Okay she's...having a psychotic break? Or maybe dreaming? That isn't how languages work! Or how anything works! What!!! 

...still not waking up. 

"I think I need an explanation of what the fuck you just did," Marian says, surprisingly calmly, in the...new language...that she suddenly speaks...?

(The fact that she's probably dreaming makes this feel significantly less awkward! Also the fact that even buying the premise, her dream-colleagues don't speak ""Celestial"" and won't overhear her being unprofessional.) 

(Orrrrrr maybe she's having a psychotic break and from the perspective of her colleagues just started ???speaking in tongues??? at random? In which case she'll never get over that, but presumably someone will do something about it soon. ...She should maybe not do any patient treatment in case she's having a psychotic break. Hopefully she wouldn't, like, hallucinate not doing patient interventions while actually doing them, that seems like not how things work...) 

...Callie honestly has no context on the fact that Marian didn't previously share a language with her patient! Maybe Marian was assigned that patient in the first place because she speaks whatever that is! She's going to continue going about her business and be grateful SHE doesn't speak any second languages and this may have gotten her out of being assigned the horrible iso patient

Wow, has Marian actually not seen a spell before? If so it's very reasonable of her to be concerned; when Samora got fluency in Celestial shoved into her head it was awesome but also scary. 

"I used the spell Share Language to give you access to my knowledge of Celestial for the next 24 hours. Is this a place magic doesn't usually work after all? I thought it couldn't be since mine seems to be working normally. Uh, magic is--well, a wizard would be able to give a formal definition but it's when people or animals make things happen by means that aren't just moving and talking. It can come from the gods or from the world or be cultivated by study or be inborn."

(Fun fact from the narrator: Celestial has something of a cuss word deficit and in particular has no cuss words related to biological functions. Marian basically said "what the coitus". This is not relevant to anything.)

(Marian realized midway that she was trying to say something the language didn’t really support and probably said something super weird instead, which would be more mortifying than it is except that seems like the sheer bizarreness of the entire situation has mostly overridden social awkwardness and also this language is objectively wrong and unsatisfying.)

Also: FRASER. FRASER WHAT THE SHIT. 

She takes a deep breath. “Uh. According to everything I know about reality, magic isn’t a real thing and gods - probably don’t exist - people do disagree a lot on that but it’s definitely not a giving people magic powers thing…”

(If this is a dream it’s admittedly a really cool one - she’s never dreamed an entire foreign language with interesting linguistic quirks before…)

Wow, this must be a really big no magic zone if the people in it don't know magic exists and aren't sure about the gods. 

"In Lastwall most villages have someone who can do magic, even if it's just a laundry and mending wizard or the village priest, and the gods--there's one wizard who pretends to be a god with other wizards pretending to be his priests, and hardly anyone believes him, but I don't think anyone thinks any of the other gods are like that, let alone all of them. It would have to be the largest conspiracy in history and lots of the people who'd have to be in it are out to kill each other."

This dream has so much cool worldbuilding Marian still doesn't feel like she's dreaming (or psychotic)? Which probably shouldn't be taken as much evidence of anything - dreams do that thing where it feels like there's a whole dream-leadup to the situation even if you didn't actually dream the whole thing, your brain fills in details when you look at it and maybe having a psychotic break does that too - but, well, it definitely feels like she remembers an entire yesterday of coherent events that just...in hindsight sure did get progressively weirder...

Focus. It feels - mean and also pretty pointless if true - to tell the person she’s maybe dreaming about or hallucinating that she thinks they’re a dream character/ hallucination, so - she’ll just take this at face value. 

"Right. Okay. I - think that isn't the case here. And also isn't in the Mediterranean. - I showed you the map earlier, the place that looked like the map you drew. They, like, have internet there? I’m pretty sure we would know if they had wizards doing laundry. So, uh,” the ‘if you’re real’ can maybe stay implicit, “I think you must be from - not Earth.”

"I have no idea how I could have been brought to another planet without magic, but I also have no idea how I could have been brought across the ocean in minutes without magic, so perhaps you're right. I wonder if Tris did something clever."

And whether Tris will be able to reverse it if so, and whether being even farther away than she thought makes it a higher priority to tell these people about Iomedae and learn their healing methods.

"Right. Okay. Um. I - guess you should explain how empowered priests work?"

It's now occurring to Marian that if this is somehow real (!!!????) and Samora really can heal people, that's incredibly important, and also aaaaaaaaaaaaaah she would have to interact with the other unit staff about it aaaaaaaaaaah. 

This is a lot of responsibility! It could be worse, though, at least she's been to theology school.

"A priest needs to be aligned with their god, both in terms of being the same alignment on one axis and within one step on the other, and in terms of having similar priorities and concerns and generally being the sort of person who will use the power they get to advance their god's interests. Actually, I should check, do you know about alignments here? Good and Evil seem really obvious, but I'm not sure how much humans could have worked out about Law and Chaos without any detection magic or holy books or anything."

So Fraser WAS right about it being a literal actual D&D alignment chart. Why???

“We do have those concepts. Uh, yeah, I think good and evil are more obviously although they’re not, like - you can’t check and people disagree a lot on ethics. Um. Law and Chaos are…a thing in this particular fictional game? Which also has wizards and who can get healing magic from their god. Yeah I know that’s really weird.”

It feels like it increases the odds this is a dream, except that Marian did not think she would have remembered a lot of these facts about D&D. 

“Your god is Lawful Good?” She does remember Samora pointing very emphatically at the upper left square.

They have legends and. . . games? about Law and Chaos but probably not a detailed consensus understanding of them. Also: yessss she read the bread diagram correctly, they do draw Good on top and Law on the left.

"People in Avistan disagree on ethics sometimes too, but I would predict less often. And yes, Iomedae is the Lawful Good goddess of defeating Evil--of solving the hard problems that threaten the world as effectively as possible, honorably and in cooperation with the other forces of Good. In Avistan the big problems are things like Evil gods conquering countries or demons invading through planar rifts, so Her church there has a very military focus, but if there's no divine intervention here the big problems are potentially something else?"

Wow. That’s - a surprisingly cool and awesome concept for a god! Marian isn’t actually sure if her dreaming brain would come up with something that cool.

“…Yeah. I think our problems are really complicated.” And if she starts getting into ‘everything wrong with Earth’ they’ll be standing here all day.

“- I do kind of want to know how you ended up injured? Sorry, I know you tried to draw it, but it was really confusing.” Given that Marian did not have D&D shenanigans in her hypothesis space. “Also your - disease? - is that magic too? It’s pretty scary.”

"Oh goodness, I didn't tell you--I cured myself of the disease right before I got out of bed. I can cure the person who caught it from my sword too if you bring me to them. I'm sorry I didn't think of that risk factor in time to warn anyone. I'm not sure if it's technically magic."

“That would be really good!” Also so complicated. “Um. He’s on another floor of the hospital - he’s less sick than you were, since he wasn’t also injured - I don’t know how safely they can move him without exposing anyone? I guess probably it’s doable but, uh, I need to explain to someone else that apparently magic exists,” which it’s obvious she does not at all want to do, “and, like, convince them? Do you have other things you can do that I could show someone, that would be obviously magic?” 

That’s also aaaah but she could at least just grab someone and be like ‘I need you to come look at something’ and explain after so she doesn’t have to watch them clearly assuming she’s a crazy person.

(…Maybe dream characters will just go along with it? There’s that thing where in dreams the most batshit things will be happening and it all somehow seems normal. But Marian - doesn’t, actually, find that she particularly still think she’s dreaming.) 

"My healing spells are limited per day and have no visible effect on healthy people, but if you can bring me near anyone injured I can heal them. Alternatively I can cast Mending--which repairs broken objects--as many times as I want, but it takes ten minutes and everyone here seems to be very busy." She says this last approvingly. "If you don't want to let me out of quarantine before I demonstrate healing magic in particular I can heal my remaining cuts and this thing." (She gestures at her ileostomy.) "I was planning on letting them get healed the first time I did an area-effect healing, but it will be both fast and visible however I do it."

That sounds like it might involve wasting some of her limited-resource healing powers??? Marian doesn’t want to do that!!

“What are the limits on how many healing spells you get per day? How big is the area of effect?” 

It would be hilarious infuriating very…something…if Fraser already knows the answer to both questions because he SOMEHOW KNEW SHE WAS A D&D CLERIC what the fuck Fraser. Plausibly she should haul him in here first to help her strategize? 

"Everyone in a 30-foot radius six times a day, plus six, four, three and two spells of the first, second, third, and fourth power levels, or circles, per day, except I used a second circle spell for the language and a third circle spell on my disease. The area effect heals only work on injuries not diseases, and nothing works on old age."

Samora makes a Very Important mental note to explain the afterlives as soon as they're no longer making active progress on getting her spells allocated.

"I have thirteen spells left today apart from the area effects, each of which can heal one ordinary person's injuries; if you have any patients who are especially hard to kill because of having been in a lot of fights they'll need one of the higher circle spells to get back into top fighting condition. I can cure one person of a disease with decent but imperfect reliability--two times in three, maybe three times in four depending on the disease--by using a third circle spell on that instead of on injury healing. I can relieve the symptoms of many diseases with a second circle but I expect you have enough injured people that it'll be more efficient to focus on those."

"Also, I can cast Stabilize an unlimited number of times per day; it doesn't actually heal, but it'll prevent a dying person from actually dying unless something injures them again, and buy them time to get treatment or recover on their own. I cast that on a couple people yesterday."

"I want to make at least one attempt to cure the person who fell ill from my sword. I also plan to use one of my fourth circle spells to send a message to my friends back home. I know that's one less person I'll be able to heal today, but I owe it to them to tell them I'm alive and that they shouldn't spend every coin they have trying to find me."

Marian is momentarily baffled by the concept of someone being “especially hard to kill because of having been in a lot of fights” before she remembers that it’s probably a D&D thing. Characters have levels and get XP? She didn’t know that made them harder to heal as well as harder to kill, that sounds honestly super inconvenient! It’s probably not a factor here though.

(This is all so weird.)

“Okay. I don’t think we can fit everyone in the,” this language unsurprisingly doesn’t have a term for ‘ICU’, “in the part of the hospital for really sick people, into one thirty foot radius, but if everyone agrees to help I think we could hit everyone with two, and everyone here is mostly here because they were injured. There are other parts of the hospital for very sick people but they usually have diseases, or - old age problems that I don’t know if your spells would help with. I think unless anyone is dying right now we should spend a while thinking about triage, if there are emergencies you can do the spell that stabilizes people.”

Which is SO COOL and Marian WANTS IT.  She wants it SO BADLY. Also she’s now wondering if one of the people Samora used it on was Rose’s patient over at CT who was mysteriously way more stable than expected during the scan? …Marian is going to be so sad if she wakes up at this point and discovers that her subconscious generated an entire elaborate backstory for the MOST USEFUL SPELL EVER that doesn’t actually exist.

“- uh, but it’s obviously fine to contact your friends and stuff, you have priorities back home - you don’t owe us healing everyone in exchange for treating you.” SOME people might say that Samora does owe them at least fixing the janitor who caught her horrible disease but, like, no, that’s not how it works.

Samora considers herself to owe the janitor! People who try to help unconscious strangers, and especially who try to help unconscious priests of Iomedae, should not end up worse off for it.

"Do you have a way to check if anyone is currently dying? Should we go and talk to your fellow healers now, or do you need to know more first?"

“…I should probably go talk to people.” It’s just that that part is scary. Clarice is on as charge nurse today and Marian cannot imagine that particular conversation going well with her. 

- though, wait, didn’t Fraser mention that one of the residents is into D&D? Maybe she should try him first, she could at least skip explaining a lot of context and he might have suggestions for how to check. Also residents are tiny babies (even if most of them are technically older than her) and less scary than charge nurses.

And she can ask Clarice for Fraser’s phone number, as a start, since she’s kind of assuming he’s no longer on the unit.

“—Yeah, okay, I’ll do that. I don’t think anyone is dying in the hospital right now - there’s an emergency announcement for it -” 

Marian is kind of desperately hoping there isn’t a code blue for the next half-hour while she figures out what to do. It would be such a dilemma - not really a moral dilemma, doing something really weird that might get her in trouble isn’t that important compared to saving someone’s life, but aaauuugh the thought of trying to hustle to the ER or whatever with a patient who everyone else thinks still has a horrible contagious disease would be so aaaaaaah.