Jasmine notices an odd sensation, almost like...

"Uh, are you okay? It feels like you're having trouble breathing." 

Please don't damage my body by somehow failing at breathing, she does not say. 

"What-- oh, right, that's the false-breathlessness. I'm..."

...oh, a vocabulary hole. Jasmine doesn't know how to say "I'm food-breath convergent" in Imperial.

"...just hungry, that's all. It's...another thing in the same category as synesthesia. My subconscious gets mixed up between feeling hungry and feeling out of breath. It can get a bit annoying sometimes, but it's harmless.

I'm surprised you haven't heard of it: something like one-third of people have *some* sort of desire-convergence when you look carefully. We meet a lot of people washing up from tiny farming villages and the like that never connected the dots, but this seemed like a place that would have noticed.

...maybe there'll be alien psychology to learn about with the *humans* too."

"Well, if there wasn't already a very good reason to get you a technique which doesn't come with breathing elements, that would be something I'd worry about. I've never heard of people getting wires crossed like that but it doesn't seem surprising, humans are weird in so many other ways. Maybe there will be some attempt to communicate incommunicable insight that you're uniquely well suited to understand because of it." 

"Anyway, it's not surprising that we're hungry, I didn't get dinner. We should get ready and get something to eat quick before orientation." 

Jasmine will instruct Kedri as to where to wash (a communal shower for her floor), what to wear (the same style of loose robes in neutral colours she was wearing yesterday), and where to go for food (a cafeteria on the 1st floor of the spire). 

Showering feels a bit awkward on a couple of levels, but she'll have to get used to it sometime. It's not as if she's never changed someone else's diaper, and this body is overall a decently close match to hers (even if she keeps getting tripped up by subtle differences).

When she gets dressed, she looks contemplatively for a moment at the two medallions hanging around their neck, tucks Jasmine's under their robe, then thinks better of it and wears both of them openly. It's not obvious to look at them which is which, so it doesn't really help indicate who's fronting; it might make for a nice bit of private symbolism, but "there are two people here, please factor that in" seems like a more valuable signal to send to onlookers.

It feels weird eating in a ~public indoor setting without being in a dining-stall, but she'll get used to that too.

Sure enough, her breathing settles down once she's eaten.

It's very surreal going through a perfectly normal morning routine but without any actual control over anything that happens. She's sort of glad she doesn't have dorm-mates who will approach her to start conversations in the early morning, now. Even if it would probably be better if she was better at making friends with them in a broader sense. Today was going to be the day she firmly resolved to change that, but she guesses she's instead going to do her best to make friends with Kedri, and to encourage her to make friends in Jasmine's place.

And so, they will head off to orientation!

Orientation is set to take place in a grand hall built for the purpose - it's a semi-circular amphitheater, with grand pillars and abstract stained glass in the window. They have been assigned seats in advance - Jasmine's seat is about halfway up the rows, and about halfway to the right side from the center. There are about a hundred students in the orientation group, who Jasmine will describe and point out to Kedri. These include the following categories:

- Students dressed like Jasmine, with her trained bearing, who Jasmine mostly recognizes as fellow orphans. Perhaps 30.

- A extremely miscellaneous collection of twenty or so who are commoners and much higher variance, in hair color, style of dress (ranging from 'homeless person' in one case, to a rich merchant's son, dripping with jewels).

- A good number, composing perhaps 40 of the hundred, who are dressed like Jasmine, but with nicer robes that display clan markings of innumerable sorts. These students from cultivating families also have a good rate of physical mutations - there's someone with scales, someone with fire for hair, someone with flowers growing along his skin. Jasmine will point out two in particular - front and center, is the Duke's three times great grandson, and in a corner, glowering bitterly at anything and everything is someone Jasmine can't identify, but her clothing bears the crest of an Imperial branch house, marking her as a princess of the imperial family, albeit one some distance from the current reigning emperor.

- Exactly 8, with skin a few shades darker than the common imperials and clothing that's tight-fitting and intricately woven, who Jasmine will identify as the candidates sent by the Warden Hillfolk - those who dwell in the hinterland of the Duchy and maintain the land for the Bank.

- Three students, who unlike the rest are adults in their forties, with blue or silver hair and pale skin, wearing well-fitted black jackets and aprons over well-tailored clothing in dark colors. Jasmine will note that they're Toojeon - an ethnic minority who do butchering and mortuary work and sort of creep Jasmine out.

- Two figures, with serpentine figures long and inhuman and covered entirely with silk veils, to the point where it's not clear how they could see out from under that. These are presumably the Tongwan - the aforementioned olm-folk. 

- And a few yet stranger things - one seat appears to have been assigned to a jeweled amulet left on top of the desk, and in the back, a bio-mechanical spider, all metal limbs and green-glowing tubing, is attempting to fit into a human-sized chair without much success.

The assigned seating has been carefully set out to ensure that nobody is sitting near anyone they already know or are comfortable talking to. Jasmine and Kedri have a noble-born man, about seven feet tall and with marble-grey skin, to their right, a nervous looking commoner in scholarly attire behind them, a slight Warden girl whose hair and clothing both prominently feature dark green in front of them, and a Toojeon with bags under her eyes to their left.

It seems the orientation schedule intends to leave them time to chat, before the speechifying will begin.

Wow this is a lot to take in.

At least she's not the most outside-context person here? Maybe. By some definitions. They don't seem to be accustomed to having cyborg spiders around, anyway. The amulet could be a telepresence device for all she knows, though she's certainly not ruling out that there's a soul in there.

So! Pre-orientation chatting!

she should have, like, prepared a calling card explaining what her deal is, it'll be rough trying to phrase things on the fly

She will...start by talking to the person she tentatively guesses has the least cultural baggage for her to trip over.

She turns around in the seat.

"Hello!" she says to the commoner.

"Ah! H-Hello?" He looks surprised that someone wants to talk to him and nearly drops the pair of glasses he's been polishing. 

Maybe they can bond over being nervous about talking to people. That is not unheard of as a way for bonding to work.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I just figured I should start getting to know people." She smiles apologetically.

"Ah. I'm sorry, I still don't really know what I'm doing here. It's not like I was going to pass the offer up, but it's so - you know. You know that they say the Immortal of Security designed the stained glass to encode one of his secret techniques? A real immortal's personal work!" 

(he shows a notebook, where he's been sketching each of the stained-glass windows and taking notes about their placement) 

"I did not know that, but then I landed on this world less than a day ago. I'm looking forward to getting a handle on things.

Oh, uh, right, introductions. I'm Kedri, and this--" she gestures at what would appear to be her own body, placing her hand a little above her heart "--is my host, Jasmine."

(Wait, should she have given the longer version of Jasmine's name, like when Jasmine introduced herself?

...well, like she said, she has not had time to get a handle on things. Hopefully it will be okay.)

"There was a lot less ambient qi on my homeworld, or at least that's the current best guess in hindsight. We didn't have cultivators. I didn't know magic was a thing it was even possible to learn, and now I'm going to be learning it." She grins.

"Ah! I'm Lark! Pleased to meet you. A world without qi sounds like it would be very odd - how did you determine who rose in the government? Purely the results of merit exams? The imperial bureaucracy still makes some use of them - especially for entry at all, but successful cultivation is so important to rise through the ranks. And wars, I can't imagine wars without cultivators - how would mortals even capture fortresses? It'd be impossible." 

"I think it was a mix of merit exams and internal votes? I'm pretty sure there's voting involved in how they decide who the town's representative in the national senate should be. It's been a while since I paid very much attention to it: I wasn't interested in a civil-service job myself, and I haven't needed to interact much with the government beyond tax contributions and such.

My initial guess on wars would be a mix of 'mortal-built fortresses are easier to take' and 'actually just having fewer wars', but that's very tentative."

"Ah, that makes sense. I have no idea what is and isn't possible without cultivator support - even the conservative manuals assume you'll have martial cultivators aiding the physical labour of the work and so forth. I wonder if there are any monographs on the subject in the archives? I wonder how much access we'll be given - the paperwork only discussed the cultivator's section, which is naturally very restricted." 

Jasmine will chime in: "Students have access to the entire non-restricted section, but only limited rights to ask librarians for help navigating the stacks." 

"On the bright side, the lack of staining means you can get a lot done with machines.

Jasmine says, 'Students have access to the entire non-restricted section, but only limited rights to ask librarians for help navigating the stacks.'"

"Ah, I apologise, I had assumed Jasmine was quiescent somehow. Jasmine is a local, then? I had wondered, at your style of dress." 

"She's a local, yeah. These are her clothes.

My original body was...no longer habitable. When it died, my soul drifted, unconscious, through the worlds, and yesterday I lodged in here and awoke. In the middle of the induction ceremony, which was...awkward, but...I think everyone's been taking it very well, really. The higher-ups were very good at accounting for both the possibility that I was telling the truth and the possibility that I was a malicious intruder--they've since proven to their satisfaction that I mean no harm--and Jasmine seems to be very adaptable in the face of this shakeup to her life. I'm glad to have her and the Bank on my side, and...I hope to make them glad to have me on theirs.

Oh, and as for quiescence: when this body's awake--so far, at least--both of us are conscious and aware of its senses, but only one of us can control it at a time. We're still getting the hang of switching: it's not really something we can do casually yet. It's early days."

"Kedri. Please communicate less about our weaknesses to people we met a minute ago." says Jasmine.

Simultaneously, Lark laughs nervously. "I'm just glad I'm not the only one out of my depth, then." 

"...sorry. I didn't think something that temporary would be a big deal, but you're right about being on the safe side."

Wait, what did he say. Something about being out of his depth.

"It will get better. Even one day has made a big difference; I'm looking forward to how much sturdier I'll be tomorrow."

Is this helping? Like, it's not false, but is it helping? She did say that she was not good at intrigue in general and intrigue-within-this-specific-cultural-context especially.

...she didn't actually say that, did she, just think it to herself.

"...actually, *should* we switch? You have a *much* clearer sense of how to go about talking to people from this culture, plus it would demonstrate how quickly our switching abilities are improving to anyone who might be taking notes on our weaknesses."

"It's not a big deal, no. Just, be careful. I'd rather not try switching, because we don't actually know how fast we'll be and I had thought you would benefit more from the actual orientation, since I'm already pretty well oriented. If we are improving rapidly, perhaps that can be the secret."

Lark looks somewhat reassured. "You're right, of course. I only wish I'd had more time to research - I had to leave immediately so most of what I've read has been what I could buy while in transit." 

"Good points."

She grins. "Well, it sounds like we have a lot of library to explore.

How did you get the offer to study here, if I may ask? It sounds like it was all very sudden."