"Huh. Okay, well, if you see anything out of the corner of your eye and it looks blurry when you stare at it, call one of us? Or if you see coins on a desk and you didn't expect them to be there. Or if there are large lurking creatures – hazy, made of shadows, whatever."

"Pretending to be coins, really? I'll keep it in mind."

"They – if you're not looking particularly closely – appear to be small, round and shiny. But basically, the guidance is: if there is anything out of the ordinary, try to stay away from it until you're backed up by some other people or preferably someone who is experienced at dealing with it, i.e. a sorcerer or a town guard."

"My intuition is that your monsters wouldn't have followed you, but intuition is very much not fact. I'll keep it in mind.

"My hope is that they didn't follow, but that Los has been going around and apparently teleporting people to other dimensions, and it ate us at separate times and put us to the same place, so."

"...Great. Okay. I haven't decided if you're both making this all up yet but am leaning towards 'why would you go through all the effort, probably no'. Anyway, yes, I'll watch out for strange things."

"… I would offer to show something but the main thing I can do on such short notice is fire, so, like, no. And it's not like a good luck charm has many visible effects."

"The wind is proof enough for now. It could be some artifact of technology, but if you can also produce light objects and metal... It'd be awfully flexible for a piece of lost technology."

"Perhaps we stumbled onto a motherlode and just happened to find ourselves alone on that island at an inconvenient time."

"Found a cache of tech here in the central bands, somehow lost your ship through hilarious misfortune, decided to lie about it all for some reason? Eh. I've heard stories with farther-fetched plans that worked out. They're terribly unrealistic stories."

"I mean, it sounds like it's probably… more probable than a world with weird creatures and magic? From your standpoint?" She shrugs.

"Who knows what's possible. Maybe Earth has magic and we all forgot. Can't rule it out. Wait and see."

Smile. "I'll be back in a minute – didn't actually eat anything."

Scribble scribble in the navigation charts.

Interesting day. Does it really matter if they're from another world or pretending? (Does one or the other make them more likely to double-cross him? Pretending probably does.)

Hm.

And then Akien is back!

"Do you mind if I look around for Chi again?"

"It's passive, just looking, yes?"

"Yeah – the only visible thing is my eyes going blue."

"Then be my guest, and thanks for asking."

So he gets the bracelet out of his bag again and his eyes flash blue.

"This place definitely has far less Chi than I'm used to."

"Perhaps it will spread from you. Or perhaps this place... Cannot support it. In the latter case you should probably use what chi you have left sparingly."

He looks down at his chest. "Seems like I'm still producing it just fine? But – oh, I guess if we're the only ones producing it then it'd make sense the area's less saturated."

"More data needed, I think."

"Time will tell." Sigh.

Evara returns.

"I don't suppose you have any books? On local culture, I mean."

"Not on local culture specifically. I've got books, but I'm no anthropologist or librarian or anything."