"Huh, that's a bit of a coincidence. Maybe you are a time traveler."

"Or maybe I just came from a very large coincidence. It's hard to be sure. I hope I'm not a time traveler, though. I still can't see clearly when my brother might be showing up, and I don't want it to turn out that that's because he only exists if the future comes out just right."

May flips back to the spellwork she was working on. "It's very distantly possible that I accidentally brought you here, though it'd be a hell of an accident."

"...what were you doing that could have accidentally done that?"

"Trying to invent a teleportation spell. It really really shouldn't have done this but it's the right general genre of thing, I guess."

'Teleportation' is not a natural construction in this language, but after puzzling over it for a few seconds, she says, "Yes, I think I can see how that would make sense. Because it was supposed to move things between distant places, and it did that, but not how you expected?"

"Not how I expected, and not when I was in fact casting a spell. Normally I'd say my magic suppression power also ought to have intervened but I was at the time trying to leave it pretty open so I could see what side effects there were."

"...is spells casting themselves without your help a usual sort of thing?"

"Not at all, no, I'd be much more confident it was my fault if I'd gotten to the point of testing anything."

"Curious," she says. "I wonder what could do that?"

"I don't know. Do you want me to try to send you back? Or to bring your brother who you mentioned here?"

"...hm," she says. "What happens, if you try to send me back, and something goes wrong? Could I end up somewhere else entirely by accident? I think it would not be good, if you tried to send me back, and I went somewhere that was not home and not here, and then my brother came here looking for me. I think that could end up causing a lot of trouble."

"I don't deny it. How would he get here?"

"I would expect him to tell a doorway to lead to me, or something like that. But if he instead tells the doorway to lead to where I went, without realizing that that's not the same thing as where I am, then he could end up here without me."

"How long do you think he'll take to notice you've gone missing?"

"Well, that depends," she says consideringly. "We're not in the same class because I'm not attuned to the mysteries of school, so if he goes home straight away he might assume I'm out hunting by myself and then he won't notice until dinnertime. But if he comes looking for me to take me home which he sometimes does, then he won't find me and he'll start to worry and he'll look for me in the future and he won't see me at all and then he'll be very worried indeed... Oh, but I forgot! He's meeting Clearsight today! So he'll be very distracted by being in love with her, and he probably won't think of me at all until tomorrow." She frowns slightly. "I would like to be there when he meets her, though. I think the future of the tribe might suffer if I'm not."

"Why would the future of your tribe suffer if you aren't there while your brother hangs out with his girlfriend?"

"No, no—he's meeting her. For the first time. And I don't know exactly what will be different but I know Clearsight will expect it to be when I meet her—or, would have, when I was going to meet her—I guess I'm not anymore, if I'm not there. Or was that going to be tomorrow? Or next week? I felt so sure I knew, but then it turned out that feeling sure and knowing aren't the same at all."

"Clearsight sees the future too, so she already knows your brother, who has not met her but will be her boyfriend?"

"Yes. And he knows her too, but not as well, because he's a worse seer. And I don't know what will happen when they meet but I know I saw Clearsight worrying about it and I know the future will turn on Clearsight's worries."

"Why will the future turn on Clearsight's worries?"

"The reason she worries all the time is because she's the best seer the tribe has ever had, and the future can be very frightening when you understand it properly."

"Are you facing down a... big natural disaster or something...?"

"She hasn't been going to say."

"Huh. I don't know what to make of that."