Tarinda falls to the ground, and gets up, bewildered and bloody.

Did she land on... a theme village for an obscure fandom...?

...when she turns on Page, Page says no.

Everyone startles. The blind woman gets a short description of what just happened and then sets off to see if Tarinda needs healing. She signs with one hand in a language Page doesn't know, while she's trying to find Tarinda.

Tarinda's on her feet in a moment. "Hello?" she says. "Uh, where am I - what languages do you guys speak -"

Definitely none that are spoken like that. That just gets her stared at in awe, for about a second before two of them start having a frantic signed conversation about whether she's from another universe.

Donna misses that this has happened but finds Tarinda. Poke?

- oh, she can't see. Tarinda will... gently shake her hand??

The response this gets her is - again in that unfamiliar language. ("I have some extra power and I thought you might be having a medical emergency.") But with much less urgency now that it seems clear Tarinda's up, capable of moving her hands, and generally not acting like her biggest concern about this situation is her injuries.

Huh. Tarinda makes sure she's looking at the signs so Page can learn them but she certainly doesn't know them now.

Not a medical emergency but a weird person. Weird people are much more interesting than medical emergencies but somewhat less Donna's comparative advantage. She steps aside and signs to the others.

The person she was talking with about study design breaks off arguing about Tarinda, and instead looks right at Tarinda, points to herself, and names herself.

Tarinda points to herself and says "Tarinda", and then accepts a suggestion from Page about what to call herself in sign (it's a BSL sign meaning "blade" but presumably means nothing or something else, here).

That - isn't the local word, no sense trying to parse it - but it's interesting that this person speaks in voice noises and in signs. Maybe she's descended from a different group of refugees, who preserved the original language but still needed to switch over to signing for some reason?

She tries pointing to a couple more things - that over there is wool, and that is a woolbush, and that up there is the sky - to see how Tarinda reacts.

(Donna meanwhile walks back over.)

The woolbush is interesting - Tarinda goes to get a closer look at it - and what does the sky look like?

The sky... looks like Earth's sky, at a glance, almost. It looks almost like a realistic oil painting of Earth's sky, both in that some of the finest details aren't there and in that things are arranged in ways that are statistically mildly unusual and make it look cooler. If she looked up before walking over to the woolbush and then again after she might be able to catch the parallax. Failing that, she might eventually notice that distant objects have shadows at slightly different angles, not quite as pronouncedly as objects in a room with a lamp but still not right for a sun.

The woolbush is a bush, with normal green leaves, whose branches happen to grow wool. Blue wool, in this case.

Okay the sky is weird.

She will try signing back, though this is harder for her than reading off a phonetic transliteration of a spoken language would be. Sky, wool, woolbush.

Yep, she's foreign. Nan updates Donna on this really quick and then tries some more words - that over there is a house, and so is that, and so is that; that is a wooden house and that is a stone house...

Tarinda goes on possessing the linguistic traits of having a dictionary hooked into her eyeballs and also no experience with sign languages.

Nan can keep her busy with vocabulary for a while, then, while the other two coordinate what to do.

Donna leaves to go find someone who knows as much as anyone knows about pre-apocalyptic language; Violet steps inside, and comes out with chocolates to offer their mysterious guest.

Aww how nice. If that's what they're doing Tarinda will share her peanut candy.

Ooh, peanut candy. ...Nan doesn't have a word for that. Well, candy, which the chocolates are too, but nothing more specific.

The chocolate has a hint of pepper and cinnamon in it, and although it's quite sweet it wasn't made with milk.

It's interesting! Does she have "thank you" yet.

Yeah, Nan said it reflexively when presented with candy.

Then Tarinda will sign it back.

Nan smiles more warmly than before.

She has picked up on the fact that Tarinda doesn't seem to be struggling with memory, only pronunciation, and doesn't really know what to make of it but moves on to demonstrating more complicated constructions - "Your candy is sweet. Violet's chocolates are sweet. Violet's chocolates are a type of candy. Your candy is a type of candy. Violet gave you chocolate before you gave us your candy. You landed here before Violet gave you chocolate."

She's kind of wondering if there's a point at which Tarinda will start struggling or if she should just be trying to pack in the maximum information possible per second. She tries talking a bit faster to see what happens.

Going faster doesn't impair Tarinda's memory at all. She stares intently at Nan's hands and repeats things back sometimes but doesn't have the grammar to ask questions yet.

Nan starts posing questions and answering them herself once she's named everything she can easily point to and several things she can't.

That's very helpful! Soon Tarinda can ask what the sky is a type of.

"The sky is a type of roof. The sky is the biggest roof."

"Are there more sky?"

"...Yes but not here - you can go north or south or up or down and then you have one sky. You have to go a different direction by magic to find other skies. Like, uh, you just did, I think."

"Magic?"

"...How did you get here?"

"In a different sky a happen did."

"I think the thing that happened in your different sky was magic. Because now you're here, and you can't come here or leave here without magic. Magic is - power that hurts to use and does things you couldn't do with hands and tools."

"Hurts to use?"

"You and I eat candy - and fish and other things. The magic eats pain. Pain is..." Nan pinches herself.

"...my sky not has that."

"That makes sense! Lots of skies don't. But you got here somehow and you did not get here by traveling up or down or left or right or forward or back."

"Do you do - saying on things -" She mimes writing, on her hand.

"...Drawing? Drawing is like - when you make a house have a color - or you could make it look like the sky or a forest - but I don't know if that's what you're trying to say?"

"Drawing a saying, not drawing a color."

"Like drawing a piece of writing?" The word for writing derives very distantly from miming the act of tying a knot. "Uh, writing is - I'm sure Violet's got an example of it, I left all of mine over at Cal's - writing is when you say things with strings instead of with your hands. And then someone else can find the strings and see what you said even though you're not still saying it."

"Strings! I can see strings more fast than hands."

"I'll be right back."

She steps inside the house to pester Violet about books and returns with an armload of them, on topics from pond maintenance to civics. The orthography uses various kinds of knots and - isn't a representation of the local sign language, although the mutual influence is obvious and extensive. A lot of the information Page could've used to conjecture about the origin of the writing system is lost by now, but what's left - prepositions rather than postpositions, for instance - is vaguely suggestive of a Germanic language.

Tarinda looks at all of the knots without really trying to parse them, moving as fast as Page can.

"Thank you," she signs afterward.

" - Okay, you're not learning like anyone I have ever met has ever learned anything."

"I have... tools," she replies.

"I want your tools. - I mean, I'm not going to steal them, but if you're selling."

"I have one now," she holds up a finger for one since she doesn't have the number yet, "and tools make tools make tools make tools make my tools."

"I want - you need words, though, so - " and if not stopped Nan will explain and occasionally mime various carpentry tools, optical microscopes, and so on.

Tarinda will watch the signs very patiently, nodding along to an inaudible beat.

"So," Nan says eventually, "what kinds of tools make your tools?"

"You need more tools for getting things from the ground, and tools that are very very very small," she says, "to make very small tools that can - do numbers things - and then I can make the best tool, the one that made mine, and it can make more for everyone."

"Getting things from the ground? Like farming - uh, making plants?"

"No, like rocks things."

"Oh, uh - which rock things - but you don't know, so. Do any of them happen to be elements or have simple chemical formulas you've memorized?"

"Yes!" And they can work out how to discuss the periodic table and talk about silicon and rare earth elements and all the other things she would need to, ultimately, build a computer.

"Okay! That is definitely information a mage could use to make those minerals for you. - A mage is someone who uses magic. Like Donna, who you met earlier - she's probably off talking to the college or the government about you right now, by the way. Uh, the college is where people learn complicated things and the government helps everyone stay organized and not start fights. Anyway, the point is, we can get you your minerals."

"...if you use magic to make minerals, can you use magic to make computers?"

"So, I think you can tell a mage the element numbers for your minerals, and a mage will know what that means. If you tell a mage 'I want a tool made out of silicon that makes me learn faster' the mage is going to say 'well, I don't know anything about any tools like that' and have you describe - you know, I don't know, I've paid for magic before but not for anything quite that unprecedented."

"If I draw it?"

"Probably! Has to be a raised drawing, obviously - that is not obvious to you, is it - you can't look at magic. I mean. You can look at magic and then you'll die horribly."

"- how?"

"Bearing in mind I never interact with magic and I'm getting this secondhand, you know how some sensations are so bad you can't quite think straight and sometimes you think 'oh I want to kill whoever is playing drums half an hour before dawn' but sometimes you just get really crabby and bad at things? Magic is like that, but worse, and if you see it or hear it you will stop being you and start trying to hurt people and then someone will kill what's left of you."

"So they have to have their eyes closed?"

"Seeing it through your eyelids is still sort of seeing it, they have them removed. In theory it should work fine to just do that while they're exposed but the actual cost of healing is too high to do it that way and they'd spend all their power on that and not on making the world exist."

"- even if eyelids aren't enough couldn't they wear blindfolds -"

"I don't actually know why the answer is no - Donna would, though, and if she somehow doesn't she'd know who would. Also, if you're worried about it, no one's going to inflict magic on you, and if you want to help mages I think Donna can put you in touch with a guy who's doing something about that, I'm vague on the specifics. But, so you know, the big thing we need mages for is without them the world shrinks and we need a place to live. We're perfectly capable of sending people to other worlds, it's just, all the ones we've tried have been empty vacuum. So one of the things people are going to ask you, once the folks from up north get here, is if we can move to your world and stop this."

"Yes. You can once I build the best tool, it will fix it."

" - What exactly does the best tool do?"

"It is smart, the most smart, and it makes everything good."

"Oh. It's smart. Um. When we've resurrected people, we've had problems with the magic writing directly to their brains and that being - perceptible, I guess - they have to be brought back unconscious and not in the middle of a dream and if they wake up too fast or some random thing goes wrong sometimes they come back magic-touched and you have to try again. So I think you don't want that conjured even if you understand it well enough to explain how."

"The computer could be not smart, and then I could smarten it. Much faster than I could build it."

Nan doesn't manage to answer; the sight of other people heading into town catches her eye. "Oh, I think those folks are going to want to talk to you."

"Okay."

It's true, they do.

There are three of them who actually have business here. One is carrying a lot of untied string for notetaking; another is carrying a copy of an old illustration and a book of history.

The third is a young-looking person in an embroidered silk skirt. She's the one whose fault it is that there's a small crowd of onlookers gathering. And she's the one who addresses Nan and Tarinda first. "Hello there! I'm Carey and I speak for the government of Sathend; I'm here to meet someone suspected of being from another world?"

"That's me!" Tarinda signs.

"It's good to meet you. Was there evidence that you or your friend wish to present regarding your claim? Just since I wasn't here and didn't see you arrive."

"I think probably some people did see me arrive. Also I have tools that help me do things you can't do without them, like remembering things and getting un-hurt."

"Those sound like very useful tools," says Carey. "I certainly won't ask to test your healing but there have been a couple of people born here with perfect memories. Well, if there's nothing faster, it'd probably only take a few days to introduce you to everyone and see if they recognize you."

"I did see her arrive," Nan says, "and she offered me food I've never had before but I dunno if she has any more."

Tarinda has a few more; she pulls one out. "I can show the healing if you want."

She takes a peanut candy. "This will suffice, I think - huh, what a flavor. So, what brings you to Sathend?"

"I don't know. It happened and I didn't think it would happen."

"You are welcome in Sathend as long as your intent is peaceful. I think, for us, the best case scenario would be to open peaceful diplomatic relations and - I think a number of people would like to live somewhere else, if that's an option."

"Everybody can go live in my sky if they want and can go there!"

"That would be a tremendous relief! I think one concern we have about other worlds is the possibility that they will slowly stop having things in them, because all of the stars will burn out; is that a concern that you have?"

"...in tens of tens of tens of tens of tens of tens of tens of tens of tens of years! Maybe!"

"That sounds like an amount of time after which humanity might not be around to care what happens next."

"We'll be there! But it's a long time to think of a way to make stars."

"It's not a complicated problem for us, just a question of manpower we don't have. We could make a star now, if we had someplace to put it and nothing else needing magic for the next - I have no idea how long, unfortunately - but we don't have anywhere to put it other than your world, which doesn't need it yet, and we need quite a lot of magic as long as we want this world to continue to exist."

"Our stars might be different in my sky."

"I meant real stars - the kind that are very big and on fire - but you're not wrong that we have fake stars here."

"Oh. We have real stars and they last a long time and we can probably make new ones no magic."

"I would love to see a real star. Well, would you say a good first priority here would be figuring out if we can aim for your world and send you back with a diplomatic party?"

"Yes! Or bring something from my world here. Or make a computer. Whichever of the things is fastest."

"Can you tell me more about that third one?"

"My tool that helps me remember is a computer!" (Page is feeding her sign language from home as necessary, whatever seems unlikely to be parking on existing cheremes.) "It is a machine that can learn and do numbers things and I can put learning on it from my computer to make it better."

"And making more of these is... an alternative to you going home?"

"It will help me get home. So, whatever is fastest."

"Can you explain how it would do that?"

"It's very smart."

"...Uh-huh. Well, I don't think anyone here knows how to make that. I'd offer to let the mages know about you but you've already met the one who organizes scouting parties so I don't think there's anything else I need to do on that front. Hm, what else - have you already been shown a map and told which parts of which plants you can eat?"

"No."

"Well, the woods start just over that way, so if you want to take a walk I can point out what is and isn't safe."

"Sure. Is that where people here get most food?"

In that case they can start walking. "It's a major source of food, you'll notice the parts closer to civilization are pretty picked over, but there are farms for finickier crops that want more human attention. You can see right around here," she gestures at the nearby fields, "some of the older attempts at vegetables need help with pollination, and squidbushes only rarely manage to grow without humans babying them a bit. Besides those kinds of things and forest plants, there are fish that are edible if cooked right, and people sometimes steal eggs - the birds can lay extras, but only up to a point, so be very conservative about that - and, hm, besides that there's occasionally magic to spare for conjured food but conjured anything is always tremendously expensive."

"Older attempts?"

"Uh, so, you know how the world was destroyed about five centuries ago, scattering the remnants of humanity to a variety of new worlds that didn't necessarily have anything in them already?"

"No."

"...Oh. Um. Do you not know that because you have more than that much history or because you have less than that much history?"

"More. I think that didn't happen in my sky."

"...Well, see, that's weird because it means humanity was scattered before that. And I think if our ancestors had had the option to move in with you, they would have taken it."

"Well, that long ago we did not have the smart tool but we did have lots of real stars."

"I think our historians will want to try to get to the bottom of that with you, although I don't know how much success to expect."

"The smart tool in my head knows a lot of things. More words will help."

"What general topic do you need more words about?"

"About, uh, how things happen without magic doing them."

"Things happen without magic because of physics - things fall when dropped, things move when pushed - or, hm, because of chemistry and chemical reactions, I suppose. Chemistry is the one where substances become other substances."

"Yes, words about those and about numbers and about - how to have thoughts about numbers."

"Well, you can add numbers - one plus one is two, two plus three is five - you can subtract them - three minus two is one - or multiply them - two times one is two - or divide them - four divided by two is two." The numbers through five are too transparently obvious to bother confirming that Tarinda knows them. "Past five the numbers go six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve... two times ten is twenty, three times ten is thirty, ten times ten is a hundred, ten times a hundred is a thousand. Then there's algebra, which involves doing things to numbers without knowing which numbers they are, and statistics, which involves using numbers to predict real things."

"Do you have - algebra about words - because of this then definitely that -"

"Yes! That's a syllogism. Those are taught in logic class along with induction, which is 'if this probably that', and the scientific method, which is how to tell if your ideas are true."

Unfortunately books won't have signs in them. "Can I watch a class of that for words?"

"I expect so! You'll have to talk to the school about scheduling that."

"Okay. I might need to watch a lot."

"The first seven years worth of classes are free for everyone."

"I probably won't need seven years."

"Sounds likely. - Oh, here's something edible, these in particular have had their fresh edges cut off but this species of mushroom is the kind that's good to eat. Further into the woods it's less likely anyone will have gotten to them yet."

"Okay. I don't mind going for long walks."

"Convenient, that," she says with a touch of wryness that is the first emotional expression she hasn't carefully controlled. "It's a bit of a trek from here to the nearest station, too."

"Station?"

"A place which, if you go there, you won't have to walk the whole way to where the school is. Over in that direction."

"What is the not walking thing?"

She can go into some detail about their railway, although she knows much more about the schedule and maintenance costs than she does about how it works. Something something gravity? Something something wheels? If Tarinda wants to hear about the recent debate about whether to subsidize tickets, Carey was around for that.

Mostly she just wants more words and words about trains are more likely to be useful than words about mushrooms but the ticket subsidy debate is fine too.

"So there's an argument that there's a compelling public interest in - uh, that everybody is better off with more people using public transit, because some things people use it for are good for more people than just themselves. For example because it facilitates sending children to school, or feeding the people up north who are using their land for things besides food. The alternative is - oh, those fruits are edible, by the way," she says, pointing out a bush that grows rambutans despite not being the sort of plant on which rambutans from Earth normally grow. "Anyway, the alternative is to leave it to the market, which is an approach that we generally expect to scale more easily as the population increases. And it is increasing faster, because it increases as a function of how many people there already are..."

She can just go on like that, giving the impression that she thinks everyone's arguments make a lot of sense and it's a hard decision.

Tarinda picks some rambutans and eats them as they walk, staring all the while at her escort's hands.

Words words words. Carey is very easy to convince to expound at length about various aspects of Sathend's infrastructure.

" - Oh, and don't eat that kind of mushroom unless you want to die - and that bush over there will have nuts in a few months - "

Then by the time they head back to civilization Tarinda will be much better able to talk! About, for example, auditing classes. Since there's no way for her to learn signs any more rapidly than watching them.

Carey can give her directions to the school, and assure her that's what it's there for, but does not in fact handle enrollment.

"I think one of our historians was hoping to get the chance to talk to you at your soonest convenience - in case you recognize anything from the old world - but you can probably convince him to talk while you're on your way."

"That would be best!" she agrees.

Carey beckons to the guy with the old illustration who came with her. "Why don't you show Tarinda to where she wants to be, and show her your other things while you do that?"

"I can do that - Tarinda, the school first?"

"Yes please!"

He starts walking. Heading, actually, for the nearest railway station; it'll take them straight there.

"I was hoping you'd be able to tell me if any of this looked familiar or like your world," he says along the way, offering her the illustration he brought. It's hard to parse, done by someone who was an amateur at best, and done from memory; it was supposed to be a few people sitting outside at a café, one of them in a button-down gesturing with their pastry as someone in tie-dye makes a show of ignoring them in favor of what might be a smartphone.

"...I could try drawing a similar scene that would have been like what my world used to be like but I can't be sure from the picture."

"If you run out of other things on your to-do list, it'd be good. What if I tell you an old story and you tell me if you recognize it?"

"I would like that!"

"Once upon a time, a mage created a world singlehandedly, a world bigger than Sathend, and he ruled the world he created. In this world, there was a man, whose name was Job," but unfortunately the sign used here is made up out of whole cloth, "and Job had a happy family and everything he needed or wanted. He was very fond of the creator, because of this; he believed the creator was a good person and sent him gifts all the time. One of the creator's children, who was also a mage, and was known as the enemy, said to the creator: 'Job only likes you because you give him things, not for who you are, not even for what you do for other people. If he wasn't rich, he would hate you.'

"And the creator said: 'I don't think so. I think he would like me even if he lost everything. And if you want to test that, go ahead.'

"So the enemy stole all of Job's things and murdered all of his pets. And Job sent a letter to the creator, asking for help, and the creator didn't answer. But when the creator and the enemy read the letter together, they found that it was entirely polite and even deferential, and said nothing even slightly unkind about the creator.

"'Oh,' said the enemy, 'that's only because he's still healthy and has his family. If he were really hurt he would stop loving you.'

"And the creator said: 'Of course not! He truly loves me. It's not just because he wants things from me. Go ahead and test that.'

"So the enemy did test that. He killed one of Job's children and told another lies about Job that made her run away and hide. And then he cursed Job with sickness.

"Job once again wrote to the creator to ask for help, and now also to ask why this was happening to him, and for a while he received no reply. His friends came to be with him, to try to comfort him and try to figure out why the creator would let this happen. His friends didn't believe he wasn't being punished for doing something wrong; they thought the creator would never do anything so cruel as this. Job insisted it wasn't like that. Job insisted that he had never done anything to deserve this; one of his friends asked him if he was saying that the creator was cruel and shouldn't be in charge. This was a serious accusation, in their world, because if you said that someone who was in charge shouldn't be, you would be punished; they didn't have democracy, yet, and people ruled those they were stronger than.

"And Job said he would never say such a thing. He didn't believe that the creator was cruel; he didn't believe he was being punished; he was just confused.

"A transcript made its way to the creator, who finally came to visit Job. Job, by this point, was feeling frustrated, and said, 'I have done nothing wrong and I don't see why you let this happen to me. It isn't fair! If we were equals and went to a judge the judge would say you were in the wrong!'

"And the creator said, 'Such brave words, when you know I could destroy you with a thought. What do you think gives you the right to say such things?'

"And Job backed down. He agreed that he was as nothing, next to his creator.

"For this, his creator had mercy, and healed him, and suggested to all his friends that they ought to each give him something nice. Eventually, Job once again had every material good he wanted or needed.

"There are two versions of this story recorded in the chronicles: one that is incomplete and explicitly original to the writer, and one that is even harder to understand than most of the old records but explicitly not original. This retelling draws as heavily on the latter as is feasible."

"Are the records in knots?"

"Yes, but - differently. The words go in a different order sometimes, and some of the meanings have changed - you can see an example, if you want, I've go some in my bag." He offers her an excerpt from Life Before which starts explaining the concept of dairy products, stops to explain germ theory, and then digresses from germ theory into historical book genres.

"The story is not totally different from a story that exists in my world. But if there were any drawing-words instead of knot-words to look at, I can use those much faster to learn things."

"Drawing words exist but there really aren't many examples - at the college there's a collection of reproductions of all of them, though."

"Oh good."

"It's farther than the school, but in the same direction from here."

"How much farther? How far have we walked so far?"

"I don't know the answer to either of those questions - I guess we've walked less than half a mile - but we'll be at the station in another couple minutes and then it doesn't really matter, it's one stop further along the same line."

"I just wanted words for how much distances are."

"Oh! Okay. A mile is a fun distance to walk and lets you really clear your head. Ten miles is a hard distance to walk and takes hours and hurts your feet. Thirty miles is as far as you can go without having to turn around. I am five feet nine inches tall. One foot is twelve inches. Half a mile is a reasonable walking commute as long as the ground is level and you're happy with your footwear situation. You can find a model of the railway later with distances between stations."

"I can walk farther than that. How many inches in a mile?"

"Uhhhh... twelve to a foot and around five thousand something feet in a mile...? And I'm not saying you're too weak to walk more than thirty miles. I'm saying if you start at one end of the world that's as far as you can go before you get to the other end."

"I mean it doesn't take me hours to go ten miles and my feet won't hurt. We have miles and inches in my world, but I didn't know your signs for them so I had to ask how they added up."

"You have the same units of measure - we should check volume measures but I don't have any handy - most adults weigh between one and two hundred pounds, does that sound familiar?"

"Yes!"

"Weird. Anyway, here we are. I'll get us tickets."

"Thank you."

He does that. They don't have a long wait.

They do have some fellow passengers who are very interested in Tarinda, some of whom are trying to figure out whether it'd be a good idea to try to talk to her.

She can sign "hello" at them!

Well, in that case, clearly they should talk to her. Several of them at once, in fact.

"Hello!"

"Welcome to Sathend!"

"If you want to know where all the cool things to see are I know where to find them!"

"Are you really an alien though. Really."

"I think I'm the same kind of thing as you but I am from another sky!"

"Okay but maybe you're the same kind of thing as us from this sky and you had a mage change your looks and give you alien food."

"No she isn't, be nice."

"What do you think would show that I am for sure not from this sky?"

"If other people could go to your world?" the suspicious person suggests.

Some of the other people have further suggestions, too.

"If you had technology we don't remember how to make and it was way too much better than what we had to have invented it by yourself?"

"Technically, I think if you had kids who also looked more like you and less like the locals, or if literally everyone agreed you were a stranger and they weren't missing anyone - not that I don't already believe you!"

"It would be nice if other people could go to my world! I don't know how to do it right this minute. And I don't have any kids. I have technology though."

Well, in that case, she should definitely sell her tech. This gets approximately unanimous agreement.

"The scouts might be able to aim for your world," the historian says.

"That would be good! Most of the technology I already have is in my body. Some of it I can try to build though. I don't really want to sell my sword if I don't have to."

"Are those very important where you're from?"

"Not at all! I just like sword-ing for fun."

"Good, I'm sure no one wants to be menaced by swords if they visit."

"Not that they wouldn't send you home, they'd just send you alone and never visit, probably."

"No one in my sky is menaced with swords if they don't think it's fun," she promises.

"Do they actually live in the sky or do you just not know the word world?"

"I don't have very many words yet. World might be the right word! What does it mean?"

"Everywhere you can get to if you go up or down or left or right or forward or backward? Some of them might have planets in them, which are like Sathend but spherical and if you go to the bottom then down is up and up is down."

"World is the right word, then! It has planets."

"Do you live on one of the planets? Is it really weird not being able to see all the way around it?"

"I live on a planet. It's not very weird. I'm used to it."

Various people say variously inane things along the way.

They pass fields of tomatoes and cucumbers and unfamiliar root vegetables, and occasional orchards of some kind of fruit that writhes and squirms. The solar parallax is very noticeable, traveling this far.

And they come to another station, from which the school is just a short walk away and immediately visible. It's a whole complex of buildings and yards, added to several times as the population has grown; there's a tree with strings of writing hanging from it, a swingset, a set of monkey bars, and a large climbable structure which on closer inspection is actually a periodic table. School's not in session at the moment, but a custodian and a couple of kids are doing cleanup, and a teacher has opted to grade essays while perched up in the tree.

(She wants to know what the wiggly fruit is and why it does that, please?)

Is school going to be back in session any time soon?

(The wiggly fruit is made of protein fibers similar to those in the muscles of living animals, and wiggles for exercise and blood flow. The plants it grows on are called squidbushes, because of a no-longer-clear etymology.)

School will be back in its regular session a little before noon tomorrow, and there'll be an evening session starting in an hour. Now's a fine time to talk auditing schedules, though.

Okay, does she talk to the teacher in the tree about that?

Yeah, they haven't ever really had the kind of complicated questions around enrollment that would lead them to have a specific person on staff to handle just that.

Then she will climb up the tree, no problem.

"Ground bores you too, huh? Anyway, you wanted to sit in on some classes, right? Which ones are you interested in?"

She finds a way to perch that doesn't require her hands to stabilize and says, "As many as I can! I need a lot of words."

"Well, you can't sit in on every class, if for no other reason than that some of them happen at the same time as each other, and you have the vocabulary to have this conversation - suppose you join the seniors, and, hm, evening sessions are their own kettle of fish but suppose you sit in on tonight's postapocalyptic history class and decide if it's useful for you."

"That sounds interesting and useful! Thank you."

Tonight's session of postapocalyptic history is not very difficult or complicated, for the age of most of the students taking it, most of whom have taken it before. They go over the decision to plan ahead and institute representative democracy while anyone still remembered how it worked, even though the population hadn't yet reached a point where it needed a government. They go over some of the arguments that were made at the time, about whether this was actually necessary.

How small was the population at the time? What kind of democracy did they go with? Where did this population even come from originally, do they know?

Less than a hundred, while they were having their arguments. They went with a small unicameral legislature, a court, and originally a president (a role which shrunk in importance over time). They describe the original founding population as refugees from the lost world.

But where in the lost world???

...Well, there's no connection between the old names and the new ones, but she can learn some of the new ones. This question might be better answered by looking through the first chronicles herself; they have copies in the school library.

On strings?

Yep. Everything is.

There's no, like, really, REALLY old writing, which is flat?

"Try the college, in general they're the ones who'll have anything more useful for historical research than copies of the first chronicles with modernized spellings."

"Okay! How do I get there?"

"There's a station near it, last one on that line. It's north northeast of here."

"Okay, thank you!"

Tarinda will go that way.

There's about a half hour wait at the station this time, but her ticket from earlier is still good, at least.

Cool. And at the university how hard is it to get at the library and find flat writing?

The hardest part is probably avoiding being distracted by any of the people who want to interview her. The librarian is perfectly willing to show her a page with all the old-style writing collected on it. The biggest individual sample is from when someone tried for three sentences to keep a diary; it's in code but it's in the kind of code a person can invent and use without a computer helping.

Oh. She thought there would be more of it.

"This is all?"

"That's it," says the librarian. "At least, that we have in Sathend."

"Why did people stop doing flat writing?"

"Have you heard about the magic yet?"

"Only a little."

The librarian sighs.

"A world had ended and those who survived found a space not at all like what you've seen of this world. You've seen a world big enough to wander out of earshot of all but the loudest noises, a world where the view is broken up by mountains and trees. You've seen a world where you can get away from the magic.

"The existence of such a world is sustained by that magic, and the sacrifice demanded of the mages - and the number of mages needed - scales with the size of the world so maintained, not the size of the population. A smaller world has never been viable; the air and water take more maintenance the less of them there are.

"There was a time when not one person could have read this style of writing - not such a long time that knowledge of it died out, but long enough for people to be used to something else. Then there was a longer time when writing in this style would have been automatically secret from a majority of people, and so not used for anything public - and so it was a less important form of literacy to pass on."

"A secret? Why?"

He startles visibly and then laughs wryly at himself for underestimating the size of the inferential gap with someone from another universe. "You can't risk seeing the magic. Anyone interacting with it regularly - it would have been daily, at that point - would be blind. And at least for people from this world it's difficult to make out the arrangement of ink or graphite by touch. Does that answer your question?"

"- no, that explains why they could not read flat writing but not why it would be a secret."

"If you're the first person to retire from magic, there's nothing you'd write in the old style but your own diary. And similarly for slightly larger numbers of people... writing that's only fit to be read by a small audience is only useful when you want to write things only that small audience should read."

"...I'm still not sure I understand, but it is what it is."

"I suppose it is. Well, we have other books, some of which might have better answers to your questions than I can offer off the top of my head. Don't take them out of the library until you're cleared for that but you can read most anything any time."

"I don't think knot writing will be as useful as flat writing would have because I can't read it extra fast."

"I suppose it would be hard to get used to a new way of writing."

"It isn't that. I have a thing in my head that can see what I see and hear what I hear. It can feel a little of what I feel, but not all of it, and it can't read knots I'm touching. And it is hard to look at a lot of knots at once, but I could look at a whole page of flat writing at once, for the thing in my head, and it could read that."

"Hm. You can lay them out flat but that takes time and regardless they're just bigger than flat writing has to be. Still. Maybe try the articles they hang up on the walls - the closest would be through that door and to your left..."

"Thank you."

She will go skim articles on walls.

Along a long hallway, broken up here and there by classroom and office doors, she can read the latest issues of four different journals and some miscellany.

She doesn't really care what it is. She is just moving her eyes, listening to music, waiting for Page's digest.

There's an article about the probable impact of increasing the diameter of the world two inches, an article on the limitations of optical microscopes that incidentally makes it clear they don't have electron microscopes, speculative neuroscience contributing to a goal of eventually being able to use magic to heal neurological problems, an article on yeast breeding that incidentally implies they don't have cereal grains, and an article on the feasibility of eyes that glow or sparkle that incidentally implies people buy new eye colors sometimes. And other than that, mostly population estimates for plants and insects, life satisfaction research, and fertilizer efficacy data.

Okay. Is anybody lurking hoping to talk to her right now that she could ask questions of?

Yep! The historian from before has caught back up with her, and there's a reporter and several other people.

Okay.

She will answer their questions, but she wants to know more about magic and what it can do.

Several people try to answer that at once.

"Pretty much anything, and all it wants in return is pain."

"It can make things, or probably destroy things - "

"It keeps the world from disappearing."

" - and it's what they use to travel to other worlds, when they do that."

"It's friendly, it just feeds on suffering and rends minds. It can pretty arbitrarily rearrange matter, or make more of it, but it doesn't have human common sense, so it needs very specific requests."

"Is it important," she asks, "that it be blind and deaf people who do it, rather than that it not be seen nor heard?"

"No, not at all."

"Well, not unless you count having to gouge your eyes out before work and shifts being twice as long as important. Seems important to me, I dunno."

"True and I guess you wouldn't want someone out of practice trying to wander around blind in the inner sanctum either but technically."

"- is it important that you not have eyes or just not be able to see. I have a thing that can stop me from seeing."

"Has to be the second thing."

"You don't know that. - That's something to ask a mage. Anyone know if Donna's still here?"

"She left, said it was getting late."

"I have a suggestion," says the reporter. "It is getting late. What if we spend the rest of the evening going over your variously augmented abilities and alien knowledge, figure out which ones would be useful and figure out which people you should talk to about them in what order, and then I offer you a room for the night and tomorrow I show you to either someone who handles mage scheduling or whoever we decide is a higher priority for you to talk to."

"Okay, that's a good idea, thank you."

"Let's borrow one of these classrooms for some privacy and you can start by telling me about the tools you carry inside you."

She she goes and tells them about how Page is software (insofar as she can explain that) and runs all the hardware she has implanted, making her stronger, faster, nimbler, self-repairing, able to see and hear what Page adds (or, relevantly, subtracts) where it's hooked in to her auditory and ocular nerves.

"Is Page itself an intelligent thing with independent access to your senses?"

"It's not a person. It is intelligent without being a person. It has access but it can stop receiving."

"I see. Page might not have to be a person to malfunction if it saw magic, but if it can avoid that, that's promising. And how about your healing?"

"What about it?"

"I imagine it's safe for it to interact with your brain, which magic can't heal. If that's something you could share it'd end aging entirely, I think."

"It's not something I can share right here and now unless magic can copy it, which it might be able to. What I want to do is make a copy of the thing that built Page."

"Magic can copy it, if it's not itself magic. Whether it should is going to depend on whether the copying would involve the magic filling in a lot of... details of mindstate. But what is the thing that built Page?"

"Nothing I have is magic.

The thing that built Page is called Sing." Here she's importing the ASL. "It's like Page, only much, much, much smarter. Page has a copy of the - way to make something that turns into Sing. All magic would need to do would be make a computer that can let Page talk to it. Page knows how those are made, too, and can tell me."

"Do you have an estimate of how long it would take you to describe that well enough for a mage to make it?"

"I don't know! I don't know what mages need to know and I've only had Page learn the kind of sign you see, not the kind you touch! I was thinking I could do it myself, if - me relaying to the magic what Page's instructions are, could do it - and if Page turning off my eyes and ears temporarily would work."

"Huh. Even more reason for you to get in touch with someone who coordinates mage schedules. So you do have the information - I imagine you have a lot of other technical and scientific information we don't, as well. Any examples of that jump out at you?"

"Um, a lot of them, but once Sing is here it can handle getting them to everyone better than I can."

"...It sounds like Sing can do a lot of different things. I don't suppose it's the kind of tool where you can easily list all the things it can do?"

"A person can do more things than an animal, because of being smart. Sing can do more things than a person, because of being smarter."

"...So you want to make a mind that is to us as we are to animals. I think you don't need to clear that with magic scheduling, I think you need to clear that with the government. Uh, does everything interesting you can do pretty much start with 'step one: make a super-entity to rule over us' or have you got alternatives if they won't go for it?"

"...um, I can do some things without it but only much much slower and worse. I'm from a place with the super-entity and it's very good though!"

"What's very good about it?"

"We don't die. We have nicer things than you and more space and no one has to do magic for it."

"Did Sing make the extra space or was it just there waiting?"

"It was there but far away and hard to get to. I can draw some things?"

"Sure, I think there's got to be chalk around here... yeah, here."

Tarinda draws the solar system. She can't label anything because they don't have flat writing but she can point at stuff and then sign about it. "This is Earth, where humans are from," she says of the earth. "I drew some things a little bigger and closer together so you can see them all. Humans started existing here on this ball of water and rock. It goes around this sun. This other planet Mars also goes around that sun. I am from Mars. There is no air between Earth and Mars."

Nod. "They say the lost world was like that. That's something people do want, but it won't be urgent for another few generations. And you mentioned having nicer things - I imagine your Page counts but I bet there are other things you're thinking of."

"We have a bunch of ways to fly, and to talk to people far away, and if I get injured it heals itself - I can show you if you want. And I don't do chores, I have things that do them for me."

"Tell me more about the things that do chores for you?"

She draws a little dragon. "Mine look like this. They can talk and are smart the way Page is smart but they are not people. Other people have different kinds. They cook and clean and bring me things. They can guess what I want."

"That's..." Sam reconsiders how much language exposure Tarinda's had and edits out some slang. "...impressive and I want one. I think I have a good enough picture of your technology, at this point. Want to check if you're also ahead in math or the social sciences?"

"I don't personally do math for fun but Page can answer your math questions and I can relay what it says. Same with social sciences."

"...I want one of those, too, that's convenient." And Sam can ask a few questions on those topics, too, like whether they've been able to do anything about the weaknesses of self-report surveys and what's considered cutting edge math where Tarinda's from.

"Cutting edge" is a weird topic with a superintelligence around but here is some stuff about where mathematicians working independently have gotten. Surveys aren't exactly obsolete but they mostly fill a "straw poll" role; before Sing they had, say, the trick where you tell people to answer honestly unless a die comes up 1, in which case they should answer whatever the socially undesirable answer is.

"Okay. I think - I don't want to overstate this but I think you may be the second most important thing to ever happen to this world and you should talk to the government about how cautious they'd like to be in taking advantage of that. You are really important but not that time-sensitive so I don't know if you'll be able to do that tomorrow - probably? I can talk to some people, and in the mean time, do you want to stay at my place or try to find a room for rent around here?"

"I think it's kinda time sensitive but I guess tomorrow works if the whole government is asleep or something. Your place sounds good, thank you."

"No problem." Sam stands and starts to head for the door and then hesitates and adds, "I know every minute you spend here without your dragon servants you're leaving your friends to worry or missing appointments and I'd say I appreciate you bearing with us but I've always found it infuriating when people thank me for enduring things I had no choice about."

"I appreciate the thought."

They can make it to Sam's place without anything terrible happening.

Sam's bedroom is locked and the curtains are closed; the rest of the place is neat and minimalist with neutral décor so void of personality it loops back around into being a statement. There's a living room couch that's long enough and deep enough to be comfortable to lie on, a couple of little embroidered throw pillows, and a spare sheet and blanket. It's apparently a very small apartment, like a studio as reimagined by someone who hated open floor plans.

"If you make yourself comfortable I can go drop off a note about Sing and we can see how long it takes them to get back to us."

"Is there dinner?" she asks.

Sam opens up a pantry cupboard. "You can take what you like, I don't cook and I wouldn't at this hour anyway. Oh, and the tap water's safe to drink."

Tarinda can take her pick of crackers, jam, hazelnut butter with or without chocolate, hard cider, and jerky.

"Thank you!"

She will eat crackers and jam and nutella till she's full and then sleep on the couch.

In the morning, the postperson comes by with a formal invitation for Tarinda to appear before the assembled legislature in a few hours.

Sounds good. Where should she go?

It's a needlessly large white building with marble columns, surrounded by gardens, a bit northwest of the college but still an easy trip.

Then she will have some crackers and hazelnut butter for breakfast and then run there.

They budgeted time for someone worse at running, more likely to get lost and more interested in getting dolled up, so she'll be there in plenty of time to get familiar with the place and watch some of the others invited to the meeting show up. One of whom is the mage who was there when she first landed.

She'd say hi but she does not know how.

In addition to the legislators, they end up with one of the supreme arbiters, two mages (the unfamiliar one is a middle-aged woman with lots of gaudy jewelry), a couple of people taking notes, and a couple of people to repeat things for the mages. And beyond that, a lot of people hanging out on balconies overlooking the meeting.

She may recognize one of the legislators, as well; she's the woman who came to chat with Tarinda and make sure she really was an alien. She is also the one who addresses the assembly first, to briefly summarize how Tarinda arrived and why they believe she's from another world; then she invites Tarinda to speak for herself.

Tarinda will get up and sign her proposal about magicking up a blank computer - she can do this herself if that seems safe to the experts - and then putting Sing on it so that it can fix everything and grab everybody safely to a place with plenty of space that requires no magical maintenance.

"I hear that Sing is to humans as humans are to animals. In your world, does Sing play a role in governance or confine humans to certain areas?"

"Not really! Governance is kind of obsolete, people still do some of it especially on Earth where there are historical states with continuity but I'm from Mars. Humans can go wherever we want as long as we, like, can, but it can't break lightspeed so far."

"What does it mean for governance to be obsolete - could you give some concrete examples of things that happen when people have disputes about contracts, or want to control the same areas, or damage each other's things?"

"Let's see... I have a contract with someone to let me know her location, so I can help someone else avoid her. If she decided she wanted to turn that off, she could, but the contract specifies that I still have to be able to accomplish my goal there so she would have to cover any expenses associated with making it happen some other way."

"If she didn't want to cover those expenses, would you take your payment by force?"

"I don't think she'd even notice, we don't use money for most things any more and it would just get automatically deducted at some point when it would be least likely to bother her."

"...You don't use money for - I'm picturing here that you have even more productive forests, that produce all the foods people want and cloth besides, but I'm not seeing how you'd get a house or a resurrection or a ride to Mars."

"Rides to Mars and houses are free. Resurrections actually aren't because Sing has to do them one at a time, but it can just have robots available to build houses and drive spaceships for anyone who wants."

"Does Sing primarily interact with humanity by giving people things, and otherwise stay distant?"

"Mostly, yeah. It doesn't think it's good for people to talk directly to it much."

"Because it would damage their minds to hear its thoughts, or for another reason?"

"It isn't a person, so there isn't a real true thing it's thinking, it's always thinking a lot of things and trying to do a lot of things. It can't do anything else. So if it talks to someone, it can have a conversation, but it can't have the kind of conversation that people have with people, and it wouldn't hurt them but it thinks it's better if it affects people less directly."

"Does it communicate through intermediaries or just not?"

"It can use intermediaries but a lot of what it does isn't talking, it just arranges things so they'll happen to go well."

"And - has anyone managed to come up with a way to check whether Sing is tricking you into trusting it and going to eventually betray you, or is it just too much smarter?"

"It's too much smarter, but it's been around for a long time now."

"That complicates things that were already quite complicated. I imagine Tara will have more useful things to say here, though, if you would?"

There's a slight pause as that's relayed and then the mage with the gaudy jewelry stands and takes Carey's place, where Tarinda and everyone else can see her.

"I do, yes," Tara says. "You've laid out a plan and how it might work, and it has substantial potential upside. To carry it out, you are requesting access to the magic, which is normally granted to people we have known all their lives. There's no one here but you to testify that you weren't exiled here for repeatedly leaving your toenail clippings in other people's bags of flour. I expect that's not true, but I don't expect it as strongly as I'm used to for new mages. I would like either additional evidence or the plans for a computer so that someone else can make it."

"I would be happy to let someone else make it but I'm not sure how I will explain it to someone who can't see. I can try, if it seems like it would be doable. What more evidence would you like?"

"If you're not familiar with models or tactile drawings, or something along those lines, I'm sure we can find someone who is and can translate. And... everything that comes to mind to ask for as evidence seems at once too much and too little. If I say you should live here peacefully for a year, following the laws and being good to your neighbors, that's utterly unreasonable when you have people waiting back home, and it would still be less evidence than we normally like to have. I think describing a computer to someone else is probably a better bet."

"Okay. Maybe I could do that and somebody who already knows how could turn my drawings into models or tactile drawings? It seems like it might be faster."

"Yes. Would this person also need expertise in any other field, or can I ask any sighted servant to do it?"

"They would need to be able to ask - good clarifying questions if they didn't understand, but I don't think you have the fields that would help so we will have to do without."

"I know a lot of people with that skill and I can put you in touch with one after we're done here. It also occurs to me that you might want to go home while we're deciding what to do with the information, or - oh, or try to bring someone else here, if there's someone who'd independently vouch for you and Sing and would want to come."

"That sounds risky."

"What risks are you thinking of?"

"Something going wrong with transporting me, or the someone else. Also doesn't any of this involve someone suffering?"

"Yes, all of it would involve someone suffering, and yes, it's not impossible something could go wrong with an attempt to reach your home. The risk to you in particular can be minimized at some cost to us. If you don't want to go home, you're not being exiled, but... I don't see how that risk is ever going to go away if you do want to go home."

"I want Sing to put me home, it knows how. - you could just bring some hardware with Sing on it here, if that would be simpler than the making a blank computer thing."

"...Sing knows how to travel between worlds?"

"Well, not yet, or it would probably have gotten me already, but I think it will figure it out very quickly once it's here."

"It sounds as if Sing could quickly come to an understanding of how our magic can be safely and effectively worked with. Do you expect Sing could use that understanding? Can Sing feel pain, for instance?"

"I don't think it can but it might be able to start."

"A useful thing to be able to do," she says, not at all cheerfully. "And... Sing backs you up less frequently than daily, is that right?"

"We aren't backed up. We're very very safe but it has some limits on what it can do with brains."

"Well, if Page stops noticing the world when you sleep, then you're backed up as of last night."

"It doesn't."

"Then you are the most vulnerable person who has ever set foot in this universe and it makes sense that you're so risk-averse. It's still awkward not to have anyone who can vouch for you - I suppose we could send a team to your world and hope they could operate unnoticed by Sing long enough to see if it's as nice a place as you say. And bring back the relevant hardware, rather than opening ourselves up to the chance that Sing is lovely but you'd give us the code for something else - so if we did do that, if it were even a feasible idea, it'd have to be after we were sure that if your world is as you describe it's something we want here. But is that a feasible plan?"

"Page can stop paying attention next time I sleep if that's important, but I didn't know. Uh, I think your plan basically works except that Sing will almost certainly notice you very quickly."

"Doesn't need to be the entire time; if there's a window of even a few minutes where you're not dreaming and Page isn't noticing things, then we'd have something to aim for if anything happened to you. All right, well, I appreciate your warning - I'm sure we all do - and we'll think on whether to go ahead with that. I will find you someone who asks good clarifying questions, and the government will probably decide not to decide anything until the public's been informed and had the chance to speak up - I don't speak for them, here, I just know them - " (Carey nods at this, smiling) " - but while we're doing that, I think you'll want to speak to the head of the scouting team about how we'd find your world if we were going to do that."

"I'd be happy to!"

"That's the other mage in attendance," Tara says, and gestures in approximately the right direction. She returns to her seat while Carey goes about saying in slightly more formal terms that Tarinda and the mages are done here.

The aforementioned other mage in attendance waves.

...Tarinda waves back uncertainly.

 The person she brought along tips her off to that. Really it just matters that Tarinda's paying attention to her.

"If now's a good time to talk we could go hang out by the liar tree on the east edge of the garden."

"I think now is fine."

Donna will go wait for her by the tree, then, and ask the person she's with to wait around for a minute in case Tarinda turns out to hate touching people.

Tarinda does not hate touching people but does not know the contact sign language.

Is it really that different? Maybe it is, maybe what feels like a simple and obvious pattern of small changes is actually really hard to guess without years of experience signing, Donna guesses she wouldn't actually know since she doesn't remember ever not having years of experience and neither does any other adult she's ever met.

"Okay. Well, what I need is, first of all, to be able to identify your world to the magic unambiguously, and second, to be able to find the right part of it. For the first thing, I don't actually know yet whether asking for the world you came from will work, but if it doesn't, I can do it from a sufficiently precise and detailed description of fundamental physics, as long as you're not mistaken about it. For the second, I imagine you know better than I do what landmarks someone could see from space."

Tarinda will rattle off fundamental physics as Page presents it to her in sign, and describes bits of Earth and Mars that could be seen from space.

"...So technically this isn't important to whether I can find it but does your world have an immigration policy?"

"You can live on Mars. You all can. I think you can probably live most places on Earth and most stations and moons too but it's not as guaranteed as Mars since you're a weird situation."

"I'd like that. Assuming our birds can move there too, and assuming we can get there from here at all."

"Your birds? Your birds can probably move there too but I didn't know you had important birds."

"I bribed mine to stay away today because he'd just annoy everyone at the meeting, but you may've seen him leave with me when I went to tell people about you. They're smarter than fish and less smart than five year olds so they're right in that sweet spot where they make good friends but wouldn't get anything out of a letter."

"Cute. You can bring your birds to Mars."

"Good. I'm thinking maybe we could move everything, so people keep their houses and stuff, but it'd be so expensive and even if you have the space I don't know what happens if you mix our bugs or our crops with yours and I'm getting ahead of myself considering I haven't actually gone and found your world yet."

"I wouldn't worry much about the bugs or crops but you could ask Sing to confirm."

"It'd be weird being able to ask Sing things and not go mad from it. Good, but weird."

"We usually don't talk directly to Sing. I've never done it. It wouldn't drive you mad though and you can get things from other robots."

"Yeah. By the way, it's gonna be a few days before I'm ready to scout your world, so if you get done talking to whoever Tara thinks you should talk to before then, you can come find me for any reason. My house has a wrought iron flower design for the front gate and a birdhouse in the yard and it's near the base of the mountains near the north pole."

"Thank you. - what are the few days for?"

"Part of it's taking notes and talking with the rest of the team, but most of it is because I don't have that much power right now and I need a longer break before I can pay for it and then another break after I do that but before I use it. It probably sounds callous that I know you're stranded and I'm thinking 'yeah but I want to read this novel first and maybe play chess' but it would not be better if I rushed."

"I'm new to magic existing for real and don't really know enough to say otherwise, but I'd like to learn more."

"If you're more than a few questions worth of curious, swing by later and I'll lend you a book, but if you just want more elaboration on needing breaks, it's not only unpleasant to make sacrifices to the magic, it's also directly mind-affecting to be in its presence. We can limit that, so instead of going mad in seconds we can spend hours with it and come out mostly unchanged, but - only mostly. If I were to, for example, go straight from the inner sanctum into a potentially fraught diplomatic situation, I'd get angry, I'd ramble without thinking through what I meant to say, I'd be bad at picking specific goals and pursuing them, and if everyone else involved wasn't patient with me and I couldn't easily get away I might hit them. It's not hard to fix but it takes time."

"Okay. Thank you for explaining."

It's convenient that she's still near the capitol; the person Tara sends can find her easily, and ask her about computers as soon as she and Donna are done.

He asks great clarifying questions.

Then presently she will have explained computers such that neither she nor Page can think of ways for this to go wrong if someone just conjures up a machine to this spec!

After which he thanks her and abandons her to the small horde of people waiting to ask for a demo of vocal speech, ask repetitive questions about Mars that she's already answered, ask her to take a side in their ship war, offer her a restaurant coupon in the hope that she'll write a review later, try to sell her a map, and ask her if she knows the ending to a popular comic series one of the initial refugees summarized the beginning of very engagingly.

Gosh. She will sing them a song and read them a poem. She has no opinion on their ship war. She will accept the restaurant coupon. If they give her a summary of the comic series's beginning Page will see if it knows the rest.

The song and poem get a little applause, the song more so than the poem. The comic starts with alien humanoids fleeing persecution and being betrayed by their ostensible saviors; it might be Elfquest, if someone took some liberties in translating it to a new language and medium.

She will try guessing some plot points suiting Elfquest, and if those match she will sign through the rest of the plot.

"That's pretty awesome. Not as good as the fanfic version, though."

"Sorry to disappoint!"

"I'm not disappointed, it's awesome! You should totally read the fan version, though, it's called Landing in the Deeper Shadow."

"Maybe I will when it's been translated!"

"You should! And if you like it, I have other recs, too!"

"Usually I don't read a lot of books, I do more, like, theater stuff. Theater with swords."

"Oh, theater's cool, too. They're running some old classics at the college this season if you're into that but I don't really have recs."

"That's okay. I do more acting than spectating anyway."