybe depending on the wish. It's not a category I've ever used, anyway. And what is a witch?"

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"They're also called monsters? They're pocket dimensions invisible to normal people that kill people near them."

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"I don't think we have those here but if we did someone with a miraculous ability might try to deal with it, or we'd try to get the attention of an angel."

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"Ah. Do you think either of those sorts of people can get us home?"

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"I would imagine so but I'm starting to think you're not from this planet so it might not be easy."

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"It does seem very different here. Uh, magical girls hunt witches. And we need the things they leave behind when they die. Or we will ourselves die. San Niang, can you detransform - save your magic -"

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"Jiejie is good to worry about San Niang." She glows, until she's just a silhouette in bright red sparkling with silver, and then dims, with a ring on her finger and the hanfu gone in favor of a neatly tailored grey suit.

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"Our options here, non-exclusive, are to go through the usual bureaucratic channels and pass your case on to... I genuinely don't know but maybe one of the people who bless ships and planes. That'll take a while and I don't know how long a while because I've never had to do that before but I'd guess we can schedule something in a couple days. Or we can pray about it together, I'd try Saint Sy first but if that doesn't work we can escalate from there, and that has the potential to get a response immediately but the answer might be no. If we're delayed in that we still might be able to get you to see someone who might be able to heal you of your, uh, hunger for dead witch things. Or, I don't really know what I'm talking about and might be barking up the wrong tree here, I am not completely sure your magic isn't itself evil and if you're stuck in some kind of violent cycle of evil magic that's definitely possible to break out of although I can't guarantee it wouldn't cost your earthly lives. Up to you what to try in what order."

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"Such inspiring confidence," murmurs San Niang.

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"San Niaaaang," chuckles Xie Lian. "Um, I don't think either of us really knows what you're talking about? I have only been in Christian churches when they made a particular point of offering free food, and in my experience the Sikhs are better at that. But I think I might have noticed if any of the things you are talking about worked very well for dealing with magical girl problems."

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"My understanding of 'Christian churches' comes entirely from the implications of the definition so I have no idea if I've ever been in one. How would I tell?"

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"Are you not Christian? I thought it was Christians who did - saints and angels."

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"I think you're using a categorization system that's sufficiently pervasively weird that just having some sense of what individual words mean isn't leading to comprehension. What's the type of thing that a Christian is, what are other examples of that type of thing and what makes them different...?"

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"Christians are a religion? They have a Bible and pastors and churches and there are various kinds of them. Sikhs are a different religion and they have gurus and gurdwaras and don't cut their hair."

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"We have a lot of religions here but most of the legally protected ones involve saints or angels, I think? And it's not your experience that the religion you know that involves those is useful - what kind of not useful, like, none of its followers can heal people, or...?"

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"Not unless they're magical girls. Or doctors."

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"And magical girls are... the religion whose followers can sometimes heal people...?"

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"We're not a religion."

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"Okay. Anyway, you seemed dubious about asking for help, but I don't have a lot of other options to offer you. I'm not sitting on a perfectly natural spaceship and it seems really unlikely that you're both telling the truth and from this planet although we can find a map to check just in case."

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"You sort of made it sound like someone might decide to kill us for being magical girls."

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"That's so last century. You would almost definitely not get worse than fined and banned from teaching kids even if your magic is actually evil. And I'm still not convinced I should tell anyone about it and if you don't either then how are you thinking they'll find out?"

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"...if we went and asked for help? Which to be clear we should still probably do, because I don't think we can get home on our own, and we will magically starve here."

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"...I think if we go talk to someone, I say 'I've literally never heard their language before and they keep talking about alien things and need to get home', and they pray for you and possibly touch or anoint you, that shouldn't result in it coming up. It's more likely to come up if we can't get you home and need to try a healer but they don't usually ask too many questions and you couldn't answer anyway. If we pray, of course the angels will know, but the angels would never want to hurt you."

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"Okay. It sounds like we should do that. San Niang, how long will our seeds last -?"

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"Mm, at least a week. San Niang can never be too sad in jiejie's company." With some effort, San Niang gets to her feet. She's steady once she's up.

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"A week's probably enough time to try everything, and if you end up needing a place to stay for that long I can probably make that happen. So, bureaucracy first or prayer first?"

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"I guess you can try praying first."

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"I can, huh? If you don't want to do it together I'll try that on the way to the payphone and save some time." She is moderately suspicious about this but willing to work with them.

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"I don't know how!"

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She just stares for a moment, having never before considered the possibility of a nondisabled adult simply not knowing how to pray. "...Oh."

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"And even if I knew how from home, I don't know how it's done here. It's different in different places, at home."

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"...I'm not totally sure if teaching you is a higher priority than getting you home but my guess is that it is, and it shouldn't take long if you want to take a minute to learn now?"

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"...sure, I guess that sounds fine."

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"The thing you do is contemplate... you're not going to be able to reach a specific person without having ever heard anything about them, so just contemplate that which loves everyone, and how it loves you, and anywhere your values are the same or any ways you want to be more like that. And if you notice it watching you back, try contemplating your problems and how solving them would affect your ability to achieve any goals you share with that which loves everyone. Some people, uh, personify it, which isn't wrong of them but... eh, it's complicated and that part doesn't matter too much to what we're doing here."

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"Huh. Okay."

She sits in a meditative posture, glances worriedly at San Niang, and attempts this. At her best Xie Lian - well, 'loves everyone' is a bit strong, but wants the best for everyone, wants to find the good in everyone. ...except Bai Wuxiang but that's not even actually a person, and at any rate one exception is still pretty close. She is trying to get help from a... divine thing of some kind, which loves everyone, which reportedly includes Xie Lian even though she was not in this universe a minute ago. Though this is also true of babies and anything that loves everyone probably loves babies, that's not even hard. Anyway she does not want San Niang to starve, San Niang is her friend and also is already having some kind of problem related to how they got here and should instead be okay.

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There is something there, or maybe there's someone there. It feels too big to be someone, like if all the people she'd met were blades of grass or individual leaves and this is an entire tree. It doesn't, or they don't, start listening; that is the sort of thing that entities need to do if they are ever anything less than perfectly aware of everything. It's hard to perceive much of whatever or whoever this is; no human has enough attention to see more than a tiny fraction at once. Most people who've seen it say it's beautiful; some people say it's entrancing, that it draws them in, that just to catch a glimpse of it is one of the best experiences they've ever had.

At any rate, Xie Lian is loved. Not in a way that involves anyone feeling anything recognizable as affection, but she feels just a little less tired and run-down, and this - whatever - is capable of having her back. Wanting the best for everyone and wanting to find the good in everyone seem a little easier, as if it's marginally less tempting to be petty, as if it'd take marginally less effort to not give up on someone.

Death is always avoidable in this world. The entity does not think San Niang needs to worry about it, or that people need to worry about it on San Niang's behalf. ...That might be more reassuring if it were clear the entity ever did think anything a human might recognize as a thought, or endorse anything a human might describe as worry.

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"Oh, that's neat," says Xie Lian, "uh, it doesn't think we need to worry but I'm not sure what it would have had to say about it if we did need to worry."

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"You get more concrete sense and more... recognition that you might want to talk about counterfactuals or generalities... out of angels and saints, especially saints, but they all take longer to sum up well enough to reach them."

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"All right. Thank you for teaching me."

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"Of course, you're welcome. Is the plan still to try the ship and plane people next?"

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"What would those people be doing, precisely?"