That's when Tema and Chanai show up with a collection of little bits of different kinds of dried herbs and spices.

"Apple," Velya says, which seems to mean something to Tema. "She mentioned she can read."

She goes sifting through the herb options, looking at them, touching a couple, sniffing one.

Rose, ashwagandha, valerian... a lot of things, and only small amounts of each. Nothing too dangerous to touch even though some plants are both dangerous to touch and magically useful.

"Can I have some tweezers or gloves or something?"

"You should have gloves, I just don't have gloves your size lying around. I bet we have tweezers - " Tema glances at Chanai.

Chanai has tweezers and other things in a little case in his pocket. He offers the tweezers to their guest very carefully, as though even wearing gloves and long sleeves he's terribly concerned about accidentally touching her.

She can hold out her hand flat to catch them dropped.

He smiles at her and drops them and backs away.

She chooses a container that will hold more than it presently does and starts tweezing other things into it. "This'll turn my hair pink," she says. "But it'll take a few minutes to work once I drink it."

The adults exchange meaningful looks.

"I'd love to see that," Tema says firmly.

"Should I drink it now or wait till more people are watching?"

"I want to see it and I think it's one of not very many abilities you could have that would be more worrying than not having magic. Anything where you change bodies like that will be a bad choice for - you know what, how about you drink it and I explain this whole situation while we wait for your hair to change color."

"You suggested changing colors! You should have been more specific." Swig.

"Yes, that's my fault. I'll try to explain enough that you can fill in some when I forget to say things."

Tema backs up a bit but then squats down so she's not looming. This person, child or otherwise, doesn't really seem to be getting tangled in long sentences or struggling to keep up with the breadth of the adults' everyday vocabulary, but then, Tema was like that at that age. Doesn't mean she needs the adult version of history. - Also she might be missing things and not asking for clarification, this hasn't been the least hostile interaction they could possibly have had.

"A long, long time ago, there were humans, like now, who had magic that touched souls. And not like now, there were others, the fair ones, who had magic that touched bodies. They could heal, or they could make people stop moving, or they could probably have changed the color of their hair. They used their magic to hurt people, humans and each other and mermaids and maybe even dragons and phoenixes. And so the other species got together and took their magic away. Humans in some places - like here in Zorvey - don't think that's enough, because you can hurt people without any magic. So we don't want people here if we can't prove they're not secretly the fair ones. That make sense so far?"

"I guess, yeah. I could make..." She looks at the herbs thoughtfully. "...furniture varnish?"

"Does it do something regular furniture varnish doesn't?"

"I don't know much about regular furniture varnish." Inspect inspect. "You said sleep would be okay?"

"Sleep is what human kids do."

"Does it have to work on me or you?"

"It has to work on someone who wouldn't pretend for you. Though I'm... not honestly sure you wouldn't be better off just leaving the country and going somewhere they don't check, which is actually something I can arrange for you."

"I'm not sure why I wound up here to begin with so maybe that would work fine or even be better if I was left here by a hostile party which seems likely, or maybe it would have some catastrophic problem. I can do a sleep potion that would work on you. Or me but it would have to be totally different."

"I do think you were left here by a hostile party and I'm trying not to make that your problem if you're not hostile yourself. I don't know what might be catastrophic for your species but I would expect being in the Federation to be fine for a human - that's a place where it'd be fine whatever species you turned out to be - but I suppose travel is sometimes dangerous."

"Well, I have amnesia, which seems pretty hostile, but if someone was trying to kill me I'm not sure why they... didn't... kill me, so I'm kind of confused."

"I think I was a target, not just you. It's not friendly at all to drop a toddler with healing powers on my doorstep, it really puts me on the spot."

"Why would anyone hold you responsible for me?"