:I know how I got my powers but I don't know if it's the same for everybody, I'll check.:

:Yeah, it's when something really bad happens, and you get powers that have to do with the thing that happened and, like, what you wanted then. They call the bad thing your trigger.:

:Ah, hm. My 'trigger event', summarized briefly, was me contemplating economics during a grocery store trip. Not very traumatizing.

I think...maybe I can say that someone really close to me died. Maybe they were injured, and I didn't know how to treat them, and that's when I triggered. But it was already too late to save them then. That probably works, so long as I fill it the details.

Before I ask you to write the letter, could you try looking up gem names on the computer? Actually, now that we're here, have you thought about what your cape name would be?:

She can look up gems, sure, and she'll quickly be able to bring up a whole list of gem names to print. :I've been thinking of myself as Rescue, for getting the kids out. If other people are going to know about me I want to use a different one for that.:

After several minutes of checking, she eventually identifies 'padparadscha' as a variant of sapphires.

:Found it! Rescue sounds good. If I do end up helping you get the other kids out, I should think of an alternate persona too.:

:Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.:

:I think I just need a couple more minutes to get the email account set up and then we can send the message, if you're ready.:

:Ready!:

To: The Parahuman Response Team
From: Padparadscha

I am a 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.

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, letting it heal more people or heal more severe injuries. I believe it has the potential to treat diseases or hasten healing of things like bones too.

I think that my powers could be very useful to you, and could be very useful to people in general. I am very well suited as filling a backline support role, patching up people who have been hurt in the field.

I am considering joining the PRT, but would like more information before I apply.

If I join the PRT, will you require that I heal exclusively the people that you direct me to heal, or will I be allowed to heal unrelated people too?

Is it possible to join the PRT as a contractor? What are the mechanisms for quitting or retiring?

What is the joining process like? Will I have to produce documents or answer questions or pass tests, aside from demonstrating my power?

I would like for us to set up mechanisms by which we can exchange credible signals about our trustworthiness and good-faith.

That looks fine to Denice, though she does explain that she doesn't know how people usually speak to each other in this kind of letter; she sends it.

:What else did you want to do tonight? I think it might be best to look for more things to print, so we can bring them with us. Stuff about capes, and maybe stuff about how to get paperwork and food and stuff if I can find anything like that.:

She sends that she doesn't know how people here talk either, and she just used the way she talked back in Kosofo. Surely letter styles can't be that different.

:Yes, I think I'd want to print out more stuff about capes so that I can talk to the PRT without looking totally ignorant. Maybe more stuff from the Parahumans Wiki? Oh, and maybe there is stuff that you can print like exercise worksheets for me to do to learn English.: It seems better than just stealing books from the library, but she supposes if you have printing presses that good, then you're stealing less value. Oh stars, she's justifying stealing to herself. What has her world come to. She is being a very, very bad economist.

:You're right. We need to think about how to get paperwork for both of us. And food, yes. I might...if worst comes to worst, I might do glamors to convince people to donate food or money to us. Or more specifically, me, since I don't think you want that attention, and then I can share half of what I get with you.:

:Those sound like good ideas, yeah.: She gets the printing started.

:Even if we find instructions for how to get food, it's probably going to take a few days, and I really don't want to go that long without eating.: Frankly she'd really like to eat tonight, but she's picked up on Marina's discomfort with the idea of stealing food and doesn't want to upset her. Maybe she can grab some of those snacks from the back office without her noticing.

:That's true. I realize now that my proposal for 'begging with glamors' is stymied by the fact that I don't speak English.:

She doesn't pick up on Denice's plan to sneak by Marina and eat the snacks, but she does know that Denice would be hungry too, and obviously she would want to eat the food that's nearby.

:I think we should eat the snacks in the back office now, and later, when we've figured out the money situation, I can make a donation.: She still feels deeply uncomfortable with it, but she like, also doesn't want to die. And this would at least make it a neutral or positive value trade...even though she cannot really call it a trade because it wasn't consented to.

:Yeah, that works.:

Various drawers in the office turn out to contain half a pack of cookies, most of a bag of low-salt potato chips, and a nearly-full package of beef jerky, and there's a jug of milk in the staff refrigerator and a coffee-making setup nearby.

She will offer to let Denice pick out which things she wants to eat first, and Marina will take what she doesn't want to eat. The thing that she definitely does want to have some of is the milk, though. She is partial to it.

She does not recognize the drip coffee maker as a food appliance and ignores it.

Denice is most interested in the beef jerky and cookies, and also wants a glass of milk. She makes sure to leave some of all of them for Marina, though.

:Did you want to try a CD while we're here? The CD player is over there.:

She is grateful! Denice needs the food much more than Marina; she's still growing, and she doesn't have a passive Flowers effect that would allay temporary starvation.

:Yes! It plays audio, right? Does it have spoken versions of books? Do you think you could help me find a CD reading a book aloud, and then the book in its paper form. That way I can listen to how it's spoken, while also seeing the spelling. And then I could get the meaning from you via Telepathy. It would be the ideal learning environment, indeed.:

:I don't know how to find specific books here yet but I can go see if they have books on CD at all.:

And a few minutes later: :They have books on CD, yeah. What kind do you like?:

:Thank you for looking for me. If you had asked me this question back at home, I would have asked about fiction. But...given the circumstances, I probably want to learn about this world while learning about language at the same time. I'm thinking...books about law, or parahumans, or technology, or computers. Or, actually, since you're already doing me a favor by mentally translating and looking for things for me, you should pick what you think is good or interesting, since it will all be good as language practice for me.:

:I'll see what they have.:

She comes back with a history of the protectorate, the parahuman branch of the PRT. After the first chapter, when they've finished eating and cleaning up after themselves, she takes the CD player over to the computers so that she can continue queuing up printouts while they listen.

Enhancing memory is resonant with Perfect, not Flowers. But there's a way to cheat it a little. You can use Flowers effects to heighten the emotional salience of memories, and thus make them easier for you to remember. The spell's not in the Federation Spellbook – she came up with it independently – but she calls it Heighten Salience. It costs little energy, but it's a finicky spell to control. Fortunately, Marina has very good Control.

She casts it, and now the history of the Protectorate is so sparkly and the meanings of words like 'president' or 'funding' are so sparkly and now they'll be much easier to hold in her mind. She still does try to write down as much as she can, though, carefully writing the English text of words alongside their pronunciation in phonetic notation – she's so glad she learned it, even if it's her world's version – and their definitions, which she will write in Towan.

She'll try actually speaking English now. 

"Thank you help me learn." She's surprisingly good at saying the consonant clusters, given that her native language only has nasal plus consonant clusters, but she's having trouble with the vowels. English has way more than six vowels. 

:You're welcome.: And she can explain what Marina needs to change about how she's moving her mouth to make the more difficult vowels.

"Thank you!" she says, with better pronunciation this time.

"Maybe we sleep soon? I want sleep soon." Despite talking out loud, she continues to have Telepathy open both so that she can transmit her intended meaning, and so that Denice can reply. 

"Not now now, but soon. I am..." :you don't have names for the Ways. What to call them...'flower' is a common metaphor for Flowers. What's the word for that in English?:

"I need less sleep. You is growing. You is need more sleep. Maybe you want sleep first? I do not sleep. Then, I sleep, and you do not sleep." She transmits the concept of taking watches at a camp.

"Flower," she pronounces carefully, :is flower. We shouldn't sleep here, I don't know when the librarians come in the morning or what parts of the building they check. But I'm not tired yet, we have time to walk to an empty house, and then we can both sleep - I'll hear it and wake up if anyone gets too close.:

"Flower. Flower. Flower," she repeats carefully.

"Oh! I not know you hear even sleep. I do not do that. I not hear even sleep. Yes, we walk to no person house later at time tired."

"Maybe good to read computer...place find food. Um. Place find food no price. Food...give everyone..." Okay this is a concept that's too complex to explain with her level of English vocabulary: she sends the concept of a soup kitchen or a food bank. Back in the day, Flowers Practitioners would set up these things, in the days before the war where there was less state capacity and Practitioners did more government-type things. She's wondering whether America – she has figured out that this is where they are – has something like that. Even if Denice can't ask for it, Marina could, and she could share what she got with her.

:If I say your name you'll wake up, right? Most people will wake up if they hear something important in their sleep, I just know a little better what things are important.:

:I don't know what a place like that would be called, but I can try to look it up.: She's a little more confident with the search engine now, and is soon looking at a link claiming to lead to a map to the nearest food bank. :I don't know how it knows which one is near us, and that seems dangerous. I guess it might already be too late if it's a problem.:

"Yes. But also, shake my..." and she gestures to her arm, "so I quickly wake. Wow! Your hearing do thinking too!"

Oh. Yes, that does seem concerning. She transitions back to Telepathy so she can speak without pausing to think.

:Do you hear anyone coming? What's your range? What might be good to do is...print out maps leading to New York now, with other food banks listed. I can try going to the second nearest, with you standing at the edge of your range, listening. No one here knows me, but if things go wrong, you have warning and you can run. And then we can take the notes and papers and go to an empty house now.:

:Nobody's nearby or coming here now, I would have said - remember how far I had to listen to hear the library? I can hear buildings a little farther than that - not that and a half, but somewhere between that and that-and-a-half - and loud things like cars maybe three times that far, if I'm paying attention to it. If I'm doing other things my range is like half or a third depending on how distracted I am but it's still pretty far. So we're safe right now, I'm just worried about them figuring out we were here and what our plans are.:

:I haven't searched for anything to do with New York yet, I think what we want to do is not do that, stay around here for a few days to see if they try to catch us here or at the food bank, and then if they don't do anything like that we know it's not too dangerous and we can look up how to go to New York. It'll make things a lot harder if we can't use computers and I don't want to give them up if we're just guessing it's dangerous.: