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floats from shore to shore of the universal seas
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They've already done a tour on the border with Iral. They're going to Azan shortly. Feris and Valan are both hard to take by surprise. But teleporting a foot away? That'll do it. There's no time to figure out what the mirror is doing there, or move out of the way. There's barely enough time to scream, which Feris does, and then both of them alike are elsewhere.

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It's raining slightly on this broad stretch of sand. In one direction, there's an ocean, reasonably calm, though it's hard to say on such short acquaintance whether the tide is headed in or out at the moment. The only other notable landmark in sight is a small cluster of huts barely visible in the distance, along the curve of the shore.

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Feris is still screaming when they appear, but stops quickly.

"Did you, uh - what did you just experience?" he asks Valan.

"You were handing me half a broken arrow and then you were screaming and it looked like I could see us and now we're on a beach. You too?"

"Well, at least I'm not hallucinating. Shall we go see if there are people there?"

"Yeah." Valan starts walking toward the buildings and Feris follows.

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The village, on closer inspection, appears to be built where a small river lets out into the sea.

As they approach, a small child emerges from one of the nicer-looking huts and heads for the river, then changes direction when he spots strangers on the shore. Now trotting toward them, he calls out a friendly greeting in an unfamiliar language.

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Feris tries greeting the child in Sesati and less fluently in archaic Neza.

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The child shrugs uncomprehendingly at both of those, then turns and calls over his shoulder. A much older lady emerges from the same hut and leans on a walking stick as she regards the scene. They have a brief discussion in their foreign tongue; then the kid turns back to Feris and Valan and earnestly attempts to invite them in for dinner by mime.

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They confer briefly but they're both in favor of accepting the invitation. Probably they can convey this by going to the hut they've just been invited to.

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The small child is setting out two extra plates around a small table, and after another brief conference with Probably His Grandmother also dragging in an extra stool from a neighbouring hut so that all four of them will have somewhere to sit, and then serving grilled fish onto all the plates and chattering animatedly while Probably His Grandmother watches in mild amusement. There is enough grilled fish for everybody, and no explanation forthcoming for why they had so much.

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Ooh, fish. Is it recognizable as a specific kind they might recognize?

They try to seem polite insofar as they can do that exclusively through body language.

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It looks within the range of possible fish one might grill, but the species isn't familiar.

When the kid has settled down at the table and begun eating fish instead of peppering the strangers with incomprehensible questions, the Probably Grandma has a go at introducing herself: gesture to self, "Viasarae." Gesture to strangers...?

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They introduce themselves as Valan and Feris.

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The kid gives his name as Kioh and then goes on animatedly discussing unknown subjects in the local language.

Viasarae, meanwhile, studies the newcomers thoughtfully, and after dinner she sends Kioh to fetch a map of the continent. On it, she points out a river and traces a line with her finger that is not drawn on the map to describe an offshoot of that river, which she identifies with the river outside the hut. Then she makes a questioning noise and gestures between the strangers and the map, probably asking where they came from.

The continent depicted is not familiar.

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Valan looks at Feris on the theory that Feris might be able to figure it out. Feris looks at the map very carefully and does not figure it out, though he considers a couple of places that seem sort of similar.

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The map names cities and landmarks (in an unfamiliar alphabet) but doesn't draw any borders, and there's a very fancy city-mark floating off in the middle of the ocean for no obvious reason. Viasarae watches Feris study the map.

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He eventually shakes his head and spreads his hands.

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Viasarae nods thoughtfully.

Kioh hands her his empty cup. It fills with water. He takes it back and drinks from it. Neither of them seems to regard this interaction as especially interesting.

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Feris raises an eyebrow, watching the cup with the obviously deliberate calm of someone who doesn't want to let anyone get a rise out of them. Valan frowns and then makes a very bland expression.

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It takes a second before Viasarae catches on to their reactions, but then she looks from the strangers to the cup with a questioning expression, and after a moment refills her own cup to see if they'll continue to be weird about it.

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Feris is not really sure how to say much of use. He can point to the cup and raise his eyebrows, not that he expects that to help much.

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Viasarae takes this as a prompt for a vocabulary lesson: cup, water, empty, full.

Once those basics are established, though, she defines another category with more elaborate setup: when she fills an empty cup, or makes the water rise out of it and eddy through the air, or Kioh makes a sourceless flame dance above his palm, the thing they are doing is magic.

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They don't try to comment on whether this category is familiar to them. Feris repeats the words when Viasarae says them.

Valan says something to Feris in Sesati and then tries to prompt more vocabulary. How about the fire, the fish, the map...?

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The fire is a fire, the fish is a fish, the map is a map (and made of paper, and drawn in ink).

Viasarae is pretty content to play this game, and Kioh is also happy to contribute although his contributions are less reliable and it's often not clear exactly what he's referring to when he chips in with a word. Viasarae can sometimes manage to clarify, though, by such means as elaborately miming setting the table with many different plates each with a different hypothetical fish, which is a step on the road to explaining why Kioh insists that the contents of his plate aren't just fish, they're salmon.

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Types of fish are not that interesting but can they get a general way to say things belong to categories?

Valan tries to get more words about, not the map, but the thing it's a map of. This part here is water, right? What do they call the other parts?

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Category vocabulary is forthcoming after a bit of back-and-forth clarification. A salmon is a type of fish, a pebble is a type of rock, table and chairs are types of furniture, and yes, that part of the map is ocean which is made of water and is the same as the ocean outside, and that part is river which is made of water and is the same as the river outside, and these parts are land, and those parts are mountains which are a type of land that is tall and made of rock...

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Then perhaps they can convey that they came from a small mountain in Sesat.

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And Sesat, Viasarae inquires to confirm, is not anywhere on this map?

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Well, Feris can't find it, maybe unless it's this bit that's the wrong scale and at the wrong latitude and oriented the wrong way... yeah, they can't find it on this map.

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She nods thoughtfully. If she has any conclusions from this information or further questions about it, she's not inclined to try to get them across through this thick of a language barrier, but she does resume teaching them the names for things and any other vocabulary they can successfully express interest in.

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Feris eventually tries to convey through mime that he'd find notetaking supplies useful. This is a lot to just memorize.

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They can scrounge up some bark and charcoal, will that do?

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Those will do! The two of them confer very briefly and then Valan starts writing down the vocabulary they've learned so far while Feris starts trying to elicit more. What do they call movement? Trade? Ships? How about the assorted gear Feris and Valan came with? Feris has a theory that they won't have a word for Valan's wristguard; do they?

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After squinting dubiously at the wristguard, Viasarae concludes that it's not really a glove and not really a bracelet and not really a sleeve (and manages to scrounge examples of all of these things to compare it against), and shrugs in defeat.

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Feris did not especially want to be right about that. Have they got a word for - he enlists Valan's help and mimes stabbing Valan, who acts out a terribly dramatic death in keeping with Sesati stage conventions other than how obviously he's having fun.

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With reference to various aspects of this scene Viasarae produces 'stabbing', 'acting', 'killing', and 'dying'.

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Feris checks their notes and tries to figure out if he needs any more words to be able to ask what the word is for groups of people trying to kill each other.

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He can scrape that together without too much trouble if he tries. Viasarae answers that smallish groups of people trying to kill each other is a brawl or fight, and big groups of people trying to kill each other is a war, and looks very curious about how these vocabulary questions add up all together but doesn't try to ask just yet.

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Well, Sesat is having a war, they can at least attempt to convey that now.

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In that case Sesat definitely isn't on this planet; the Emperor doesn't stand for that sort of thing.

...Viasarae has to detour to fill in some vocabulary in order to make sure what she just said got across properly. The Emperor is a person who lives on the fancy dot in the ocean on the map, and if someone started a war here, he would make them stop; is that enough information to explain what sort of thing an Emperor is or does she have to get more creative?

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Feris tentatively thinks he gets what the Emperor is.

...He's confused about the "definitely isn't on this planet" thing.

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...so, this here is a map of the continent, which is the place in the world where people are. Besides the continent, there's the ocean, which is a place where people mostly aren't. After that you run out of places where people might be.

In all of the places where people might be, if there was a war, the Emperor would find out, and then there wouldn't be a war anymore.

So if there's a war, where Feris and Valan are from, then Feris and Valan are from somewhere new, somewhere else, somewhere outside the Emperor's domain. And if it's outside the Emperor's domain, it is not under this same sky, not encircled by this same water, it is not the same place. Not 'not the same' like different continents or different islands, where you could swim or sail or fly between them. 'Not the same' like something new has to have happened, for someone to have gotten from there to here.

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Yep, a thing happened. They have no idea what thing happened, but a thing happened.

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Viasarae has no idea either, but seems in agreement that there has probably been a thing.

...the Emperor could probably find out what thing happened. Viasarae looks pretty dubious about the idea of consulting him, and tries to explain that it may be a bad idea but runs aground on lack of vocabulary with which to explain the nuances of the situation, but she does seem to think that if they really want to find out, he's just about the only source she can think of that might have a clue.

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They confer.

Feris attempts to convey - so on this hand there's the Emperor, and on the other hand, there's... what, exactly?

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...Viasarae is not following whatever they're trying to get across here.

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Not really a shock, that.

Well, then they can keep trying to learn the local language and at some point maybe they'll be able to do anything else.

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After enough of that they'll eventually need sleep. Viasarae conveys that they can sleep in her hut if they want.

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They'll do that.

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In that case when night falls they may catch a glimpse of her casually turning into water and flowing into the river and out to sea. She's not making a point of showing off or anything but it's also not particularly a secret.

 

The village wakes early the next morning, to get the fishing boats out onto the water. Viasarae rises from the surf, damp and smelling of seawater, and no one takes particular note of this except to welcome her back and accept her help and supervision.

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Her guests do not turn into anything. They do, silently, conclude they were totally right to think they had fallen in with the fair folk somehow.

They attempt to offer their help with things that don't require magic.

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The villagers are mostly not inclined to add strangers to their workflow but Kioh is fetching and carrying for what might be his mother's boat and will happily direct them to fetch and carry in his stead. Mostly people aren't using magic, except that one boat gets bumped out into the water a little too early by accident and Viasarae calls it back on an unnaturally tidy little wave.

Viasarae is just about the only villager who stays behind once the boats launch; she turns back to her guests to offer them more language lessons. Maybe she'll try her hand at teaching them politics-related vocabulary in case it helps them formulate their question about the Emperor. This here is a very small village, and she's the closest thing it has to leadership, but bigger villages have heads or elders, and towns and cities like Southport over there have mayors. Her grasp of the finer details is unfortunately not very good because she has spent most of her life in this tiny village only visiting Southport occasionally to sell fish.

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That is a useful kind of vocabulary! They are from a town with a mayor.

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At this point she kind of runs aground on her hazy understanding of the empire's organizational principles, and switches to filling in more general vocabulary like, oh, numbers, numbers are probably good for something. She can try to translate all the major place names on her map of the continent, maybe. Southport is called that because it is a port (a place where boats can dock) in the south (that end of the map, with this relationship to the path of the sun). Skygarden is called that because it is, at least poetically speaking, a garden (a place where plants grow, but more decoratively than agriculturally) in the sky (up there).

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They are pretty sure they can't visit Skygarden, and curious if the fact that it's in the sky is the reason Viasarae had reservations about suggesting contacting the Emperor.

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Oh. No, there are airships for that, boats that fly by magic. You can get on one just the same as you'd get on a ship that stayed in the water, by paying money or by working for your passage. Once you get to Skygarden it's all built on normal dirt and rock like a normal city, just a long way up. The Emperor did make it but that's one of the least concerning things about him.

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...That is honestly very cool.

Well, they suppose they'd at least better stay here until they know enough of the local language to conceivably have a productive conversation with the Emperor and coincidentally also to hear more about Viasarae's concerns. Unless she wants to volunteer any ideas to get them home faster than that.

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She does not volunteer any such ideas. She does volunteer all the new vocabulary she can think of a way to convey. Kioh, when he's around, is also happy to chatter aimlessly at them about the concerns of his life such as whether yesterday's catch was good and his excitement for helping his uncle build a new boat soon and the fact that he fell down and clonked his head a minute ago, and might manage to accidentally introduce a useful topic or two that way.

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It's something! They take very detailed notes. Long before they're actually anything like fluent they can decipher over the course of several minutes sentences that only use words they've already taken notes on. Possibly worth trying again on figuring out whether they should go to Skygarden and see the Emperor, once they're starting to worry about the expense of the writing implements and starting to mostly vibe with the simpler grammatical constructions.

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Nobody seems inclined to bother them about expense-related concerns. They can stay in Viasarae's hut and help Kioh with miscellaneous chores seemingly indefinitely, and eat a lot of fish and be supplied with a lot of bark and charcoal.

Viasarae does try to elaborate on her concerns regarding the Emperor again, once they've got a steadier foundation of words to understand such an explanation with. Her concerns about the Emperor involve the intersection of two facts: one, the Emperor is very, very powerful. He has the most magic—the most magic out of anyone in the world, and possibly also the most magic it is possible for a person to have? If the entire rest of the world were to try to go to war with the Emperor for some reason, Viasarae would very firmly bet on the Emperor winning. And she'd stay out of it herself, even if all her neighbours were very keen for her to join. But even if they somehow got her into it, she wouldn't expect her presence to help.

Two, the Emperor is... hmm, rumour has it he angers easily? Though it's a very distant rumour, to come here all the way from Skygarden, and the details may have gotten smudged on the way. Rumour also has it, somewhat more reliably, that he likes to hurt people, and buys slaves to hurt them for fun. It's said that he does not just scoop people off the street for his own entertainment, but if for some reason he felt like doing that, per point 1, there really isn't anything anyone could do to stop him.

On the other hand, Viasarae does think the Emperor is more or less reasonably well invested in the safety and prosperity of his empire, in a general sense. When something catastrophic happens, a landslide or a flood, that only a catastrophically powerful person could do anything about, he'll show up and settle things and fix what he can and then leave without hurting anyone. If something catastrophic happened here, if the whole village washed out to sea or if someone showed up from a strange world who was less friendly than Valan and Feris and powerful enough that Viasarae couldn't handle them herself, she'd get the Emperor's attention and she'd expect good things and not bad things to result from doing so.

It may take some vocabulary detours to successfully communicate all this, but Viasarae is pretty patient about making sure she's understood.

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They confer about this.

" - Basically the only reason to seek this guy out is to go home, right?"

"Well, there's also curiosity," Feris muses, "not that he's likely to want to answer questions and there's Viasarae here..."

"So no good reasons." Definitely not going home, not if it involves bringing Sesat to this person's attention.

"No, no good reasons."

Valan sighs. "I guess all this being terrified of coming to the monarch's attention is probably how all the other boring fishermen feel."

"I'd write a book about it, but."

"Well, you can tell me what the book would have in it."

And in the end they thank Viasarae for her help and decide to spend the rest of their lives right here in this village being as boring as possible.