"Yeah.  Just needed to say that out loud so I'd remember to ask someone later."  And she's walking, and walking...

She's not walking far at all, actually.

The spellwagon station looks rustic, with a big room and open log walls on the inside, sort of like a ski cabin - more rustic than anything else in town.  Through the open windows at back (it looks like real glass, though sort of milky?  But the windowpanes are open) Mira can see a platform that looks a lot like a railroad station, with a few people already waiting there.

Randall nods to the stationagent behind one of the two counters (the other being unoccupied), a man a little older than him with a golden horse coat-of-arms sewn to a weatherbeaten shirt.  "One for Dumrath."

The agent looks surprised.  "What's taking you out of town, Randall?  Hope there's no bad news from Tilda?"

Randall puts down a few coins from his pocket and shakes his head.  "Ticket's for her."

The agent shoots a quizzical look at both of them.

"From another world, maybe."

"Another - what?  How?  Haven't heard about that since the Days of Wonder!"

Randall shrugs.  "No idea.  Thought Tilda should know."

"Yeah, I'm about as surprised as you are.  Especially since there just wasn't magic, back home.  So, yeah, going Tilda-wards, hopefully to find out."

"...Although I should note that I have no idea how I'm going to find her once I'm there?"

The agent looks in surprise.  "No magic at all?"

Randall shrugs.  "Go to the palace; tell them your story; they'll know."  He turns to the agent.  "Got paper?  For a letter for Tilda."

He pushes a pen and paper (looking like it'd be newspaper-quality on Earth?) across the counter, and then stamps a ticket.  "Good luck - the spellwagon's coming in three chirps."

"...I should note that we appear to have vastly different systems of timekeeping; I have no idea how long a chirp is.  Not that I'd necessarily need to, but I'd like to."

She'll hold on to that ticket like her life depends on it, then.

(And, presumably, the letter, too.)

"So, twelve tweets to a chirp, six chirps to a tide... we've been talking for maybe a tweet so far?"  He points up and behind him.  "There's a clock on the school next door; you can hear it chime on the chirp."

After a moment, he adds, "Are you trying to get home?  Or - what do you want to do here?"

"I don't know, yet.  Magic's pretty cool, and I know a lot of stuff that'd probably synergize with it pretty well.  I want to poke it, y'know?  ...I just dunno.  I'll find out, I suppose.  And there's so little I know yet of how things are here that would impact my decisionmaking."

"Stuff that'll work well with magic?  Then you're definitely going to the right place; the Queen will love that!"  He grins.  "And if you've got questions - well, sorry you ended up with a guy of few words like Randall.  Anything I can say before the spellwagon comes?  Or what's your world like?"

"My world...It's honestly a lot like how yours could be, in twenty to fifty years?  If you were going on and researching on your own, I mean.

"Despite the whole no-magic thing.

"And then there's the crazy shit.  I could just call up and talk to someone on the other side of the world from me.  There's a network of billions of devices that can all talk to eachother, manufacturing barely requires human input...we make a basic component of computation that's less than the thickness of a human hair long.

"I have in my pocket more externalized ability-to-compute than the project to launch a manned rocket to the moon - I still don't know if you have one of those, actually - needed to succeed."

His eyes go wide when she mentions talking to people on the other side of the world.  "It takes us a day to get a spellwagon across the country!  And that's if we're hurrying unsustainably, and we can't send news or mail any faster, unless you believe those stories from the Research Mages."

Randall looks up and smiles at this, but doesn't say anything.

The agent snorts at him.  "Hey, if it was real, you'd think they would've told everyone by now and trained us in how to do it!"  He shakes his head.  "Anyway - 'rockets'?  Don't know what those are, but we've got a moon.  They say the Elves used to go there in the Days of Wonder."

"My home country went to the moon by setting things on fire very hard."  She grins, subtly, before delivering her followup: "Fifty years ago."

"Huh!  Can you do that!?"

"Not on my own, not right now.  But I bet I could figure it out, with magic on the table."

He shakes his head and smiles.  "I'd love to see it."

Randall folds over the paper and hands it to Mira.  "Letter for Tilda?  Saying who you are, plus other news.  And good luck."

"Thank you, both of you."

And now's about the time that the spellwagon arrives, right?

Actually, it takes a little longer, but the station agent's willing to tell her a little about the town while she waits.  It's called Appledore; in the last generation or so, it's grown from a farm town to also cater to tourists coming - by spellwagon - for the hills and the nearby lake.

The spellwagon looks a lot like a train.  It's enclosed wagons coupled together, running along a (single) metal rail.  The conductor pokes his head out of a window to wave her (and a few other people) on, and Randall silently raises his hand in farewell.

The seats are draped with cloth, but they're clearly wooden benches with rough backs.

She waves goodbye to Randall, before taking in the train.

There aren't any seatbelts.  Figures.

The direction is a bit backwards, but she's half expecting to meet Arachne Tellwyrn on the other end of this ride, just off the tropespace she's been observing.

...At least she has a coat she can bundle up as a pillow.

No, no such thing as a seatbelt.  Nor arms.  The spellwagon does move smoothly, though... at least most of the time.

The track runs along the river for a while, and it does look pretty.  After a little while, the conductor comes by and takes a look at her ticket, and lets her know they'll be getting to Dumrath tomorrow morning; unfortunately other travelers have already paid for all the beds, but they'll be stopping for a few chirps at Silmvale around suppertime where there's a decent restaurant in the station which can pack something in a hamper.

There aren't that many more people in Mira's car, but for a little while - between two local stations - a family gets on with two young boys arguing about some stories from the Days of Wonder.  They get off at the next station before they've settled whether it was more awesome to plop a mountain on top of your enemies or turn them all into air-spirits (or beetles; the tales vary.)

Around evening - after the stop at Silmvale - the spellwagon switches to another track, leaves the river, and sets off through a well-farmed plain.  There're two more women in the car with her, both with wands in hand, murmuring together something about magic and occasionally practicing spells, occasionally interspersed with grumbling about how it's a shame they'll be getting off in the middle of the night and wouldn't it be nice to go on to the palace someday and see the Queen herself.

Mira sees the full moon rise just after sunset.  It looks about the same size as Earth's moon, but clearly not the same - there're fewer craters, but the Man in the Moon has such an obvious face that no one can miss it here.

There're next to no lights, but the moonlight is enough for her to make out waving fields of grain and the occasional town as they rush past or briefly stop.

She absolutely listens in to the women practicing their spellwork - and, later, drawing upon past experience, somehow manages to sleep pretty decently despite being on a bench that's as hard as a rock.  It's something about being wedged into her seat and possibly engine vibrations that makes it work, apparently, because she can't replicate it in cars, and she's tried.

Regardless...Dumrath awaits her.

Dumrath is a large city, clearly densely packed, running right up against a forest on one side. A turreted palace is at one side of the city, by the forest.  The spellwagon runs across the river on an arch bridge, turns to avoid the palace, and then through an archway into the large stone hall of Dumrath Station.

It's midmorning now; the car's filled up somewhat in the morning, and just about everyone is piling out now in the station.

She, and her various stuff, will join them.

...Is there anyone there who might be willing to help a traveler?

...Anyone wearing the fancy emblem, she means.  She's not that trusting of strangers in the city.

The golden horse that was on the stationagent's shirt (and also the conductor's)?  Oh yes, there're several people with that, a few standing around the platforms and a few at desks near the doors leading out.

...so yeah, she'll just...

"I'm horribly sorry for bothering you, but, well, I've got a letter that's supposed to go to someone in the palace and I'm kind of freaking out about going anywhere near said palace because I have not in fact ever done anything that could possibly bring me to the attention of someone who could crush me with their pinkie finger if they so chose, before?  And I mean, I need to actually do it myself, I have necessary context that also needs delivering, but, uhh...aaah."

The woman looks surprised.

"Don't worry!  They don't crush anyone there.  Is this your first time in the city?"

"Of course they don't, not normally, but they still could.  Which...my nerves really don't like the idea of.  ...It's my first time in this city, at least.  I've been in others before.  Just...not one with the Palace in it, y'know?"