"How would I know? But - no, don't think so. Just took the edge off."

"Okay. Next thing to try is getting a psion to have a look at you in Eclipse - it's less likely to work than a Mîr wish, but Mîr wishes are normally batched, lots of effects in a single wish, so getting one for a single person isn't advisable if you have other options."

"Wishes? Stars, I can see why... I'm an experiment, right, so I'm not going to end up owing a hundred thousand crown or anything? Just checking, you know. As if you have any use for crown when you can teleport - teleport, that's the word."

"You won't owe anything," Sai Ding assures her.

She stands up and holds out a hand with a sigh.

Sai Ding doesn't actually need to touch her but she holds her hand anyway, some people find teleporting less disorienting that way.

Pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop.

"Welcome to Eclipse."

She gives a helpless shrug. "All of this is just magic to me. What exactly is an eclipse? It sounds pretty."

"An eclipse is a phenomenon some planets have where the planet gets right in between the sun and the moon, so the moon is shadowed. It looks pretty neat," says Sai Ding. "This world has magic eclipses, but we're not on a planet with a moon, this is a staging area for stuff that doesn't require one." It looks like a nicely furnished office. She sends another message on her computer.

"Oh, that does sound beautiful."

Samara sits quietly and peers around at the space magic office. What a strange desk; It's obviously not fancy, there's no art to it, but it is surprisingly nice none the less. Such clean paint on the walls. And of course the artifact lights and artifact ... mail ... thing.

"Somebody'll be with us in forty minutes. There aren't that many psions - a lot of worlds everybody who's born there gets magic, but in Eclipse it's a pretty low chance. So the wait times are a bit high. Can I answer any questions while we wait?"

"What exactly is a psion going to do to me and how is it different from a wizard or wishing about it? And - can I get paints and an easel and canvas?" She is fidgeting and tapping one foot now. "I've got the spark of an idea and I want to catch it while it's fresh."

"- sure, is it okay if I leave you here alone for a sec to grab them?"

"Well I'm not going to turn into a demon the second you turn your back, yeah. Thanks, I appreciate it."

Sai Ding disappears, and is back in ninety seconds with a plastic-wrapped kit containing a pre-stretched canvas on a frame, four paintbrushes, eight colors of water-soluble oil paints, and a plastic palette and palette knife. "I can get you a glass of water too from across the hall." She goes and does that.

"Thanks. I'll try not to get anything on the floor, stars know my studio is a mess but it's just, I've got an idea, and if I can still have those and execute on them, then coming back to life is worth it. Was terrified my art bone was broken, so to speak." She smiles and starts opening the kit.

"It's fine, there's magic cleaning-up things in places like this." Glass of water.

And she starts painting!! Broad outlines in heavily diluted grey first.

"So," she asks while considering the canvas, "A psion is another kind of magic person with another kind of magic healing? That might be able to fix the thing where I still don't feel emotions about my memories? Is the resurrecting, the wizard, the teleporting, and the psion all different stuff?"

"Yep, those are all different," says Sai Ding. "Lots of worlds, and a bunch have magic."

"There's shamans and things on ours. I guess I don't need to know all the fine details, you lot seem well organized, calling people over whenever they're needed. I'd really like to go home if it won't make me miserable, since everyone wants me back and all. It's the phantasm of the artist, the allure of the genius, you know. A sort of pride for living in the same city that produced brilliance. It's bad to let it get to your head, led to a lot of bad things, bad thoughts. Maybe I should be glad for the chance to see it all from a detached perspective, actually."

She is sketching out a landscape squished into the bottom third of the canvas, some scattered clouds, and then a huge circle with rays radiating outward at the top.

"That looks really nice."

"Does it though? I'm only getting started. This is just framing and arranging. I was going to ask what exactly psions do, but it's not like I would get it get it, you know. It would just be meaningless words. Oh yes, magic this and magic that. I'm just sort of thinking out loud now. I do that a lot. I guess it's a habit, part of the role you know, the mad genius who doesn't sit still? Too many thoughts in this skull. Ignore me if you like, or tell me to quiet down, I won't mind."

A few experimental dabs of color go down.

"In Eclipse there's two kinds of magic, mages and psions. Mages do physical stuff and psions do non-physical stuff. The psion I called in is trying to specialize in souls and soul-related healing since that's not something we otherwise have a great angle on besides running to Mîr for everything. I don't know if he has it well developed enough to help you."

"What will be will be, I suppose. The flowers bloom regardless of the beholder's appreciation." (This is a rhyme in her home language.)

She does seem to have run out of things to say, focusing on her painting with an intense expression. After forty minutes it's - not done, quick and a bit messy and not all filled in, but clearly on the way. The whole painting's center is empty, framing the great eclipse against a starscape in the top center and its sunbeam shining down through clouds onto a tiny and insignificant looking little house in rolling grassy fields. The eclipse itself has the most detail, with the pale face of the moon visible, surrounded by a bright halo and ephemeral rays of light radiating away in all directions.

Sai Ding goes and picks up the psion when he's ready and brings him back. "All right, let's see what I can do," he says.

"Go ahead and hit me."

She has a soul. It's... Geometric? Angles and lines and circles. Four colored; White, red, blue, and green. Centered on her head and only lightly stretching around her body. New and barely-there, stretched thin and insubstantial. Not really fitting her but slowly growing, filling in 'gaps' in something as it goes, but not perfectly. There are places where it doesn't fit right, or where it looks like it should be more complex but is just blank.