There are skyscrapers. So many skyscrapers, nestled together along wide pedestrian-only streets. There are trains, leaving well-lit rail stations with remarkable regularity and zipping off into the countryside. The countryside is pretty far away. It's bigger than any city he's seen. 

He would've certainly heard of a city like this. At least there would be something about it in the Bermuda Conflux brochure. This can't be a "lost" pocket dimension, he was in the Shattered Skies, the whole point of the place is the open portals. ...It could be a new pocket dimension that he didn't notice last night by virtue of being hidden among the Bermuda's cluster? That is possibly the most worrying peace of news he had since last year.

Maybe he should talk with some of the locals? He tries to spot someone approachable enough.

There are like a hundred thousand people out and about on the streets. Every single person has brightly colored hair. - okay, a few aren't brightly colored, but they're still distinctly colors. No one has brown hair. 

Okay, he is assigning more credibility to the "this is a new pocket dimension" theory. He knows there is green hair somewhere, maybe blue, but not this rainbow plus gray variety of colors.

Well, he really needs to ask for directions. Are the locals even friendly? Well, he does not need to land in the middle of a crowd, he searches for isolated people...

Maybe the folks in that alley? What are they even doing in an alley in the middle of this cold? As an afterthought Felix starts tinkering with the weather on a citywide scale and more locally he makes the alley warm up to healthier temperatures. He lands.

They freeze for a second, blinking at him, and then flee.

Um...

Yeah, I guess that is a reasonable reaction. They might not even know what a skymage is. But a winged stranger is definitely something.

(Still hurts a bit when people fear him like that.)

He doesn't follow.

The alley is now deserted. It seems to be a garbage disposal alley, behind two rows of buildings. There are tunnels at the ends, so it doesn't intersect the main streets.

(He really shouldn't be so upset that people got this scared. It's too selfish. They're the ones that have any right to be upset.)

He stands in the alley, wings folded around himself, tinkering with the weather. One can't just change the weather without consequences but Felix can make this blizzard less of a problem.

The tons of people in the streets nearby will probably appreciate it.

Yeah, and after a while it can be meditative to have your head up in the clouds.

No one comes back into the garbage alley.

Well, Felix is not going to stand in this alley forever. He takes flight... he still needs directions, maybe a way to get in contact with home in case he was teleported somewhere else.

He startled a bunch of people in the streets, but that is not unreasonable. Maybe people would feel safer in their own homes? If they get too scared Felix can just take flight. He finds somewhere that looks residential, lands and knocks on the door.

It takes a while before someone answers. Then the door swings open enough for a little boy with orange hair to peek out. HIs eyes widen.

Felix gives him his best and most benevolent smile. "Hello, is either of your parents home? Do you mind calling them here?" He is not going to ask permission to use the phone from a child, that sounds like asking for another scare.

"Are you an alien?"

Blink. "Uh, I am a skymage," he tentatively opens his wings to demonstrate.

"Wooooooaaaah. Mum Ma there's an alien come and see!"

Why does the kid thinks he's an alien? "Uh, I just need to use the phone."

"Mum! Ma! There's an alien!"

  A woman with orange hair like his comes to the door and squints. "Uh," she says. "Hello?"

Charming smile. "Hi, I am very lost."

He is not really moving his wings, but they don't look fake.

" - I suppose you must be! Uh. It's lovely meeting you. What can we do for you?"

"Uh... I would really like to know where I am and how to contact my home if possible?"

"- this neighborhood is Cypress Grove, we're about two blocks from the East line station. I don't know if the trains are still running, they were calling for quite a storm - is that the level of lost you are?"

"No... I think my level of lost is closer to I don't know which city I'm in and possibly not even which country."

Absently, he stretches his wings. Gosh, if those are fake then they are really good fakes.

She blinks rapidly. "You're in Lina, which is the capital of Anitam."

"...Country level it is."

" - okay. Anitam borders Tapa and various smaller countries and the Great Sea?"

"...not familiar," Felix says, maybe this is a pocket dimension where people believe they are from another world? How hard should he poke? "Have you heard of the United States of America?"

She shakes her head earnestly. "But you speak our language..."

"Uh... that is weird. You sound English to me."

...And pocket dimensions can have translation effects. He looks around for some visible piece of writing.

Next house over has a welcome sign on the door.

...Yeah, he had seen it from the corner of his eye, did the letters look like the Latin alphabet then? It sure doesn't look like that now.

So, given what he knows, this sounds like a pocket dimension with some sort of translation effect. Huh. He would've heard of one of those near the Bermuda Conflux, it's the sort of thing that attracts tourists. "Uh, there is an translation effect going on. I didn't even notice it affecting me."

"Okay," she says politely. "I can look up the United States of America for you? If it's very small I might not have heard of it."

"Sure..." Felix says because he doesn't know how to continue the conversation. "Uh... I don't suppose there is anyone here that could... talk about your country?"

"...what about it exactly?"

"Uh... just generally what you would feel important to tell a winged person that had never heard of it?"

"Ah. Anitam has six hundred million people? None of them have wings. People here don't have wings. None of them have black hair. We're the sixth-largest country in the world, I think - my neighbor would know for sure, she's a geography teacher. We haven't made contact with any aliens. We know there could be some in principle, of course, but we haven't met them. We live forty years and are grown up after five of them, we auction child credits by caste..."

Felix nods along feeling a bit sad, because he thinks this person only started existing a few days ago and all this information is false...

"Only forty years?"

"Do aliens live longer?"

"Yeah? Forty is very young to die. I think the average is seventy five world wide? And the records are above a hundred. ...We also are considered adults at eighteen and only a subset of us have wings... uh, what do you call yourselves?"

"Amentans, I suppose. Your years might not be the same length, if you're aliens."

"Yeah, true. We call ourselves humans."

"You should perhaps talk to scientists or the government or something. Maybe after the storm - they're saying it'll be a storm, though it doesn't look too bad out yet -"

"Ah... uh... the storm isn't going to be a problem anymore."

"...you changed the weather?"

"...Would that freak people out?"

"I think people will be pleased about very powerful aliens if they are friendly and scared if they are not."

"Oh, I am friendly, I swear!"

"Aliens might say they were friendly even if they weren't."

Nod. "I just didn't want anyone to freeze to death."

"That's very good of you! We have homeless shelters and emergency mental health services will be out, no one'll freeze to death."

"Ah, good. Well, I was careful enough that I don't see any reason to bring the storm back, but good. Uh, who do you think I should talk to?"

"I haven't the slightest idea, I'm a purple grammar school teacher. Liset might know - deeeeeaar -"

"Purple grammar?"

"One-year-olds, but we just said our years probably aren't the same - I teach them the alphabet and a bit of reading and very simple maths..."

"I was confused about the purple part."

"Oh, purple's a caste. Farming and retail and unskilled labor and the service industries."

Nod. He is a bit tired of standing and leans against the wall. "Do any of those have magic?"

"No one in this world has ever observed any magic, that I know of. Do you want to come in?"

"If it's no problem," Felix smiles politely.

He feels a pang of pain in his chest, but since he was making an effort to smile it isn't noticeable and Felix himself ignores it.

Tentatively he walks in. "No magic at all?"

"I suppose it's possible we mean something different by magic. Deeeaaar -" 

Another woman walks in. She blinks at Felix. Her hair is yellow.

"Maybe? Skymagery is magic. It's why I have wings."

And to the new woman. "Hi, I am sorry for disturbing your evening."

"It's quite all right," she says rather automatically. "What do you mean when you say it is magic?"

"I think the technical definition is something like 'unconventional physics that are often responsive to the mind?' or 'mental aspects as fundamental mechanical units'? I don't remember. In practical terms it would be things like controlling the weather, flying, making plants grow or turning light into cloth?"

"We definitely don't have anyone who can do any of those things."

     "Can I get you a glass of water?" asks orange-haired woman.

Another pang of pain, which Felix notices.

"Yes, thank you. Uh, I don't think I introduced myself or I got your names. I am Felix Dalkaila," he gives a slight bow spreading his wings carefully.

"I'm Liset Atif," says the yellow-haired woman, "and my wife is Nasami Sa. How did you end up here?"

"I was flying through a place called the Shattered Skies and then it started acting weird, threads of energy everywhere, and then I was here."

"And how did you end up in this neighborhood and at our house in particular?"

"...I just picked somewhere basically at random. I didn't know... that I was somewhere like Anitam and stopping to ask for directions or a phone isn't that weird when you assume you're in your own country."

"It's not strange here either," says smiling orange, returning with a glass of water. "Though if you have alien hair and wings people might be very confused."

Felix sips. "Yeah, but it was logical thing to do given what I knew at the time. ...And I guess those people I scared were just reacting to the wings."

"You didn't notice that no one here had wings? Or are they very rare even at home?"

"They're rare. My world has seven billion people and only two million of those are skymages. Seeing one is rare and I guess people might be a bit scared if one just dropped out of the sky but... fascination would be just as likely as a reaction. Many people would want to touch the wings."

"I think most people wouldn't touch an alien," orange lady says. "The alien wouldn't know if we were clean, perhaps aliens wouldn't like touching... it'd just be very rude to presume."

"Clean? You mean toxic? And that is a reasonable assumption, I suppose."

"Clean like garbage and sewage and the dead are unclean."

        "We should really inform the authorities about the alien," says yellow-haired woman.

"Which authorities, just call the police non-emergency line and say 'hello there's an alien', that'll get us mental health services -"

       "But they might know who to call."

"Talia across the street works in mental health services, I really don't think she'd know who to call."

Another pang of pain, a small one, Felix notices and finds it is weird, but not important enough to comment.

"Uh, do you know anyone important or with credibility? If nothing else I guess I could go to the city hall or something, but I would rather not go somewhere too public that sounds like a recipe for chaos."

"Liset used to work for greens -"

         " - if you spoke another language I would call Afen Kisantami, his family's blue and I'm sure he wouldn't be annoyed to be bothered if there were languages to get out of it -"

"Well, I speak two? English and Tormundic. Can you even tell that I am speaking English? Huh," he repeats slowly, "can you even tell that I am speaking English?"

They can while still understanding every word.

" - when you do that it is obvious that you're not speaking Anitami but I can still understand you. Hmm. I will go ahead and call Afen Kisantami. And check where Kitak's gotten to -"

      "He's hiding behind the curtains," says Nasami. "I think he's feeling shy."

"That is interesting. Are you sure you don't remember anything like this translation effect?" Felix says. "Aw, am I bothering him too much? I don't want to bother your family."

"I'm quite sure," Liset says.

      "Don't leave alien," comes a voice from the curtains. 

"It's really no bother," Nasami says firmly. "It's lucky you came to us, really, I don't think most people in this neighborhood know any greens who could get it to appropriate attention - it's mixed caste, but orange and purple and yellow -"

"I won't, don't worry," Felix tells to the curtains, "huh, could you explain your castes? What is the relevance of knowing greens?"

"The castes in Anitam and everywhere on Amenta are red, purple, grey, orange, yellow, green, and blue," says Liset. "Green is scientists and inventors and artists. Most people socialize within their caste, and most neighborhoods aren't mixed, and so most people in a purple or orange neighborhood wouldn't know any greens to get an alien in touch with. The government's blue but the only purples or oranges who know a blue socially are ones employed by them and there aren't many blues."

"Ah. I guess I was lucky to knock at your door then-" the pain strikes again sharp and strong enough that Felix gasps.

"Are you all right?" Nasami asks worriedly, while Liset writes messages on her tablet device.

"I am alright? I just felt a pain in my chest," he shakes himself, "it's probably nothing."

"What makes you say that it's probably nothing? In Amentans that would not probably be nothing."

I am so immortal that the sun eventually going out is a concern, but he couldn't say that even back home. "I think I am more resilient than you?" half-true.

"Okay. Does your species have heart attacks, or strokes -"

"Yes? But I am too young for that. It could be just something I ate or maybe a side-effect of being hit by the magic whatever that zapped me here."

"Oh, Amentans sometimes have that young."

"I mean I think young people can have those, but it would be extremely rare and I am healthy as of my last check-up. I would bet more on weird magic."

It is actually a fair concern. He was sort of assuming that the magic lightning took him here, but maybe there were other effects?

"Is there anything we can do for you?"

Felix thinks, he probably should just go to sleep, open a portal back to Earth and find where he is and how to contact his brother. But he probably shouldn't act too suspicious, it ought to make it easier introducing this pocket dimension to the rest of the planet. He should just play along for now.

"I don't really need anything. I guess introducing me to the authorities is good enough. I would offer to repay the hospitality, but I wouldn't know how."

"It's our pleasure," Nasami says. "I couldn't guess what your magic can do - if you have travel between worlds that'll be more payment than we could dream of -"

"I mean there are the gates between pocket dimensions, but I don't think that is what you meant. Do you even have pocket dimensions? Some people insist they are not magic."

"We do not. Pocket dimensions?"

"Yes? They're extra-dimensional spaces accessible only through gates in specific locations. Often have magical properties."

"We really don't have any magic."

        "How much space?"

"Varies a lot per dimension, vast majority ranges between ten and forty kilometers radius, but there are a few that are continent-sized. ...I think their total size is equivalent to ten percent of the planet's total area."

They glance at each other. "How do you access -"

        "We should leave that to the appropriate people -"

"Is there a problem?"

"Not at all, the opposite. It'd be really good to have a bit more space, they could allow more children."

Felix looks at them confused. "Children?"

"Our species has children. Like Kitak? He is an example of a child."

"Yes... the confusing part was the implication that they have to be allowed."

" - they do. Otherwise people would have too many and we would run out of space and have constant wars and people starving."

"Wow. How many people do you think there are in your world?"

Okay, he shouldn't've phrased it like that, but it isn't a disastrous phrasing.

They don't seem bothered. "There are thirteen billion. We've had population controls for more than forty years - it's still growing, but at a controlled rate. There are treaties to which Anitam is a signatory but I don't know the details."

Still better not give off signs he thinks everything they believe is a lie. "Huh. We should figure out how long your years are? Earth's years are 365 days long, a day is 24 hours long, an hour is 60 minutes long, a minute is 60 seconds long. I could show you on my phone how long a second and minute are," he takes out his phone.

They examine it. They think their days are about the same. "A year is one thousand four hundred seventy five days."

"Ah, then you actually live twice as long as humans, but maturing at same rate. Huh."

"Perhaps that's why you haven't had to implement population controls yet. If you become infertile younger than us - we are fertile until we're twenty -"

"There is one country that does that, but like, it's literally the world's most populous country. Females become infertile at about... your twelve or thirteen, that doesn't happen with males but they might... experience difficulty with age."

"That might do part of it. I think perhaps people'd only average three or four kids, if they only had until twelve. I don't think it'd resolve everything. Perhaps your other countries will start soon - what is the global population -"

"Seven billion. The average per couple varies a lot per country. Some of the richer countries are actually experiencing problems with keeping a minimum of two children per couple."

"How strange. - are they taking immigrants?"

"Varies? ...I would recommend trying for either the Stormlands or the Witchlands. They have a history of taking in magic people."

"...we're not magic people."

"Ah, I mean... I guess aliens would be close enough. I certainly could see the witch-queens finding flattering the idea of receiving aliens as subjects. I am sure some of the other countries would be excited about receiving aliens too."

"Lots of people'd want to emigrate if there are no population controls."

      "Witch-queens?"

"Huh, the Stormlands is actually one of the countries with population replacement problems - albeit mostly because young people emigrate. Would people be willing to have a magical weather-controlling aristocracy and endure one month of intense storms every other month. And the Witch-queens are the rulers of the Witchlands and also a kind of magic user... the most powerful kind of magic user known actually, they are... proud and wasteful, but generally good rulers to their subjects."

"There are lots of people, I'm sure some of them would be interested in anything you could name. Far more of them if the storms don't cause reseasoning. Anitam's government is all right, but people'd take their chances for free children unless the governments were really bad."

"I might be biased in favor of the Stormlands - that is where skymages come from - and maybe biased against the Witchlands. But I don't think either government is really bad, the Stormlands are bit too conservative and traditional and Witch-queens are really squandering their capacity to improve the world. What is reseasoning? Being allowed to have children is that complicated?"

"Reseasoning is when you go some place with different seasons and your body adjusts accordingly? Do aliens not have that? And in places where we can't season properly we don't like to live there, the equator and poles and moon arcologies are all like that. If you're diligent and not horribly unlucky you will probably end up able to afford a child, maybe two, but not as many as you want - and some people are lazy or horribly unlucky and then they won't get any."

"No, we don't have anything like that. I wouldn't be surprised if the Witch-queens could do something about seasons. Maybe even skymages could do something. What exactly do they do to your body? I think at this point I must ask... how biological is the need for children? You mention them every other sentence."

"...I'm not sure how to answer that question. I'd - really expect any evolved species to have a drive to have children? But I'm not green - Afen is on the way -"

"We do have a drive to have children, but plenty of people are perfectly happy with just one. Also, could you tell me more about Afen?"

" - he's just the only green I know who'd come right across town in the middle of a snowstorm on my say-so that there's someone present speaking an unfamiliar language, he's not otherwise remarkable or anything."

"Ah, fair enough. It's that hard to make friends outside caste? It sounds... limiting. Also, if you show me a map with his likely route I could make the storm simply stop in the relevant area."

"...I expect he's on the train. It's not that it's hard, exactly - we're married cross-caste, after all - it just doesn't come up very often. And most people of any caste wouldn't rush across town during a snowstorm, even if I knew a hundred greens that'd still be true."

Nod. "Linguistic nerd?"

"Afen? Yes, he's an honorary professor of linguistics at Kistal, teaches these eccentric little seminars you have to speak seven languages to sign up for. I used to do the department scheduling."

"Heh. I see."

Another sharp prick of pain, which he ignores.

"I don't think you quite explained the effects of seasons?"

"We're fertile in the spring, and feel more - springtimey, does that translate?"

"Inclined to reproduce?" Felix tries, "humans are fertile all the time and with a stable desire for reproduction."

"And yet you have fewer children. That's interesting."

"It makes sense evolution-wise. If you are only fertile during a quarter of the year then you'd need a strong imperative to take the opportunity."

She shrugs. "They tried artificial lighting and temperature changes to induce spring in the arcologies or underground or wherever. It didn't work. Magic could perhaps do it."

"This makes it sound like it would be complicated for a skymage to induce a proper season, but not outright impossible if it can be done. Still there could be a chance for witch-queens to work ...maybe directly."

She raises her hand to her hair as if it's a gesture as common and communicative as shaking one's head. "Directly?"

And he gets what it means. "Tell your biology to behave in a certain way instead of changing the environment. Aaand this translation effect is rather thorough. I understood that gesture."

"I don't know if people would want their biology changed. Perhaps some of them. Are translation effects common?"

"Not really, but not unheard of. I was just surprised, this one is rather unobtrusive otherwise, but my culture doesn't really have an equivalent. We don't have castes."

"How strange."

"To be fully accurate, some cultures had or have caste systems, but it's not really a norm in modern times."

"Everywhere in the world has the same system, though there are different details."

"Oh?"

"Medicine is green in some places. Sex work is orange in some places. Firefighting and heavy lifting and night shifts watching security cameras vary grey or purple. In some places civil court and tax court and misdemeanors are adjudicated by yellows, and in some places yellows can run city governments."

         "Modelling is grey here but I think it's green in Cene, either that or they all dye their hair for the pictures, it's all green in catalogues from there," offers her wife. "Surrogacy is orange in Anitam because castes are patrilineal here but in places where caste is matrilineal and the gestational mother matters I think they let all castes do it, they kind of have to. Television news announcers are yellow here but in places where the job's considered more like writing opinion pieces they're green."

"Why do you have castes? And why you can't... just let some jobs be casteless? If they're hereditary why would the gestational mother matter?"

"It'd be outrageously expensive to try to train everybody in the country to do every conceivable job, and outrageously stressful to try to figure out peoples' aptitudes when they're one or two by testing them constantly or something, and it wouldn't sort them any better than going off caste - probably much worse. If jobs were casteless officially they'd stop being that way pretty quickly once it was clear who had an aptitude for them."

"It's still sounds... too extreme to be this restricted. Don't you people face issues with lacking people to do specific tasks? Or unemployment because the castes prevent you from taking a job even thought there is a demand? I really don't see what is the harm of having whoever modeling or reading the news."

"Maybe aliens don't inherit aptitude very strongly? Caste sizes are managed to match the job market - it's not perfect, but it's not really realistic to suggest we handle purple unemployment by training them to be programmers."

"Well, I am going to withhold judgment until I have the opportunity to see some graphs or whatever evidence you have. I wouldn't say aptitude inheritance is nonexistent but could just as easily to be attributed to nurture instead of nature. I was thinking more on the reverse. People that can't manage as programmers watching security cameras. Programmers are green?"

"Yellow. The yellow aptitude is for attention to detail and reproducible performance. It wouldn't be fair to purples to take their jobs if we couldn't cut it at ours."

"What are the different castes' aptitudes? Also you never answered why the caste would work by gestational mother?"

"I don't know that, it'd be something about how that country wrote their caste laws. Purples are - dear, maybe you could explain it better -"

       "Purples are good at things where your labor directly produces value," says her wife. "Service industries, manufacturing, farming, if after a day of work you have produced a day of some product or your labor has given people a service they wanted, it's probably a purple job. Hairdressers, retail, carpenters, construction..."

"Greys are good at physical things, anything for which strength and endurance and energy and an enjoyment of movement would be a job qualification."

      "Oranges are good at emotional labor - teaching, caretaking, therapy, nursing."

"Green is for things that require raw intellectual and creative and inventive ability. Blue is for things that require foresight and diplomatic skill and wisdom."

Nod. "Wait, there is no red caste?"

"Oh, reds do unclean jobs."

"...unclean?"

"Working with garbage, sewage, dead bodies."

"That is a weirdly specific category."

" - not really. Things that are a contagion or infection risk."

"Right... how does that interact with doctors?"

"Doctors learn lots of cleanliness precautions. You could probably have garbage truck drivers with equivalent precautions - I think Olvala's trying it - but it'd be a bit of a waste of time and energy."

"I guess that makes sense," head tilt, "are the different colors supposed to relate to anything or each other? I am assuming that the caste colors relate to hair color."

"Most people have the correct color for their caste and people who don't mostly dye it, yes. The ordering in the visible light spectrum doesn't have to do with anything."

Nod. Felix disguises a flinch of pain. "Is there anything you would like to know?"

"I think maybe we should leave that to the experts," Liset says cautiously. "We wouldn't emigrate, probably, we're expecting to be able to afford three."

"...You mean that as 'I lack the expertise to ask the right questions' or 'it's illegal for me to ask these questions' or something else?"

"- I'm just not sure what we'd want to know, in particular, you know? There aren't laws about asking aliens questions - I suppose we could get in trouble if we tried to convince aliens to invade Anitam or overthrow its government..."

"Ah, okay. It's just that I think I would be full of questions in your place. I only mentioned the possible illegality because I am unsure how the caste restrictions are enforced. As far I know it might be illegal for a teenager to babysit for their neighbors... that is orange?"

"Yes, but you're allowed to earn out-of-caste income up to 20% of your income per half-season - and even past that you could babysit if you wanted, just not charge money for it. Explaining things to aliens would definitely be allowed."

"That cap is so the caste don't feel others are stepping on their turf? I guess explaining things to aliens is similar to being a tourist guide?"

"I don't know," she says dubiously. "It's not paid at all, really - this might be closer to hospitality, which is orange - the cap is so you have incentive to improve professionally within-caste."

"I was joking. Uh, do people never show out of caste talent?"

"I think approximately two percent of people hit their out-of-caste income cap any given year."

"That wasn't exactly what I am aiming at. I was thinking more... if there could be people that would contribute more to society if they are writing academic paper or inventing new things."

"Oh, an orange smart enough to be a mathematician teaches mathematics - and can write papers, if they like - and a yellow that smart does some kind of math-intensive engineering - and can write papers too. And greys and purples just aren't that smart."

"...Okay."

"Maybe your species has less variance in intelligence."

Nod. "Worth taking a look once I have a better... sense of things. It's still weird to penalize people that happen to be good at something that doesn't straightforwardly fit their caste. But again, worth taking a look later."

"What would you do once you've - taken a look?"

Shrug. "Not sure if I would even be able to do anything about it, but at least I would know."

"Hmmm."

There's a knock on the door. Nasami goes to get it. "Evening, sir," she says when she does.

"Are you Lisit's wife? She wrote -"

      "Yes," Lisit calls. "He's in here."

Afen bounds into the room. He pulls up short at the winged alien. "Is he an alien? You didn't say he was an alien."

     "I thought you might think I was out of my mind."

"Hi! I am Felix Dalkaila," he tilts his head and adjusts the translation so he can sound English but be understood regardless, "they called you because you would take a train here in the middle of the storm to learn a new language."

"Oh," he says delightedly, "you are an alien....Plenty of people would travel much farther, really, to learn an alien language. But I'll be fastest. What's the - translation thing going on -"

"Uh... I actually don't know how it works. It's subtle enough that I failed to realize you are not speaking English."

"English. English. Where are you from exactly -"

Feels a stab of pain and flinches a bit.

"I am from a country called the United States of America. But my parents are from the Stormlands," he switches to Tormundic, "where they speak Tormundic like this."

Bounce. "And you've never encountered the translation effect before? You're not doing it? But then - what is -"

"I haven't... I confess not knowing where it comes from. They exist, but the only one I can't recall with any clarity only does audio translation and this also does writing... Huh, now that I think about it I wonder if it can do any language... This is a sentence in Spanish. Oooh. This is a sentence in French. This is a sentence in Portuguese. This is a sentence in German. This is a sentence in Mandarin."

His eyes pop. "Can anyone else do this -"

"I am not even sure how I am doing this. It's new." he taps on the table. This morse code. Then signs. This is ASL. "Could you name some Amentan languages for me to try?"

"Tapap. Evaleen, Litholeen, Voan, Arvoran -"

"This is a sentence in Tapap. This is a sentence in Evaleen. This is a sentence in Litholeen. This is a sentence in Voan. This is a sentence in Arvoran."

Perfect green accent too.

"How're you picking an accent -"

"I wasn't consciously picking accents," he says still in Arvoran, "I don't even know the options there."

"There's caste, sometimes there are distinctions in addition to that. Has it been checked whether anyone else can do that -" he tries to speak English -

Doesn't work which leaves Felix a bit confused.

"Oh, speaking of caste, they told me you know blues?"

He makes a face. "Yes, yes, they'll be all excited - would you switch back to English, I speak Arvoran -"

"Oh, okay," he says switching, "Do you want me to say anything? Most humans are not skymages and thus don't have wings. We also don't have castes."

"They'll want to know how you got here and whether we can do it, mostly. And military applications of your abilities and friendliness of your societies, they'll probably be worried about that..."

Nod. "I am sure-" the pain stabs him much more strongly now and he yelps.

" - hmm?"

"Are you okay?"

"I am f-" pain and Felix gasps, but before he can properly catch his breath the pain attacks him again and he spits blood.

Locals look concerned!!

Maybe they are less concerned once Felix regurgitates a small blood covered pebble? Or maybe it does the opposite of that.

The pebble floats in the air and Felix jumps back in shock upon seeing it. "No, no, no."

That does not in fact make them less concerned. Orange-hair darts outside to get a paramedic friend.

Felix starts crying hugging his knees. ...That is a fail-safe of his form of immortality, he recognizes. The one that is activated when the connection with the floating spring is broken. Except the connection is ridiculously overengineered and superluminal. Fenris theorized only one way that it could've been broken.

He was a fool, all this time he assumed this was a pocket dimension with delusional inhabitants. But no, they're actual aliens- no Felix is the alien here. Not only to this planet, but to this universe. The Shattered Skies must've been sent here and... how he is going to go back home?

Alien paramedic comes. "Excuse me, sir. Are you all right? Can you hear us?"

Afen sits on the couch and repeats English phrases to himself, frowning.

Little kid, freaked out, jumps into his mother's arms.

Felix regains a measure of composure. He wipes off the blood from his mouth. "I can hear. I am sorry."

"Are you having a medical emergency?"

"No. I'm sorry for disturbing you..."

"It's quite all right. What's your name?"

"Felix Dalkaila," he says absently, "I probably should talk with someone."

She glances at Afen. 

         "Yes, all right, all right, I can call people."

Nod. "Oh, I should check something. Do you have anything that could put me in and out of sleep real quick?"

"Not safely," says the paramedic. "Or particularly quickly. Why?"

"I have an ability that is sleep-dependent. Safety is not a concern, but I really just wanted to check. It's probably still there, this is likely my original body."

She nods confusedly. Afen is on his tablet, writing something. Their hosts cluster against a wall calming their child. 

"I am sorry," he tells the hosts. "Uh... is there anywhere where we won't bother you?"

"If the government is sending people they will probably set you up somewhere nice," Liset says, "and you're welcome here in the meantime."

         "They're sending people," Afen says. "What's the sleep-dependent ability? What happened?"

(Oranges frown at him disapprovingly. He ignores them.)

Should he tell them? Well, he guesses he could check first, but then it might be easier to get something to induce sleep.

"Uh... I have an ability called dreamshaping... it allows me to create a pocket-dimension. That rock thing is... a failsafe that should only show up if I am in a completely different universe than my native one.

He points at the floating pebble, which raises to eye level... it looks a bit bigger than before and it starts dripping water.

"Uh, sorry about that."

He looks fascinated. "Pocket dimension?"

"They're extra-dimensional space. You can reach them through portals and might have various magical traits."

He looks at the increasing puddle forming on the floor.

"Um," he says to the orange mom, "do you mind if I turn that into water vapor?"

She shakes her head silently.

"Sorry," he repeats.

The water turns into a mist and he keeps it as a tiny cloud beneath the pebble.

"What abilities do you have - where's the pebble getting water or is it producing it -"

"It's producing... making out of nothing, or rather out of magic, I guess. I think you've seen all my abilities so far?"

" - I have seen the translation effect and changing water into water vapor. That's all?"

"Oh, sorry. I shouldn't have assumed background knowledge. The changing water into vapor and the wings are part of skymagery, which gives me various weather-related powers, flight and..." he hates saying it, "control over fire. There is the dreamshaping and the translation effect - which I have no idea where it comes from if it isn't an ambient effect. And I am immortal, the pebble is that, it will grow into a floating boulder with a fountain where I can grow a new body after losing the previous one."

"Can other people learn these things?"

"No, sorry."

"Are they common where you're from?"

"No? There are two million skymages out of seven billion people. The other two have less than a hundred individuals. Uh, I meant that the immortality and dreamshaping have less than a hundred individuals. I actually don't know anything about the translation effect. I was assuming this was a pocket dimension and the effect was local-"

"But if that were true your - immortality rock wouldn't be far enough out of range to activate?"

Slow nod. "My brother makes them and they're very overengineered and full of redundancies."

"Can other people from your world get here?"

"I don't know. I've never heard of it happening before and they wouldn't know that they're supposed to look... the other fountain back home is going to assume my body died and is going to fork me."

"Huh."

"...There are conspiracy theories about the Shattered Skies doing weird things to people. But I don't think it's ever throwing them into other universes. And I most definitely never heard anything about people returning from other universes."

"What are the Shattered Skies?"

"They're a bunch of portals that someone decided to force close, and then half a century ago they all opened in a chain reaction, and haven't closed since- I have a touristic brochure," Felix retrieves from his pocket and presents it to Afen.

It's in English, it shows what can be presumed to be standard touristic information, a map and pictures. One of the pictures shows the Shattered Skies, the name is fitting. The portals are irregular and with cracks around the edges.

"How do portals work? Who can open or close them, what do they go between -"

"It varies per portal, each has sects of circumstances that are commonly called Keys," the translation happily provides the capital letter, "and they vary a lot, but each dimension has a theme. Some might react to emotions, actions, sounds or specific kinds of magic."

"And what do they go between."

"I am not sure I understand that question? Or if I can meaningfully answer."

"When you go through a portal, you are in a different place, yes? Are portals between any two locations, or specific locations? What locations have portals between them?"

"Ah... sorry, a lot of this is just background knowledge to me- Portals connects two specific locations in different dimensions. And pocket dimensions are related to regular space such that if you walk through a portal, walk two kilometers North and exit through another portal, you will find yourself two kilometers North from your starting point. In large dimensions portals appear to be randomly but evenly distributed. I can place portals to my dimension wherever I want as long there is space for them."

"But you won't be able to return home from there because you think you're spatially very far from home?"

Nod. "The immortality is really powerful and if it can't beat the distance between universes I don't think dreamshaping can."

"But you can access your - pocket dimension - from here?"

"I wanted to sleep to see if I am still able to create more of it, but I wouldn't expect to access the parts back home. ...I can create bits that coexist to where I am or expand already existing bits but I wouldn't be able to create a section of pocket dimension... on your moon without going there or expanding my pocket dimension until I reach it. I have a limit to how fast I can expand that is between 3 or 4 cubic kilometers per hour of sleep."

"...wow. And only you can access it?"

"No? I could close all portals, but by default as long they're open anyone can come and go... Is this about babies again?"

"Again?"

"Uh. I was talking to our hosts earlier and the topic came up. It's a species difference, humans don't have as much of a need to reproduce as you do."

"A pocket dimension sounds like the sort of thing that might help with population pressure but maybe not if it could be cut off at any time."

"I wouldn't be a jerk about it, but it's a capability that I would have and I could offer help some other ways. My dimension is pretty flexible about creating things and I can't unmake those. And there is also an ambient effect that makes fire not harm and consume things in there. I could make a power plant that does not consume any fuel."

"People can do lots of magic specifically within pocket dimensions they control?"

"It's idiosyncratic. Mine automatically does the fire thing. Some dreamshapers can pick traits like gravity or default weather and some can't add any variance."

"Is being a dreamshaper innate?"

"...No, but the means to become one aren't on this planet."

"Are they themselves magical in nature?"

Nod. "And dangerous. And pocket dimensions aren't always nice or cooperative. Some can produce monsters or other dangerous things."

Amentans look unimpressed. 

"What kind of technology does your world have," Afen asks. "Phones, internet, moon colonies..."

"Yes on the first two, no on the moon colonies."

"Have you noticed other things we don't seem to have here?"

"Not really, but I wasn't looking for it. I was assuming this was a pocket dimension. This looks like a fairly big city, even a bit futuristic, but not very different from Earth."

"What are all the kinds of magic you know about?"

"That is sort of a tall order. ...Huh, how long until the blues arrive?"

"Twenty minutes, maybe?"

"Okay... I wouldn't be able to nap in that short of a time anyway, even thought that is going to shape that conversation. Well, besides the ones I mentioned there is the witch-queens and which actually have a sort of magic that might be shareable. Called witchcraft it allows one to do a whole deal of things, telekinesis, flight, animate objects, make plants grow, produce energy, mind-reading, illusions, and lots more but comes with the downside that it requires a power source that can only be harnessed in a pocket dimension. They claim that only witch-queens can get to their level of witchcraft, but they keep it a secret to a point that is suspicious. Witchcraft is shared only a few and only in limited ways. Witch-queens can track down people that know more than they should, so I never looked into it."

"Is that everything?"

"No, but dreamshapers, witch-queens and skymages are the most powerful by far and deserved to be talked about separately. From there there are various miscellaneous things like people that never get tired, people that can weave light into glowing cloth, talking fish that are people. There are various magical creatures like unicorns which have purifying properties, bats that can sense portals, shapeshifting animals... there used to be phoenixes but they went extinct because their eggs can make people immortal for five hundred years, one of the translation effects that I know off is granted by a two-headed snake that needs to lick your ears... there are magical artifacts that make you tired in exchange of granting telekinesis or telepathy, there is a type of glass that lets you see through dimensions. I think the other translation effect is an ambient effect attached to a specific dimension, some dimensions are always night but plants still grow normally there... the full list is going to be long."

He looks undeterred!!

Felix would find it endearing if his heart hadn't been ripped out of his chest recently. Felix offers more magical examples, they all keep interesting things but not as strong as the top three: Sea serpents! Flying animals of various types! A pocket dimension that gives telekinetic "phantom limbs" to people that lose limbs there! Berries that boost your singing ability, mute people that can eat said berries and sing divinely and control birds! scientifically inaccurate "prehistoric" animals that can be revived from their bones in this pocket dimension near Italy (this is a sentence in Italian)! Flying islands! Moving statues! Half-plant people! This place amplifies emotions! People that can animate wooden toys that protect children...

He eventually has to give a side explanation as to why so much of that magic was lost and why so many of the surviving magic people have recessive genes. Here are the wonders of thaumatophobic persecution! And why most of various magical people choose to live in either in the Stormlands and the Witchlands.

"I'm surprised governments didn't - treat magic as an asset more -"

"It's getting better. People in the past didn't know any better and thought magic was evil. And nowadays there is a lot of inertia because transitioning to a more magic friendly society can be complicated I doubt they have anything specific to deal with the needs of sapient fish simply because it wouldn't come up often enough and there are still conservative people that think magic should belong somewhere else or that the fish aren't actually people or that the relevant debate isn't worth taxpayer time. They have laws about skymages, but they're aren't always friendly."

"Oh?"

"It's more legal for me to spend my day shaping clouds into swear words than stopping a house fire. As long I keep the cloud volume relatively the same."

"...more legal?"

"I meant I would be better protected against possible consequences. The owner of the house could sue because I don't have a license to use my magic for firefighting purposes. While my right of free expression is better protected as long I don't waste natural resources to do it."

"...huh."

"Yeah. It's weird. Magic as a resource is very inefficiently used."

"I doubt that would be the case here, but it doesn't sound like there's an obvious avenue to get access to it."

Slow nod.

"Do you have guesses about what's causing the translation?"

"I really don't remember anything that could give persistent translation like that. And if there was something like that near the Shattered Skies it would've at least show up in the brochures. My best guest is that the bolt of energy that got me here somehow gave the translation to me, maybe I was briefly teleported to a pocket dimension with the property and then sent here."

He is taking notes. "Is there magic on Earth that could be used to find you?" he says in English.

He blinks at the English. "Uh, I think there is non-witchcraft magic that can find things. But I have a fork there and from their end that must've looked like was that my body got killed by weird magic, they won't suspect that I got into another universe, they won't even know I exist-" he closes his eyes and breathes deeply. "And if my form of immortality failed to keep the connection then I am very skeptical that some other form of magic could look across the universes and find me. I can't overstate how unnecessarily strong it is. My brother said something similarly functional could've been achieved with less than a twentieth of the power. It creates full back-ups of my mind at a rate of two hundred updates per second and it can evaluate between updates to check for signs of mental tampering at a rate of fifty times per second and I meant all updates since I first got it. My brothers suspect that if something could somehow tamper with the back-up it would adapt and fight back-"

He feels out of breath.

"It sounds nice. Did you have children back home -"

"No?" Felix looks at Afen confused.

"You seem really really upset about being here even though you're the only magic-user in this world and its discoverer."

"I'm curious if it's for want of a specific person or a specific feature of Earth or just general unadventurousness."

The oranges glare at him.

"My twin brother, my little sister, my friends, my grandparents. The fact that I am the only immortal here. The fact I am even less able to blend in a crowd here, assuming your government doesn't try to lock up in a facility somewhere," Felix lists hollowly, there is not even a single note of anger in his voice.

"If the wings fold you could dye your hair and blend in fine."

"They're noticeable even under a trench coat."

"So have a backpack designed for them."

"Yeah."

This somehow fails to reassure him.

"What information would you get from taking a nap? What might happen when you nap, and what inferences would you make from that?"

"I would know if I could still dreamshape... I don't know about the rest."

"You can learn the language even if someone else is talking to him, right?" Nasami says to Afen. 

        "I can learn the language as long as it's being spoken. Or written."

"Okay. Felis, would you like a glass of water or a snack or anything?"

        "Felix."

"I can't make that sound."

         "Yes, you can, it's a voiceless 'ks', try whispering 'kas' quickly and that's pretty much it."

"Would you like a glass of water or a snack or anything," she says to Felix.

"No... thank you. I already abused your hospitality too much. And Felis is alright."

She smiles at him. "I will probably get it with practice, but that's very kind of you."

Slow nod.

"Do you have questions for us now that you've learned more about our world?"

He starts shaking his head, but then. "I guess I could ask the green about castes?"

"What about them?"

"My planet doesn't have castes. Societies that tried that were... incorrect about the approach. You are aliens, so it might just be that it makes sense for you to divide this way, but it feels extremely weird from my perspective that only a caste can do something like looking at security cameras and work as a model. And... uh... saying that some castes can't be as smart as the others would be strongly associated with prejudice where I am from and is generally... suspicious."

"- are all people where you're from equally intelligent?"

"No. But a lot of that can be caused by lack of opportunities, or development problems because of lack of nutrition, or even administrative bias because their teacher think ethnicity correlates with intelligence. And the excuse was - and is - used to justify the oppression of certain groups and the people doing it that were simply incorrect about the belief."

"Huh. Well, the average green is much smarter than the average purple, though there are three hundred million purples and there are not none smart enough that they could be successful if they were green. Instead they found major successful companies - it's useful having some purples be smart. It seems like maybe the unreasonable step was the oppressing people."

"Yes, they shouldn't oppress people. What I am coming from is: I know as an observed fact people being wrong about this thing. I am not saying that your world is wrong about those things. It's just a question worth asking. And it still feels weird to be so rigid about things. If a nonpurple wanted to found a company, what could they do? If a nongreen wanted to have a career like yours, what could they do?"

"That depends what caste they were. Everyone can found a company in their line of work - a grey can found a security company, an orange can found a daycare or a private school, a yellow could found a software startup, a green could found a think tank or a theatre, a blue could fund and advise anything they liked. A purple or grey who wanted to be a theoretical computer scientist would have to get a day job or be a stay-at-home spouse and contribute to open-source projects. None of them do. Orange could teach advanced green three and four year olds, yellow could get a software engineering job with a research component, blue -" he giggles. "Sometimes there's a blue who should be green."

"It sounds like people are incentivize too much against out of caste work - externally so - and it would affect social mobility a lot. It even sounds like the only way for a garbageman to have children that don't have to do his job is to marry outside of caste."

" - reds can't marry out of caste. And men can't marry out of caste in general, it's patrilineal."

"...Why?"

"Why is it patrilineal? That's how it was historically in Anitam and we see no reason to change it. Or why can't reds marry out of caste? Because it's illegal and no one would want to and the children would be red anyway."

"The reds part... Why is it illegal? If it's patrilineal then it only applies to red men, right? Which is bad enough, I guess..."

"Because reds are unclean, and spreading pollution is a really big problem, so you couldn't just go touching reds even if you wanted to."

"Unclean."

He might sound a bit skeptical under the hollowness.

"Aliens might not have it, or might have some other way of handling it. Anyway, I don't think it bothers reds being unclean, so the garbage truck driver wouldn't want his children to do something else."

"We don't. What is this uncleanness?"

"It's an extremely strong aversive reaction to situations in which contagion would be expected - contact with sewage, dead bodies, garbage, and people who are regularly in contact with any of those. At the thought that something you drank was actually raw sewage, or that your mattress is stuffed with decaying corpses in bags, or that reds are touching things, we feel nauseous and panicked and have a hard time functioning normally. Reds follow containment procedures so everyone isn't in a state of disgust and panic all the time."

Felix thinks about this. "That... sounded like it is entirely in people's heads."

" - yes? So are literally all social institutions. Maybe human ones are different?"

"I meant that it doesn't sound like it accurately reflects a fact about the physical world. At cost of making touching a set of people illegal or comparable to something actually dangerous to your health like drinking sewage."

"The fact that everyone would be constantly miserable if procedures somehow collapsed is a fact about the world."

Felix manages to give a fairly unimpressed look under all that misery.

" - do you just not care about that?" Liset asks curiously.

"No? ...I am assuming your civilization invented soap and similar cleaning products?"

"Yes, there are ways to decontaminate if you touch a red."

"I am talking about cleaning the reds. Even if they handle unclean things it doesn't mean they can't wash off later."

"No, touching a red is as disgusting as touching those things directly, even if they've washed."

"Why?"

"Why is anything disgusting? In the environment of evolutionary adaptedness it was a disease risk and now it's hardwired to cause revulsion."

"...I suppose, if it is that hardwired to you guys."

They all nod.

He actually a bit skeptical, but he is not strong enough to argue the point right now.

Then Afen will return to quizzing him about English.

Which he answer absently.

The cloud around the pebble grows and Felix asks if it's okay to open the window so he can divert the humidity away. He can do that without making the house colder.

They are happy to open the window for him.

Good. He is so sorry over the inconvenience.

The pebble is moved next to the window to facilitate getting rid of the water. The vapor billows out like a chimney and there is no loss of heat as promised.

And more people arrive! Blue and grey and a couple more green; they confer with Afen and Liset at the door and then head cautiously in to speak to Felix.

He tries to make his shirt and jacket more presentable and waits to be addressed.

"Felix Dalkaila?" one of the blues says with impeccable pronunciation. "We heard you're, ah, lost here. Would you like to come back to a hotel with us, so we can stop imposing on these lovely people?"

"Felix Dalkaila." He confirms agreeably with the translation still set to show that he is speaking English. "They have been perfect hosts," Felix adds because he really don't wanna these people get hurt because of him.

They don't seem particularly worried! They retreat to put their son to bed. "An orange neighborhood is a good place to have landed," the blue agrees. "I'm Asa Eletan. Is there anything we can get you now or have waiting when we get there?"

"I don't need anything unless you have something that could induce a short nap... This wasn't the first place I landed but the people ran away."

"Oh?"

"They're in an alley and I landed near them... I was still assuming this was my home planet and a skymage wouldn't normally cause people to just run away in panic."

"What kind of alley?"

"...I think it had a large red metal box in it? Maybe it was a dumpster."

"Ah. Did you touch anything? If you touched anything we'll set up a shower for you when we get to the hotel - that's a red alley -"

"I touched the ground? I mean, I stepped on it..."

"We can get you new shoes," she says reassuringly.

Felix just nods. He can probably just make new ones, but he is not feeling like bringing that up. "How are we going to reach the hotel?"

"Oh, they sent a car for us. The roads don't look as bad as predicted!"

"Yeah, I did that. Am I going to fit? You're shorter and I have wings... Also I have to bring this."

The floating pebble floats closer, dripping water that turns into steam.

"It would be easier if it could float along outside, but we'll manage either way."

Nod nod. "What is the plan once we ge there?"

"That's up to you! If you want to sleep - for, ah, information reasons or just because it's been an exhausting series of events - you can do that; if you have more questions we can answer them..."

"I'm not in a good headspace for questions. Maybe you could give me a list of books for me to conjure - for personal research."

"Sure! I'm not sure off the top of my head what'd be helpful, I can ask people to send me suggestions." She starts typing something. "The car's here, are you ready to head out?"

Nod. "I don't have anything besides what I am carrying with me. And the floating rock."

"How much space will the floating rock eventually take up?"

"...It gets about house-sized? But it won't take less than a day to reach that size."