"I'm sorry to be putting you on the spot like this. I'm like - managing, it's not direly urgent."

"All right."

"- somebody's coming. A bird just turned into a human outside."

"That'll be Finnah or my dad. Probably Finnah."

It's Finnah! "Hi Mial who's this?"

"Hi Finnah! This is Annie, I found her on the bottom of the world."

"What were you doing on the bottom of the world?"

"Appearing involuntarily," says Annie.

"Somebody get pissed off and push you there?"

"No, it was an accident."

"She's from another world," Mial contributes, "they have different magic there - the bite-sized summary is 'she fell in a pile of random magical effects and one of them was one-time interworld travel'."

"Wow, sucks to be you," Finnah says.

"It hasn't been the most fun day," Annie agrees.

"Mom's in her office checking the books for any spells applicable to the situation, unless she's already finished looking and gone out to raid a library."

"Well, I'm useless in this situation unless she wants candy. Do you want candy?"

"Maybe later."

"'Kay." She trots upstairs.

"Finnah makes some pretty excellent candy."

"After lunch I will totally have some."

He smiles at her.

Aww.

"—it occurs to me to ask if there's a painkiller artifact—"

"...I don't have one, or if I do it's doing heroic amounts of work and isn't very good anyway, but there must exist one. For little shrens?"

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. A lot of them end up pretty thoroughly addicted to their pain potions by the time they learn to shift, and this is considered a good trade, I can imagine drawbacks that I'd hesitate to inflict on a kid even under the circumstances but anything that's just inconvenient as opposed to debilitating..."

"I don't know of one, so the university doesn't have one and there isn't one that people routinely get on a plane and pay a year's income to touch, but yeah, if we can contact my world I can look that up."

"And, uh—should I be getting you a painkiller potion—"

"It's not that bad, but if there's non-addictive kinds I'd try it. The cold thing is trying to be hurty and I think it's only not succeeding better because of the warm thing."

"That's, uh, sort of convenient, I guess. I'm sure we've got some hofis in the house, neither of my parents is a shren so when they get headaches they notice... let's see if I can dig it up."

He proceeds into the kitchen and tries two cupboards before locating a neatly labelled vial.

"You don't notice headaches?" She reads the instructions.

"Pain in general is - just sort of not attention-getting the way it is for most people. I have good enough body awareness that I don't have to go to the light every week in case I broke a bone without noticing, but I still try to go once a month if I remember, just in case I missed something. —Lights are one of those inborn magic types, they're healers, they make a little glowy ball of, uh, light, and if you touch it you are healed."