Like we were doing when you arrived.

"That works. OK, I'm about to tell Irissë why it was secret."

I have magic. There are different specialties, but I work with nature spirits: water, heat, wind. You heard me binding an ice elemental, but it got away. My kind of magic comes with drawbacks, of which the relevant one is a system of karma. If you tell someone the practice exists, you become partly responsible for any mistakes they make. This is mistakes as judged by the magic itself, and it has a system of right and wrong that as far as I know no one actually agrees with. As long as people don't themselves become practitioners, the universe isn't really paying them much attention and whether they slip up or don't even try barely matters except in extreme cases. But I just informed thousands of people, so maybe there is an extreme case or maybe it just adds up and the universe compensates by throwing bad luck my way or outright destroying me.

The other reason is that there are Others. It's usually a catchall term for nonhumans, but you don't really fit that categorization. A lot are malevolent, but most can't hurt innocents. Non-practitioners are protected, people who don't even know all this exists are more so. Combine that with the karma, and there's a very strong rule against going public like I apparently just did.

I'm sorry. I can come up with an explanation for everyone - that it's a private religious ritual from your home, and that listening to those is considered somehow rude. You're now in trouble for mistakes I make? What's a mistake?

You and however many other people. I'm not in much trouble, yet, because none of you have become practitioners. This would be worse back in my world, because anyone who wanted could awaken the people I told risk-free. If I'm literally the only person who knows how to do that, it's safer than it could be.

A mistake is anything the spirits consider wrong; this has a general theme of betrayal and is heavily influenced by cultures that died out thousands of years ago. I could explain some details, but at the moment it's...maybe not stable, but at least not currently harmful. You can act as you normally would without worrying about this. The accident with the boats might have counted if they were close relatives and you did it on purpose because you wanted them dead, but it takes a lot for a non-practitioner to get a karma score.

A religious ritual, that could work. If people think human prayers involve threatening our gods, that's not weirder than them thinking synthetic fabrics generate heat.

The other problem is that you can now be attacked by Others. I haven't seen any sentient ones since arriving here, and I suspect there aren't as many. But if something decides to cause an avalanche, the universe won't go as far out of its way to prevent that from hitting you as it would for innocents. For me it wouldn't step in any more than it would for a natural one. And there are probably some actively malevolent ones. if your children have stories about monsters under the bed, there are probably Others that fit into that mold.

Oh. That sounds...worse than I expected. Alright, I'll tell everyone that mortal religious rituals involve threatening their gods.

We have no stories about monsters under the beds, we grew up in Valinor. Is this an Outer Lands thing? 

Valinor is probably the exception there. I thought it was an everywhere thing.

Others tend to be more powerful and last longer if there's a theme or some other kind of consistency. Imitating human concepts is common, and the Others attached to scarier concepts gain more from it. They can be fought even without magic, and not all are hostile, but it's a risk.

Well. Halls. I'm sorry I didn't think to mention that even with the winds as bad as they are here we can hear for a few miles, and when it's calm much much farther than that. We can't really afford too much more hostile forces at work in this mess - is there a way to win them over?

Collectively, not really. They don't tend to take sides in messes. The exceptions are on an individual basis, and I doubt there'll be enough Others who are people for exceptions to be common. I did have a plan that might conceivably help affect spirits and Others in general, but I wound up here before finding out whether or not it was possible. And I can't try it here.

Case by case, working with Others is very possible. That's what I was trying to do with the ice elemental, and I've got a few that are more thoroughly bound than that one would have been even if it had worked.

And how do you bind them?

It varies. They might agree, for payment or as part of a larger plot or just because of shared goals. If it's by force, it might come down to figuring out this specific Other's weakness and throwing it at them. Sometimes literally. I have it easier, working with nature spirits, sometimes it's less obvious.

I'm not really sure how much detail to go into here. If you awaken you'd need this kind of information, but otherwise I'm leaning toward having as little of this out there as possible.

You have my word I won't share it lightly. And you've said 'awakens' several times now - what does that mean?

Oh, that's just the name of the ritual for becoming a practitioner. I'm not sure whether or not all the components exist in this world, but making it work is probably an option. For a very few trustworthy people.

For binding Others, it's not innately secret the same way the existence of magic is. It's just that five minutes ago I didn't know I had been found out, and haven't thought through whether keeping as much as possible secret might be instrumentally valuable.

How did you learn about all of this? How widely known is it within your world? Do you regret knowing? If we had your abilities, would they let us cross the Ice?

I got it from my family. Most cities have people who know, but in small enough numbers that they mostly all know who the others are. I could cross the Ice, but that's dependent on resources that took a lot of time and effort to collect. Some of which almost certainly aren't here to be found. I don't know of a way to get this many people across.
Whether I regret knowing... I don't like the world behind my world. Half the time it's thoughtlessly enforcing rules and half the time it's malevolent. Knowing put me and my family in the line of fire, in a way we wouldn't have been otherwise. But I can't say I'd rather live alongside a world like that and not know about it.

She nods. What resources? Can we help you collect them? Is this world thoughtless and malevolent in the same way, can you tell?

It's similar as far as I can tell. Since my magic works at all, I'd expect the weird ideas of right and wrong to come along with it, but I can't tell that just by looking.

Of the things I use to fly, the hardest to get were collected from fast-moving rivers and another was a magic item I traded for and don't know how to make. Also the heat elemental I said you'd have more use for than me, to avoid freezing on the way.
Some of those I might be able to find in Valinor. None of them are likely to be here.

I see. Are they damaged? Is that why you can't fly again? Or is it the reason you gave us earlier?

I could fly right now. The only damaged equipment is the outer layer and I wouldn't need that for ordinary flight. I just surround myself in water and move that. Limiting factors are that I can't bring all that much with me, I'd need the heat back to fly anywhere water would freeze, and I can't really picture taking a hundred thousand trips to fly you across. And that doing it where people can see would be a bad idea, in case there's anyone who doesn't know yet.

Sorry about misleading you earlier, I was trying to hide having magic at all.

Hmmm.

Hmmm.

The thing that immediately comes to mind is flying to the people who abandoned us here and letting them know we're crossing the ice and they can meet us with food or with swords, their choice, but they're going to pay for everyone we lose along the way so maybe they should try to make sure it's not too many. But you don't know anything about the politics and that's quite an ask. 

I would be more than happy to tell them their sabotage didn't work. I doubt they'd be directly dangerous if I'm prepared. Less than happy to let them see the flight.

I can't see them shooting a messenger, but if you have preparations you can make, all the better. Not sure how they wouldn't see the flight. We can see things about fifty miles off pretty clearly, and they'd see something hot coming in across the water.

Then there probably isn't a safe way to do that.

When are you planning to leave? I could try to collect whatever spirits I can and hopefully meet you back here with at the very least more heat, assuming the Valar don't decide to keep me there. No guarantees of finding anything, though.

Couple months.

....if you teach me how to do your spirits, I can do it in a way that doesn't reflect badly on your reputation, right? What does that take, just being generally upstanding and honorable?

I wish. Upstanding and honorable according to a culture that otherwise no longer exists as understood by an aggregate mass of spirits that aren't even sentient. We can't lie, for instance. Harder for some people than others, but all of us have to keep at least one secret. Sometimes the rules makes sense, like how it's a bad idea to take something you don't have a claim to, and sometimes it doesn't. People are almost interchangeable by these rules; the reputations belong to bloodlines. That's one of the big ones I object to.

Oh. Hmm. How - directly bloodlines? If I just plan not to have children, am I protected? Or are cousins involved, in which case awakening anyone in the family fucks all of us over forever?