She sighs.

"It's a long story and I don't really like talking about it. Can I save it for when I'm not sitting on your plants? I might be able to manage walking by now."

"Yeah, sorry. That's fine. Should I introduce you to the government?"

She gets up, carefully, and picks her way out of the plants.

"What... does introducing me to the government..." She has to stop talking for a bit because multitasking it with the walking isn't going so well. "...consist of?"

"I guess I would... uh, walk with you to where they do things, and let someone know, and then you could talk to people there, or I could go ask someone else to tell them to come here... I don't really know what they'd want to talk with you about?"

"I don't really know either and I'm kind of concerned about it."

"You don't have to talk to them if you don't want to. I mean, I'm not going to keep you a secret, but."

"I guess that's fair. ...and your world is not big enough that I can just wander off to somewhere that doesn't look inhabited and start digging a garden. I guess—I guess you could ask someone to come here, and I could ask them where's a good place to put my house." She looks, insofar as her small grey facial expressions are interpretable, troubled by this prospect.

"...I can probably also tell you that. How big a house and garden do you want?"

"...for myself, just this size would do, but if I'm going to be trying to do magic, I probably need at least twice this much land to build on. Maybe better make it... hmm, let's see..."

Being careful to find a route that doesn't step on any plants, she paces out the dimensions of the plot. At her height this makes for rather more paces than a human would need.

"...I think... about six times this much. If it matters a lot that I definitely have enough land to make all my magic work, which it sounds like it might. I might be able to get away with less, but six times this much will be more than I had at home so it shouldn't be possible for it to not be enough."

"I think that won't be too hard? But not right here. But someplace that's not being used for much. Which isn't news to you. But I don't think we have shared vocabulary so maybe you need a map? We have a map inside, if you want to come in I can introduce you to my husband and show you the map."

"It has to be someplace that isn't being used for much else; I don't know much about the magic I'm working with but I do know that it cares about how mine a place is, and it's less mine if I have very close neighbours. Yes, sure, I'll meet your husband."

The house is still in a state of being moved into. There are a couple of boxes and a rolled up tapestry against one wall, and a long cane on a hook by the front door, and evidence that someone has been painting while sitting on the floor. There's an open door through which can be seen a room where someone is assembling a crib.

"Let's introduce you first, I don't want to be hanging around without him knowing we're in here."

"...can he not tell...?" But indeed he doesn't seem to be reacting to their presence. The Lamb is making her concerned face again.

"Well, he's a mage. Mages can't see or hear." Poke poke. "Hey, it's Lia, I saw this weird furry person, uh, I forgot to ask their name, anyway they appeared out of nowhere claiming to have come from some other world and have different magic and I brought them in here to show them a map of Sathend. Please help I think I'm completely mangling first contact."

"...I see. Hello, weird furry person."

The Lamb attempts, as gracefully as she can, to join this conversation. The touch-sign is as mysteriously comprehensible to her as the visual sign she was using with Lia before, and she can't tell whether that's because they're close enough that the correspondences are obvious, or whether the magic gave her both modes at once, or whether that's even a sensible question to ask.

"Hi," she says tentatively to Val. Her hands are small and rough and a little strangely shaped, but she can make herself understood all the same. She is, verifiably, furry. "Uh—" there must be a way to address Lia while including Val, it would be insane for a language not to have that—right okay— "You don't have to worry about asking me my name, I forgot it, probably for spooky magic reasons. And I don't think you're mangling anything. You've been really nice so far."

"Okay but you constantly look horrified." (She is also looping Val in.)

"Oh, I promise this place is way less horrifying than where I came from, so far!"

Pause.

"...that sentence was so much more reassuring when it was on the inside of me."

"Are you at risk of being followed by any of the reasons your original world was so horrifying?"

"Definitely absolutely not. I wouldn't have even tried leaving if there was any chance I might be followed."

"Good. We've been looking for other worlds but if they're horrifying we're not out of space yet, we can stop looking while we figure out if it's a bad idea."

"The world I came from is very very—far away, in world terms. If I figure out how to be able to move between worlds again I can look at ones that are closer and maybe there'll be something. But, um, the more I think about it the more I think—apparently magic here costs torture, and mine does not, but I think if I want to do anything with it that's as much of a thing as moving between worlds I will need... I'm not sure how to explain. A thing that is concerning but not in the same ways that torture is concerning."

"Would you find it easier to explain with models or pictures?"

"I don't think so. Hmm. Um. ...okay, I can start with—I was telling Lia I'd need a plot of land that was about six times what you have, to be sure I'd have enough to make the magic work. That's because—part of the foundation of the whole thing is having my own place that's mine, with my own stuff there, and building certain things on it. And... the other big part of the foundation... is people living there who are—connected to me, by the magic. Which I would not find so concerning except that the connection makes people like me and look up to me and trust me and want to do what I say, and—when you have people like that, it's hard to figure out—how to not be screwing them over—a lot of what was wrong with the place I came from was that other people who could do that same kind of magic had just set up whole territories of people who were bound to them like that, and weren't at all trying not to screw them over, and were instead doing lots of fucked-up stuff."

"What the fuck."