"Yes," he says. "That is a house. My house, even. With my mother in it, assuming she hasn't gone anywhere in the last couple of degrees."

(There is indeed a person of humanoid shape in the house.)

"I wouldn't know how to recognize your mother but there's someone, yes."

"Well, let's find out."

He opens the door and proceeds inside.

"I'm home and I brought a guest!"

The person comes into the living room to greet them.

"How did you manage to dig up one of those?" she wonders. And, turning to the guest: "Hello, I'm Koridaar."

"I'm Annie."

"Pleased to meet you."

"And I'm Mial," says Mial. "She just sort of appeared, apparently there was some kind of magical accident."

"It's complicated."

"It is that," he agrees.

"- in my world magic is based around artifacts each of which when touched confers one bad and one good effect and I have at least five maybe more I haven't noticed."

"Oh, dear. What have you noticed so far?"

"I'm counting by drawbacks - I am too hot and too cold, which is I think better than only one of those things? Those are probably separate. I'm blind and deaf which might be separate or not - I can hear you anyway but nothing that isn't talking - I showed up here, that's one. And there's a psychological effect. And I might be missing some."

"That sounds altogether unfortunate," she says. "I suppose you're lucky to have landed on a family of wizards and problem-solvers. To have landed on anyone at all, for that matter, if you landed on the bottom of the world."

"Yeah. I have some kind of healing factor which might have kept me alive but if I have a way to get off the bottom of the world I don't know about it. And it'd have to be an unusually good healing factor to handle, like, not drinking water."

"One can in theory get off the bottom of the world by walking but it takes a while, worlds being world-sized."

"Yes, that seems like it would be very time-consuming."

"So I'm glad you managed to find my son instead."

"Yeah," Mial agrees.

"Apparently interworld magic is even a thing here."

"Yeah - d'you think we've got anything in the collection on it?" he asks his mother.

"Well, I don't have an entire book about interworld magic, but there might be a reference or two. I'll take a look. And we can try a library if I don't get lucky."

"Thank you."

"I'm happy to help. Let me go see about those books."

She goes up the stairs.

"Do you want anything to eat?" wonders Mial.