She can find books on architecture - this world has skyscrapers! - and construction vehicles and people in various unifom-ish outfits doing various things, some of which involve using various tools or interacting with casually-dressed people in strange settings and some of which involve writing or sitting in groups with similarly-dressed people in opulent surroundings.

Skyscrapers! Definitely will take that one. She'll also takes a few each of the 'using tools' books and the 'sitting in groups' books, and returns to Denice.

:There we go. I took a bunch of books. This will be my first time learning a language after awakening as a Flower. I hope Telepathy and my other spells will let me learn quicker.:

She'll place the books beside the paper she's writing down on.

:I'm still working on the email, I think I'll figure it out tonight but it's complicated and I've never done this before. I can take a break and read one of those to you if you want.:

:Yes please! Thank you for all your effort helping me. I hope that I'll be able to help you in the same way.:

She'll gesture for one of the 'sitting in opulent place' books.

:I'll maintain Telepathy so that I can get the meanings of the words from you. Will you read aloud or silently?:

:Silently, I really almost can't talk at all. They do have CDs and some of those might be people reading books if you want that.:

:That's okay! I think I might do that, though even if I only get some literacy, that is already very good. At least then I can read and write. Is your script at least phonetic? That is to say, can you glean the pronunciations of words based on how they're written, and vice versa?:

:Uh, sort of. Words are made of letters and the letters usually have mostly the same sounds, but only usually and mostly.:

:Oh, that sounds like the state Towan is in. We've been wanting to do spelling reform to accommodate changes in how the language has been spoken since the War. I can deal with it.:

Marina will focus on maintaining Telepathy to associate word-meaning pairs between what's on the page and what Denice is sending her.

The book she's picked describes the basics of how the United States' federal government works, with a two-part legislative branch selected by the states to make laws, the president in charge of the executive branch and the military to enforce laws and conduct wars, and the president-appointed members of the judicial branch to determine the details of how laws are enforced, by hearing court cases. There's a fair amount of focus on the fact that most of these people are elected and all of them are meant to serve the country.

She is learning!

:We also have a democracy! We can vote on laws and who's elected to the executive and judiciary. Though – can capes run for office? Practitioners can't run for office or hold government positions with executive power, but they can vote.:

:I haven't heard of that happening but I'm not sure how you'd stop them, if you don't know who's a cape most of the time.:

:Ah, that's true. For us you can verify whether or not someone's awakened, and in what, using effects. But I suppose there's no way to detect whether someone like you was a cape, because your power is passive. Unless there are cape powers that can detect other powers.:

:Are you allowed to check out books from the library? Could I come here tomorrow, during the day, and check out these books? I might also be able to check out books for you.:

:You can check books out but they might want paperwork from you before they let you - I can check that too, write it down so we don't forget.:

She'll write it down!

:Thinking on it, it seems like a good idea to read more books now, and then try to figure out emailing the PRT later? Because then, at least, if we do end up having to run away because they figured out where we are and are coming, we'd've already have read the books.:

:If they come for us I'm going to want to leave the whole town, and I think there'll be another library wherever we go, I don't think they're rare at all. But sure.:

The next book is about how skyscrapers are built; the one after that is about the scientific method, following a be-lab-coated scientist as he runs an experiment to determine how much water makes kidney beans sprout the best. The one after that is a biography of Galileo, then one about the founding of the country and how its constitution was written. Denice doesn't offer commentary on the contents of the books, for the most part, but does point out the more egregious cases of English's frankenlanguage nature.

By the time she's done with the last book, she wants something to drink; conveniently there's a water fountain against the wall. :There's snacks in the office if you're hungry,: she adds.

She is not listening, but she is learning!

Marina is very familiar with the scientific method and is glad, though unsurprised, that this world has it too. 

Huh. She has no idea what religion is, or why they would want to suppress information like that. She's not sure whether she wants to open that topic.

It sounds like the founding of the Federation, in a way. Though the impetus for creating the Federation differs: it became a thing because people wanted to avoid another world war between the six Ways – at the time, individual countries usually privileged one way and marginalized the others, which caused deep cultural differences that eventually came to a head.

English's unoptimizedness is frustrating, but not surprising. She managed to learn Topona's complex compounding system – she can learn weird English spelling.

She sends images of written text rather than pure concepts this time, to try out the language.

:"I understand. I am not hungry. But, I want drink water.":

She really is not hungry, though a part of why she said that is because she kind of is still repulsed at the idea of just...taking things like that. She doesn't want to steal, despite the circumstances. But it's possible that she'll have to in future. Future Marina can deal with that. Sorry Future Marina.

Marina is also welcome to the water fountain, then; Denice will show her where to push to get water out of it. And then she has an idea for working on the email project: having to switch back and forth between the instructions for setting up an account that she found and the actual page has been slowing her down considerably, but if she can figure out how to print the instructions she won't have that problem any more. It turns out to be fairly easy to print the instructions and she tells Marina she thinks it'll be pretty quick from here, if she wants to start thinking about what she wants the email to say.

Piped water is great! She smiles brightly.

This part will be complicated so she goes back to sending concepts rather than images of printed text.

:I keep being amazed by your technology. A printing press that can put out pages like that that fast! And with such quality, too. Anyway, the email.

I'm conflicted on how forthright I want to be. Explaining the whole...situation about how I'm from another world seems nightmarish, and also seems like they'll reject me outright for being deluded. But not being forthright risks exposing myself and then having to be investigated more deeply than if I had just talked about everything from the start. Not to mention the reputational costs.

I'm thinking...I should frame things in their native ontology – that I am a cape with innate powers, which is true, but not entirely accurate – rather than saying 'I'm a Flowers Practitioner and I can do these spells and rituals'. And avoid outright lying, but do some misdirection or tactical omission. I think they'll still be interested even if I just say that I can do healing that can scale, and perhaps telepathy, but not mention my other abilities like fertilizing plants or boosting fertility or improving vigor and whatnot. So...

This would be a good time to pick a cape name, I think. I'm not sure. 'Marina' doesn't mean anything – it's just sounds. I named myself after Marina, a famous historical mathematician from my province.

'Hiupio' means 'quartz'. Perhaps I can use that? 'Inse' is 'jade', and 'suimche' means 'secretary'. Probably not the last one. It's wholly unrelated to my powers or concept. I could also name myself 'Flower'. Maybe something that combines the two...

Lotus-sapphire. Do you have it here? It's sapphire that's orange or pink.:

She sends an image of padparadscha sapphire.

She also sends her initial draft for the letter, for Denice to comment on.

To: The Parahuman Response Team
From: Padparadscha

I am a relatively new cape*, and I have read that you are open for capes to apply to join and receive guidance on how best to use their powers. I have also read that you do not require your capes to patrol if their powers are unsuited to it. I would like to correspond with your organization what would be required of me if I join, and what the joining process is like, and mechanisms for each of us to be able to signal to each other our trustworthiness and good-faith.

My power is healing. Alone, I can heal minor cuts and bruises. However, my power can scale. My power is mediated by dancing, and to a lesser extent, singing. I can have other people – non-capes – join in with me in the dancing and singing, including the person or people being treated, and this makes my healing more powerful. The energy I can use exhibits polynomial growth with respect to the number of people participating**. People with more severe injuries take up more of the energy. With several assistants, I can form a circle and treat many people inside the circle.

Some things are easier to do with my powers compared to others. Healing skin injuries and bruises is easiest. I can also cause some parts of the body to regenerate, such as restoring skin lost due to burns, but I cannot restore, for example, a lost finger. Some diseases are treated by my power, but some are unaffected, or become worse. I can also help people recover from blood loss, or make healing from things like broken bones faster – but the bone must be set properly first, or it will heal wrong.

I think that my powers have the potential to be very useful and benefit a lot of people, and I think that you, the PRT, are best placed to put me where I could benefit the most people.

* It's not a lie, not technically. She's a veteran practitioner, but a new cape.

** You can get exponential growth if you use fellow Flowers practitioners, but she's the only one in this world, she thinks.

:I don't know much about gems. That one's pretty, though. And 'marina' is a word in english, for a place with boats - 'marine' is things to do with water in general, like 'marine life' is fish and stuff.:

:I think it'd be weird for a new cape to know that much about how their power worked. And it's weird to want to join the PRT if you want to heal people, they're not really for that, I think.:

:Thank you! It's one of my favorites. We can try looking up its name later. If the name doesn't sound so nice in English, I'll think of some other gems. Maybe...rose quartz. Or rosaline.: She attaches pictures of both.

:I see! That's a great meaning – sadly unusable for a cape name for multiple reasons, though.

That's true. I should pare it down a bit. I think removing a lot of the lower sections, but keeping in the fact that my power grows stronger the more people are dancing with me.

It does seem that cape powers are quite narrow, mostly. More akin to our Geniuses rather than Scholars. So it wouldn't be unusual if healing and telepathy were my only powers.

Really? What does their mission statement or similar say? Are they explicitly like, martial only? Even if they were a military organization, you still need support staff like medics. Flowers ritualists see a lot of use in war, because we do healing, and our healing scales. Hm, do you think you can look up capes that have healing or medicinal or regenerative powers that work on others?:

:I think they'd take you, as a healer, but they'd just have you healing their guys, which isn't 'lots of people'. Anyway, I'll look.:

There's a wiki about capes, it turns out; it calls them parahumans. According to it, healing is rare, found mostly in tinkers (:people who make machines and stuff:), and highly sought-after, especially for endbringer attacks.

:Mm. That's true. I should probably ask whether I'll be contractually obligated only to heal their people or whether I can heal other people too on the side, or some other more complicated arrangement. If they wouldn't allow me to heal other people, then that is a major con for working with them. Does the PRT have any healers? Or are the healers all rogues?:

Marina is kind of baffled that tinkers – which she's rounding off to Fires – are the ones that specialize in healing. But she has to remind herself to discard her old ontology and adopt this one.

:What is an endbringer attack.:

:I don't know what capes the PRT has. Endbringers are huge monsters, there's three of them, every once in a while they attack cities and all the capes go to fight them - not all the capes, I'm not going to, but lots and lots. The water one sank a whole big island last year and there's an earth one and a flying one, the flying one makes people - not normal crazy but kind of crazy, if they hear her sing too much.:

:Oh. So your world has been suffering from something worse than the storms after the war this whole time.

I – definitely want to see if I can help, though that is not the main priority right now. Most likely I'll work in the back healing people and not actually do any fighting, given that I'm useless at that. And I assume that I could earn money doing it, but I'm not sure. I would want to make enough money to support the both of us.

Relatedly, for my letter, if I pose as a new cape, I'll need to talk about how I got my powers. How do capes get their powers? I'll also need to think about what story to say about my life before then, but that I might be able to weasel out of elaborating on, or piece together a story mimicking my actual life story.: