She's in a bar.  There's even more magic in the bar than Aeslin expected to find in the royal palace.

The bar's decorated with a festive winter theme.  Fireplaces are around the hall, with fires crackling in them.  Garlands of holly and ivy and pine branches drape the wood-paneled walls.  Snow is falling near the large windows that look out on stars and exploding stars.

(And somehow, the logs in the fireplace never seem to be consumed by the crackling flames, and the snow never seems to melt on the floor even though it shouldn't be anywhere near cold enough for it to stay snow.)

There're some chairs and couches scattered near the fireplaces, but at one end of the room, a long bartop stretches across the space, stools positioned along it at staggered intervals.

Sitting on one of those stools is a woman, not entirely dissimilar-looking to Aeslin, albeit seemingly a few years older, a might bit taller for it, and with the tan complexion of someone who works outdoors. Her clothes are utterly unlike Aeslin's though, wearing heavy and worn leather jacket, pants, and shoes over what might be rough linen underclothes. Notably, she's absolutely saturated with an unfamiliar magic, to a similar degree as the rest of the bar but with a subtly different character.

She seems to be alternatively writing and reading small notes on the bar's counter as she sips on a glass of eggnog, evidently not noticing Aeslin's entrance.

(Aeslin is wearing a plain blue blouse and red ankle-length skirt, with the small gold crown-and-starburst arms of the Royal Research Mages below the collar, and a few small crystals hanging at her belt.  Gwen kept despairing about her clothes, but no matter how much magic had gone into its being easy to maintain fancy dresses, it was still even easier to just not wear them in the first place.  Besides, the spells to keep them poofy sometimes interfered with her work.)

This's all too much magic even if someone decided to redecorate the palace, and the wrong sort of magic at that.

Aeslin waves her wand again, to check for dream-magic, in case someone cast a sleep spell on her...  Nope, not that.  She's awake.

She checks herself for any spells that might be on her...  Nope, she's clean of anything except for the alarm-spells she cast on herself.

She pokes up to invoke the palace Web system to ask someone what happened...  She's not really surprised to find that the Web isn't there at all.

"Okay then," she says aloud.  "Is this some sort of portal or magic pouch straight out of the Days of Wonder?  Er, Your Majesty, I know you're the least-illogical candidate for making one of those - congratulations, if that's what you were doing, and, er, if you can hear me?"

The woman starts slightly upon hearing Aeslin's words before spinning around on her stool, smiling and giving her a congenial wave. "Oh, hello! Sorry if you were talking to me, I was bit distracted talking with Bar." She notices the wand Aeslin is holding at semi-ready and her eyes widen with gleaming interest. "Ooh, is that a wand? Are you doing magic?"

Nope, that definitely isn't Queen Elethy.  No idea who in all the world would be that surprised by magic, either.

"Yes - I'm trying to find out where I am and who you are.  Do you by any chance remember Elves?  If so, you've been trapped in a magic pouch -"  Just in time, she remembers that it's probably best not to lead with how long it's been since anyone knew how to make the sort of magic pouch this would have to be.

The woman shakes her head negatively. "No, I don't think-- Well, hm." She scratches her chin and looks off into space. "It might depend on what you mean by elves? I don't think of uncle as an elf but I can sort of see him counting depending on what sort of elf you mean." She refocused on Aeslin. "Anyway, I'm Ira! And this is Milliways, it's a, what did Bar say...interdimensional? I think it was interdimensional. Milliways is an interdimensional bar and inn, I think is what they said, or close enough." She turns around for a moment to take a sip of her eggnog before facing back towards Aeslin.

"An interdimensional bar!  I've never heard of that!  I guess I suppose someone back in the Age of Wonders could've coupled a pouch with a cornucopia - but how would it reach out to more dimensions - and we've never heard of any of that -"

She slips her wand into her belt and runs up to the bar and the woman.  "Bar - can you hear me, or do I need magic to address you?"

A napkin appears on the bar in front of Aeslin.

"I can hear you.  I have my own magic; not all my patrons have magic of their own.

"Welcome to Milliways, the bar at the end of the multiverse - or, you might say, in the middle of the multiverse.  I am Bar.  Your first drink is free, if you would like one."  

Aeslin turns back to the woman, beaming.  "How'd you get here?  How long have you been here?  What magic do you know - have you met anyone with different magic -"

"I was walking inside after checking on our chickens and ended up in Milliways! That's how Milliways works, by the way, replacing doorways like that. I've only been here maybe an hour or two? I didn't think to check the time when I came in, we don't have any clocks back in the house. I know about lots of magics, if I'm allowed to count fictional kinds, but if hose don't count the only thing I know about is the hearth's magic. I'm not really an expert on exactly how it works, not as much as uncle or grandma are, but I think I still have a pretty good idea! And, there's Bar! They're very magical. And if you're magical then there's you too. But you're only the second person I've met here so far, and the first human-shaped one."

"Your uncle - is that the uncle who's maybe an Elf?  How does that work?  Where I'm from, you either are an Elf or you aren't.  It's... it's an open question whether you can say I am magical, but if I am it's not like Elves who're inherently magical - it's just that I'm alive and I'm a person.  But I can definitely do magic, and I've got magic on me."

She gestures across her face in the standard alarm-spell gesture, only realizing a moment later that the woman wouldn't recognize it.  "The spells I've cast on myself," she explains.  "And then the residue from all the spells I've cast elsewhere."

Ira nods as Aeslin explains. "Uncle is, hm. The way he usually says it is that he's a part of the hearth, combined with a part of grandma, but he's always told me that's an oversimplification. He's definitely inherently magical, he's warm like the hearth and his hair is all floaty." Ira gestures with hands, raising a couple handles of her own dark locks up into the air before dropping them. "And he can wrestle the cave-sleeper and just get tired and scratched up, and probably lots of other stuff but I don't know exactly what since he doesn't like to use it without knowing exactly what it's going to do and how it works. But, yeah, he's definitely more magical than me or grandma. But I have no idea if there's anything about being an elf other than that, so who knows! I certainly can't do magic, or I guess maybe just don't know how if everybody can. What sort of magic can you do? What spells do you have on right now? If that's not rude to ask."

"Oh wow!

"It's not rude at all!  My best spell, I guess, is my dreamwalking - I rediscovered it myself from an old book the Queen had written ages ago, and I'm still the only person who can reliably do it other than the Queen herself.  And maybe Svarendar, but he never really does it.  But other than that, I'm in the Royal Research Mages" (she taps the coat-of-arms on her blouse) "- I've been trying to improve the spellwagons and farm spells and new long-range ward spells and all sorts of things like that."

There's no need to mention she was hoping to cast those long-range wards on the entire border with the Crystal Mountains, even though this woman's definitely from another world.

"On myself, I've got some alarm spells so I don't lose track of time before my next my appointments, and then the personal shield - even though I'm in the palace, or I was, there's no reason not to have that.  And then there're these crystals... I charged one of them this morning to record my voice, if you want to hear it?"

She holds up a clear crystal dangling from her belt.  It's not really shining, but it's glistening in the light.

"Sure! But, what are dreamwalking and spellwagons? And, what sort of spells do you use for farming? How do you do magic in general, if that's not too vague a question?"

"Ooh, I could talk about that for hours!  For spellwagons - there're lines of crystals and metal across the country, charged with magic, with spells cast on them.  And then you put a wagon on the line, with a large crystal charged with magic with a different spell cast on it, and it can move down the metal line by itself!  You don't need a horse, and one crystal can pull a whole train of wagons between cities!  That's been around for maybe a hundred years, but it's been expanded a lot since then, and there've been new improvements to make it move faster with even less magic, or more resilient against its being disrupted - I'm hoping to get it more resilient; we've had some... mischief-makers, you could say.  Or you could call them criminals."  She briefly frowns, and then shakes her head.  "It's an interesting problem, for all that most people don't care about it.  And spellwagons in general are one of the ways I can say we're clearly ahead of even the Days of Wonder.  You could travel faster back then if you were lucky, by roc or dragon or magic boots, but most people didn't get to use any of those and they just had to ride a horse or walk!  Now, anyone can buy a ride in the spellwagons!

"In general - magic flows around the earth, but most things can't sense it.  Or maybe the human body does instinctively and that's why we're living people; that's not my field.  But anyway, you need to catch it and conduct it to do anything with it, and for that you need - well, if you don't have an Elf or a dragon or something like that, in practice you need wood or leaves from one of a few plants."  She taps her wand.  "Even crystals can't catch it, though they can store it.  And you also need your own living mind behind it to direct the wand, of course.  Would you like to try?"

"Fascinating! And, which first, the sound-crystal or the wand?" Ira takes another sip of her eggnog, then seems to realize something. "Sorry, I never gave you a chance to introduce yourself, or take a seat or order something!"

"Oh!  And - you said you're Ira?"

Aeslin slips onto a stool next to Ira's.  "I'm Aeslin.  Er, Bar, can I have a pear cider?"

A glass cup of pear cider appears in front of Aeslin.

"I should've had my wand out to see if I could sense the magic!"

Aeslin shakes her head and takes a small swallow of the cider.  "Just like it is from home.  Crystal first, why not; I'll try you on a simple spell but it still might take some time to get the hang of a wand."

She unties the sound-crystal from her belt and taps it with her wand.

Her voice - sounding exactly like her voice, but a little muffled as if she's speaking from the next room over - comes from the crystal:  "They were shut unshakeable.  Then shrilled a trumpet as a phantom fanfare faintly winding in the hill from hollow halls far under; a creaking portal with clangour backward was flung, and forth there flashed a throng, leaping lightly, lances wielding, and swift encircling seized bewildered the wanderers wayworn, wordless haled them -"

Aeslin taps the crystal again, and it falls silent.  "That's an old poem I was reading from the Days of Wonder.  It might have some clues for one or another project I'm on - but I don't know.  I wish they'd been clearer!"

"Mhm!" She replies before listening to the crystal, and to Aeslin's explanation. "Huh! That actually sounds a lot like a poem from one of the books my mother wished for, I think. I haven't read it in ages but it was one of the ones that really got me into thinking of stories as being parts of worlds rather than as just, strings of events, I remember. Maybe I could help you with that project? Just as a fresh outside perspective if nothing else. After the wand?"

"Oh, yes, so many stories seem to be written as if they were just a sequence of events - they don't say which Elvenking it was or where he reigned - we don't even know for sure whether the Crystal Mountains even existed back in the Days of Wonder!  But still, if the Queen doesn't know something about magic, half the time the best bet is to try piecing through the old stories for clues as to how their spells might have worked..."

Ira nods some more. "Wow, your queen must know an awful lot about magic! And, you've mentioned a couple times but I'm not actually sure how to picture these Crystal Mountains." Ira shakes herself a little. "But, magic! Magic I might be able to do, with a wand?"

"Oh yes!  Queen Elethy is an Elf, maybe the last Elf alive - she was too young to remember any of the Days of Wonder herself, but she's learned a whole lot about magic; she's the one who founded the Royal Research Mages, and if it wasn't for her I don't think magic would be anywhere near as widespread -

"But anyway, the wand!"  Aeslin holds out her wand to Ira, holding the middle, with the handle-end toward Ira.  It's a straight stick, a little shorter than Ira's forearm, with a few rings carved in it around the middle.  The handle end is textured, clearly designed to let you get a good grip.  The other end is perfectly smooth, very well-polished, and tapering just a little toward the end.

"Take it with your hand, either hand.  To start with... start with the kids' light spell.  You can wave it in a small circle if you want, but the important part is to be thinking about a small light on the end of the wand and envisioning the magic flowing through the wand to make the light."

Ira forms an odd expression briefly, before delicately grasps the wand's handle, nodding as seriously as she can with a wide grin pulling at her lips. "Is there any, uh, trick to the visualization? Is magic more like wind or water or something else, with how it moves, or is it more a personal thing?"

"... Like water.  Or even more like mud or like pudding, until it gets moving - until the spell starts - and then it's like water."