With the second half of a startled yelp, a short boy with several prominent scars falls out of the ceiling. He yelps again, this time in full, when he hits the floor.

Teleportation accident: good enough! She slides out of her seat before the teacher can regain control of the situation and darts over. "Hey, are you alright?" she asks. "Need anything healed?"

"Uh," he says, and then some things in an unfamiliar language.

He doesn't speak Genoshan? Where the hell did he come from, then. She repeats herself in the other languages she knows.

Nope and nope. He shrugs apologetically.

Oookay then. This is maybe slightly bordering on mind-reading but precedent is on her side, so she gently queries the world, what did he say?

He said: "Sorry about that; I don't suppose you can tell me where I am?"

Now he's looking at her with wry amusement.

She gestures around. "Genosha." She points to herself. "Odette." She gestures to him.

"Milan." He hops to his feet and gives a charming little bow.

She cups her ear and snaps her fingers, making an illusory spark at the same time.

He blinks quizzically at this display.

She points at him, makes a "talking" hand motion, points at her ear, and nod. She points at herself, makes the gesture, points at his ear, and shakes her head.

"You can understand me but not make yourself understood? What kind of cut-rate translation magic is that?" he laughs.

She raises an eyebrow. He thinks a random student can do real translation magic? Whatever, she can deal with that later. She waves around. "Genosha." She points to herself. "Odette, Genosha." She points to him. "Milan...?"

"Pleased to meet you, Odette of Genosha. I'm Milan Kosorin of Laefair. I apologize again for rudely falling out of your ceiling."

"Zavier. Odette Zavier," she adds absently. "Does anyone else know what the hell language he's speaking?"

No one does.

"Does anyone speak any languages other than Genoshan, Anglic, Germanic, Hebrew or Ashkenazi?"

A handful of people are fluent in languages other than those, and more know a few word or phrases. Assorted languages are tried, once Odette prods them enough.

"It's Pax," he says, "I'm speaking Pax, the language of the Imperium. But I'm pretty sure that was the Interplanar Studies building, so I doubt we're going to get anywhere trying random languages on each other."

...

Odette translates this.

"He's crazy," someone snorts derisively. Odette gives him a look. He shuts up.

"Er..." the teacher says hesitantly. "Perhaps we should find someone with more authority to deal with this."

"Good idea. I'll go do that," Odette says. The teacher looks like she's considering arguing, but ultimately doesn't. Odette opens the door and gestures for him to follow her.

He smiles and follows Odette.

Odette brings him to the headmaster, who tries half-a-dozen things he won't explain before admitting that he can't find anything to contradict Milan's story and this is also way over his head and would you mind dealing with him, please, while I see if I can get our illustrious Great Mage's attention.

Slightly exasperated, Odette gestures to the papers as best she can to indicate, bureaucracy.

"A universal constant and then some, I see."

She giggles and nods.

"And who am I being escalated to next?"

"Atennesi Cohen," she says. She can't think of how to explain 'Great Mage' through gestures, but--she waves a hand and sparkles fly out; maybe such a frivolously wasteful use of magic will get it across?

"From student to teacher to academic bureaucrat to... wizard?"

She snorts, shakes her head, and picks the word out of the sentence that seems to have been "mage." She points to herself "Wizard." She points to the headmaster's office. "Wizard." She gestures elsewhere. "Atennesi Cohen. Wizard!" and when she says wizard that time she spreads her hands to indicate bigness.

"Wizards everywhere. I begin to feel left out."

She shrugs, pinches herself viciously, and spreads her hands in a "what can you do?" gesture.

"Eh?"

Pantomime is an even worse form of communication than regular language, who'd have thought?

She forms one hand into a mouth shape and pinches the wrist. The hand wobbles in a way as to indicate the pinching doesn't matter. She points to that hand and says, "Wizard." She makes the other hand into a mouth, pinches it, mimes it squawking in pain, and shakes her head.

"...Seriously? The major local restriction on magical aptitude is pain tolerance?"

She looks at him like she can't imagine how he could possibly have not known that.

"Magic doesn't hurt where I'm from. At least not usually."

"What!?" The word is unfamiliar, but the tone of shock comes through fine.

"You didn't think I was crazy when I said I was from another plane, but that's what gets you?"

She nods firmly.

"What a curious look into local metaphysical assumptions... help, I am being tempted by the siren lure of thaumatology."

She gives him a quizzical look.

"Which part of that needs explaining?"

"...Thaumatology?" She guesses, hesitantly.

"Thaumatology, the study of the underlying nature and function of magic. Best practiced by the quick of mind and humble of heart. I fulfill the first criterion but fail catastrophically at the second."

Something about this is puzzling her but she can't seem to articulate what.

"Yes?"

"of mind and humble of heart I?" she guesses.

"...I am very smart, and very arrogant, and only one of these things is a virtue?"

She raises an eyebrow. She holds out a fist. "Of mind and humble of heart I," she says. She holds out her other fist. "Wizard." Her fists zoom away from each other as though they were magnetically repelled.

"...'Quick of mind and humble of heart' and 'wizard' don't go together? What, your wizards are all arrogant idiots? That sounds unfortunate."

Oh.

"Humble of heart," she corrects. She holds her fists out again. "Wizard," she labels her right fist. "Humble of heart," she labels her left fist, and they zoom apart. She holds up her left fist, relabels it "quick of mind," and this time the two stick together.

"Aha. Well, that's much better for local prosperity, I imagine."

She nods and smiles.

"But why is arrogance a wizardly virtue?"

She looks at him blankly, pinches her wrist again, and shrugs.

"...Really? It's just inexplicable?"

She sighs and shakes her head, points at her mouth, and shrugs helplessly.

"Oh, come on, work with me here. We have one-way translation, that's better than nothing by a long shot. So it can't possibly be the same reason why thaumatology is for the humble, unless you live in some kind of insane fantasy universe that rewards you for trying to become more powerful..."

She gives him a look best described as "duh."

"...Wait, what?"

"Wizards," she says emphatically.

"...Are wizards rewarded for trying to become more powerful?"

She nods, then makes a so-so gesture with her hand, and pinches her wrist more strongly than before.

Milan looks disturbed.

She waves a hand over the pinchmark, as thought to indicate it's not a big deal.

"No, not the pain thing. The pain thing is one of the least disquieting aspects of this situation."

She gives him a confused look.

"What?"

She pinches her wrist and mock-winces.

"Try words, I bet I can get nonzero information from tone of voice and cadence," he suggests.

"Most people don't like pain," she says. "What else is there to be disturbing?"

"Okay... you're confused at why the pain thing isn't what's freaking me out?"

Nod. Pause. Shrug, so-so hand gesture. "It doesn't freak anyone else out, but what else is there to be upset about?"

"Is that by any chance 'what else is there'?"

Nod.

He snorts.

"The way you describe this universe sounds like some kind of elaborate lie specifically crafted to trap me in particular into spectacularly lethal hubris. It's a little unsettling."

"Why would hubris be lethal?"

"Well, why wouldn't it?"

"Incoherent question. Why wouldn't lemon juice be lethal?"

He snorts. "Fair enough. I don't know. It's hard to explain because I've spent so much of my life building up impenetrable mental habits of not thinking about certain subjects so I can channel all my frustrated arrogant genius into being a really excellent skirmish player and hopefully live past twenty."

"You poor soul. Why on earth would you have to do that?"

"Because hubris is deadly! If you go around thinking too highly of yourself, the universe will endeavour to prove you wrong, and it will win, because it's the universe and you aren't. That's how it works where I'm from, anyway. And I'm not yet ready to believe the rules are different here."

"Well, they are! Bending the universe to your will is how magic works. How the hell do you have mages wherever you are if you can't do that."

"Okay, I admit defeat on that one. Something about what the fuck is wrong with my home plane?"

So-so hand gesture.

He laughs. "How long do you think it's going to take the escalated wizard to show up and take charge of me? Soon, not soon?"

"He's in charge of the city, so he has a lot of things on his plate. Could be anywhere from a minute to five hours."

"That sounded like 'not soon'."

"Soon, not soon," she says, correctly guessing the last two words, and shrugs.

"Uncertainty! My favourite."

She giggles.

He smiles.

Gosh he's cute. She wonders where he got those scars...

She mentally shakes herself. Irrelevant. She might as well teach him what she can of Genoshan, since she can't think of any way to communicate her actual confusion with the idea of magic that doesn't involve asserting your will over the universe.

She makes an illusionary globe in the air over her hand, which she holds flat, palm up. "Earth," she says.

"Your planet?" he guesses.

She nods. "Planet. Planet. Wizard. Mage. Not soon. Not soon."

He echoes all these, nodding.

"I am Odette. You are Milan."

He happily repeats that one with the names appropriately swapped.

She points at a chair. "Chair. One chair." She points at another chair, back to the first one, and back to the second one. "Two chairs."

"One chair. Two chairs. The rest of the numbers?"

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten," she counts on her fingers. "Eleven, twelve. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty three..."

He echoes along, and then gets ahead of her, watching to see if he's guessing right - "twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, ...?"

She nods. "Thirty! Thirty-one, thirty-two," she waves a hand. "Forty, forty-one, forty-two," waves her hand again, "Fifty-one, fifty-two..."

Milan follows this recitation, grinning.

"Sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety. One hundred. One hundred ten, one hundred twenty..." she waves a hand. "Two hundred. Three hundred." she waves a hand. "One thousand."

He giggles.

"Hand," she says, holding it up. "Five fingers." She wiggles them. She touches her nose. "Nose." She puts her index finger beneath an eye. "Eye."

Vocabulary, whee!

There is a muffled crack sound, and then there is a tall man with tanned skin, black hair hanging a few inches past his shoulder standing in the room with them.

Milan turns and bows smoothly to the new arrival. "The wizard, I presume."

Atennesi studies him for a moment, tips his head, and replies. "I am Atennesi Cohen, creator and administrator of the Free City of Genosha, and a Great Mage. It is to my utmost interest to make your acquaintance."

"Milan Kosorin of the kingdom of Laefair, until recently a student at Magisterius University in the Imperium, likewise fascinated to meet you," he says cheerfully.

"There is not a kingdom of Laefair in the world. It seems you are correct about having come from another plane. Could you summarize your interactions so far with Miss Zavier?"

"I fell out of the ceiling in her classroom, she was the first one to come over and try to help me, she brought me to somebody or other's office when her teacher didn't have a clue what to do with me, we had a brief but fascinating cultural exchange and then she started teaching me your language."

He nods. "I'm not surprised. Can you expand on the cultural exchange?"

"Apparently around here magic costs pain and rewards arrogance. At home, the first thing is false and the second rather more so. Hubris is a deadly sin, in that if you practice it it will likely kill you."

He chuckles. "I can see why that would have confused her. Here, magic consists of applying to the universe in one of three ways: pushing it, coaxing it or commanding it. None of these approaches benefit from humility. And it does hurt, but that isn't the real hazard--I suppose she would have had a hard time getting it across. When you push on the universe, it pushes back. Each branch has its own...mental side effect."

"Well, that's the first thing I've heard about your magic system that makes it sound like something other than a flawlessly crafted trap to lead me into lethally overreaching myself. Do go on."

"They influence you," he explains. "Sympathy causes one to be more diplomatic and conflict-averse. Conquest increases your force of personality and encourages you to have an entitlement complex. Effort makes you more stubborn, for good or ill. Great Mages are those of us who don't mind the pain, one way or another, and have enough resistance to one or more of the side-effects to keep our personalities intact for centuries of arbitrary magic use."

"That sounds like it makes for an interesting society."

He gives a thin-lipped smile "Great Mages are not permitted to interfere unduly in international politics."

"Who stops them?"

"Why, each other, of course." He sounds very much like he's trying to imply something while still leaving himself plausible deniability.

"Sure," says Milan. "But it's not a divine edict or anything?"

He shakes his head, amused. "If we have any gods, they haven't seen fit to intervene in the world for a very long time."

"Gods are a fact of life in my home plane."

"I see. It seems we have much to discuss. Would you care to retire to my study, for the moment?"

"Sure."

He holds out a hand.

Milan shrugs and takes it.

And the muffled crack sound repeats and they are in a richly appointed office with several comfortable chairs. Atennesi lets go of Milan's hand and sits in one of them. "It seems that your world is very different from this one on a fundamental level."

"Yes, it does seem that way," he agrees, taking a spare chair.

"You say that hubris is punished; could you expand on that?"

"If you try to claim you're better than the gods, a god might notice, and then you have a problem. If you walk around thinking the universe should function in a way that's more to your liking, the universe might decide to take offense, and then you have a problem. If you annoy someone or something who is considerably more powerful than you are, in general, you will have a problem."

"For the most part, that seems relatively straightforward," he admits. "If mages were worse at self-policing we might have a similar problem. But I'm not sure what you mean by the universe taking offense. The most obvious meaning would be that you had a much sharper magic-to-pain curve than we, but we've established that you don't recognize magic as we know it."

"It's common to attribute motivations to the universe, because if you do things that annoy it, it reacts as though annoyed. For example, the universe is shy, so if you try to do rigorous experiments to figure out its underlying rules, it arranges for whatever you think you're discovering to blow up in your face, often literally."

This seems to genuinely shock him. "You can't do experiments?"

"We can, technically, it's just highly inadvisable."

"How do you get anything done?"

"We manage."

"I'm impressed."

"Thank you. I'm, frankly, skeptical."

"Would you like some form of evidence?"

"Such as?"

He shrugs. "I could perform a series of trivial experiments here and now. I could show you one of the science classes being taught at our university this moment."

"...I'm tempted to ask for the experiments, despite the danger."

"It would be trivial. I believe the simplest one to achieve with the materials on hand would be the one which confirms that objects fall at the same speed regardless of weight."

"I think I heard about someone trying to answer that question once. There's now a part of the world where down has permanently ceased to apply."

"Curious. If it had that affect here, I wonder if it would apply to Genosha or to the ocean."

"Hmm?"

"Ah. Genosha is a flying city. The reason I can get away with being in charge of a city, despite the bans on Great Mages interfering in politics, is that I created it rather than taking over an existing territory."

"What a delightful solution."

He grins. "I'm pleased that you think so. My peers weren't thrilled that I had found a loophole in their ordinances."

"It's exactly the sort of thing I'd do if I let myself do that sort of thing."

"I'm not quite certain whether 'my condolences for your stifled cleverness' sounds congratulatory or condescending. I apologize, if the latter."

"I choose to take it in the kinder spirit. Thank you."

"It was intended as such. If you had been born in this world, I would--certainly wish that you had been born in Genosha."

"High praise on such short acquaintance!"

"I have power to help my people that the other Great Mages tend not to exert on behalf of those in their vicinity. It does not take much for me to wish that someone had been born within my sphere of influence."

"Well, fair enough."

"May I ask if you know how you ended up here?"

"I was walking past a school building and a wall blew out in front of me and then I was falling out of your ceiling. I surmise the Interplanar Studies people were doing something they shouldn't."

"You have knowledge of other planes in yours? How do you study them, if you can't do any experiments?"

"I'm not an interplanar studies major myself. But we can study things, generally. Through observation and practice, without getting ahead of yourself or trying to take reality apart at the seams. It's usually safe. There's a reason I didn't go into thaumatology, though. Arrogant thaumatologists tend to have accidents."

"That sounds...excruciating."

"A bit, yes."

"Do you want to go back? Before or after seeing the properties of this world demonstrated. I don't know if I could return you--I've never heard of anything like this before--but I have the best chance out of anyone else in this world of doing it."

"I'm genuinely not sure," he sighs. "If your world is as you say... it represents an incredible danger and an incredible opportunity. I'm not sure I should go home even after as little exposure as I've had, let alone what I'd accumulate in however long it took you to send me home. The mental balancing act that's been keeping my natural arrogance from driving me into an early grave is very delicate and I don't think it's responding well to this disturbance."

"If I can send you home, I can almost certainly do it immediately," Atennesi assures him.

"Really? Why?"

He considers this. "Because that's how our magic works. I admit I'm not entirely certain why you think it ought to take longer than that."

"...Granted I'm no thaumatologist, but I'm under the impression that it's normally useful to have some idea what you're doing when you try to accomplish something with magic. If interplanar studies does not exist as a local discipline, I'd expect you to have to reinvent it in order to get anywhere. Even in a nice, friendly plane that doesn't mind you reading over its shoulder, I'd expect that to take longer than five minutes!"

"If I can access your plane at all, I expect to be able to do so through you. If that fails, and reaching your plane is otherwise possible, I do expect that it would take more than five minutes," he agrees.

"That does make somewhat more sense."

He rubs his face, and thinks, and sighs, and shakes his head.

"I shouldn't go home," he says. "I'd get obsessed with the lost opportunity and do something stupid and die."

"I'm sorry," he says sincerely. "If I had had any idea this sort of thing might come up I would have had better policies in place."

"Okay, now I'm deeply curious what policy you'd put in place to handle cases like this."

"If someone appears out of nowhere, don't talk to them, and be able to get me immediately," he says, "is the first possibility that comes to mind, but obviously I would think about it for a great deal longer before deciding on a long-term policy."

"I approve of you being in charge of a flying island kingdom."

"I'm glad to hear it," he says a bit smugly.

Milan laughs.

"If you wish me to see if I can send you home now, before you face any further contamination, I can try that. If you decline, or if it fails--I presume from context that you wish to learn magic."

"That is my hope, yes. If not magic, science will certainly do."

"The two are far from mutually exclusive."

He grins.

"Should I then not make the attempt?"

"I believe I already mentioned that I would die."

"I wished to be as sure as possible, given the situation, and I was unsure if the possibility of immediate return would change anything," he explains. "It cost nothing to ask."

"Fair enough."

"I shall speak with the university about seeing you enrolled immediately. It's partway through the semester, so you won't be able to officially sign up for classes yet, but I can issue you a general auditing pass until then and find you a dormitory room to sleep in. And a more permanent solution to the language barrier," he reflects.

"My impromptu language tutoring from Miss Zavier was going pretty well."

"I can ask her to continue. I don't expect her to mind."

"Sounds like a plan, then, if she's agreeable."

"I will ask," he says agreeably. "I have guest rooms until then, and until I have your enrollment sorted. Is there anything you require in the near term?"

He shrugs.

"Perhaps it would be best to see if Miss Zavier is currently available, while I sort out the rest," he suggests. "I highly doubt the class she would be in right now, if she's returned to it, is particularly interesting to her."

Giggle. "Well, far be it from me to interrupt someone else's education, but sure."

Atennesi teleports them both back to the office. Odette is, in fact, not there, so Atennesi teleports them again, this time just outside the door of the classroom Milan appeared in.

Whee.

He pushes open the door. "Excuse me," he says, in Genoshan instead of Pax. "I'm afraid things have turned out to be more complicated than originally anticipated. I would like to borrow Miss Zavier again, for the moment, if I may."

The teacher is startled, but allows it without a fuss.

"Hi!" she says cheerfully to Milan. "Thank you, Mage Cohen," she says to Atennesi.

"This is a one-time pass," he says, amused. "I expect you can still excel in this class even after having missed the majority of a single session."

"Of course I can!"

"Well and good," he says. "He requires language tutoring. The majority of this will have to be done outside of class hours, but for the moment leaving him with you while I dealt with the bureaucratic ramifications of his presence seemed most sensible."

"You can count on me!"

"I'm glad to hear it," he says. "I've explained the situation to her. Have fun."

"Thanks," he says cheerfully, and to Odette, "Hi!"

"Let's go outside and see the gardens!" she says cheerfully, since talking to him seems to have a nonzero success rate. "Better for studying than a random hallway."

"That sounded like a suggestion but I'm afraid I have no idea what you're suggesting," laughs Milan.

So she nods, gestures for him to follow her, and leads him out into some lovely gardens with convenient benches.

"You make good suggestions," Milan concludes.

"Yes I do."

"Yes, you do!"

She beams at him. "Flower," she says, pointing to a rose. "Flower." She points to a hyacinthe. "Flower." she points to a daffodil.

"Flower...s?"

"Flowers," she nods. She points to herself. "Person." She points to him. "Person." She points between them. "Two people."

"Flower, flowers. Person, people," he echoes happily.

She points up. "Sky." She grins wryly. "Two skies," she says, gesturing at him.

Giggle. "Sky, skies."

"I see the sky," she says, looking up. "I see flowers," she says, looking around.

"I see you."

Why is he so cute. "I see you too! I speak to you. I am speaking to you."

"I am speaking to you. You are speaking to me."

"I was speaking to you in the building. I am speaking to you in the garden."

Ooh, verb tenses. And vocabulary. "Building," he gestures at it, "garden," their surroundings?

"Yes. In the garden, there are flowers, and benches," she points to a bench, "and trees." She points to a tree.

"Bench, tree?" he guesses at singulars.

"Yes. Leaf, leaves," she says, pointing to a leaf and then gesturing to the branch.

Whee! "This is fun."

"This is fun."

"This is fun."

"Leaves are green. The sky is blue. Your eyes are grey."

"Leaves are green; the sky is blue; my eyes are grey; your eyes are...," he peers at them.

"Blue. My eyes are darker blue than the sky. The sky is lighter blue than my eyes."

"Darker, lighter." He locates some example leaves. "Darker green, lighter green."

She nods. "This flower is red," she says, pointing to a red carnation. "This flower is yellow." A daffodil. "This flower is white." A white carnation. She picks up a fallen rose petal and puts it on her head. "I am wearing the red flower."

Giggle. "How fashionable."

"I am wearing a dress," she says, smoothing down the fabric. "You are wearing a shirt," she points, "and pants," she points.

"You are wearing a dress and a flower. Well, a petal."

"I am wearing a purple dress and a red flower petal."

"Purple, red..." he looks around for examples of the other colours to refresh his memory, "yellow, white, blue, green." He can't see his own eyes, but he blinks them for, "Grey."

She nods. She points at a cloud. "White and grey. Cloud."

"Clouds are white and grey," he nods. "Most of the time."

"When the sun sets, clouds are many colors!" She realizes there are some words missing from his vocabulary. She points at the sun. "Sun. That is the sun. Red and yellow and white and grey and purple are colors."

"Colours. Many colours - many flowers?" he gestures around at the garden.

"Many flowers! There are many flowers in this garden. There are many hairs on my head," she says, grabbing her braid.

Milan giggles. "Hairs! Colour?"

"My hair is brown."

"Your hair is brown." He runs a hand through his own and raises his eyebrows expectantly.

"Your hair is black."

"My hair is black. Black, white, grey, brown, red, green, blue, yellow, purple," with examples of each. "One two three four five six seven eight nine ten, twenty thirty forty fifty sixty seventy eighty ninety one hundred. Yes?"

"Yes! You're good at this."

"I am good at this," he agrees delightedly.

"You're adorable," she accuses, giggling.

"Did you by any chance just call me adorable?"

"Yes!"

"I am adorable," he says, beaming.

She beams and twirls around. "You are adorable, the sun is shining, the garden is beautiful and I am not in class. It is a good day."

"Class is important," he says mock-chidingly.

"Not this class! I am in this class because everyone else needs it, so everyone has to take it. I don't need it."

"You have some kind of special circumstances and that class was actually useless to you...?"

She nods. "Yes. I am going to be a Great Mage someday. I don't need to learn how to use a little bit of magic to get a big result."

"Missing parts of that. You're going to be a major wizard like your delightful not-a-king...?"

"Yes. Yes I am."

"And that class is for people who are going to be mere ordinary wizards, but you have to take it anyway because bureaucracy?"

"It's slightly more complicated than that, but essentially yes."

Giggle.

"I'm pretty sure I'm going to be a Great Mage too," he adds brightly.

"Ooh?"

"The pain thing," he not-really-explains.

She taps one of her temples. "Mind thing. Atennesi speak you mind thing?"

"Yeah, he mentioned it. It seems like it balances out adequately, and I'm very, very used to hauling my mind along unnatural tracks to get away from undesirable results."

"Balance..." she makes a so-so hand gesture. "Some. Not all. These are some flowers," she says, gesturing at a patch. "These are all of the flowers." A sweeping gesture that encompasses the whole garden.

"Some but not all? Yeah, well. Back to the part about unnatural tracks, then." He grins. "I mean, I don't know for sure that I'm going to turn out to be major wizard material. But I'm very interested to find out."

"Resistance," she says. She makes a fist and moves it through the air. "No resistance." She puts her other hand up to slow it. "Resistance." She taps her temple. "Mind resistance."

"And what actual characteristics correspond to mental resistance?"

"Many."

"Is it more like," he gestures to one side, "naturally having the characteristics that oppose a certain magic's effects, or," the other hand, "some sort of idiosyncratic magical property people have?"

"Oh. First one," she says, gesturing to the relevant side.

"And I can't imagine it'll hurt to have a lot of practice mastering my own thoughts when they turn in unwanted directions."

"Yes. Meditation," she says, and stops, trying to figure out how to explain meditation in gestures using only the objects available in a campus garden.

"Mm?"

"Um..." She sits down on a bench, closes her eyes, and breathes in and out in long, even breaths. Then she opens them and gestures to her head. "Meditation. We meditate to reduce the mind thing."

"Meditation?"

"Yes! Meditation. Meditation."

"Meditation," he echoes. "Never been my style, but hey, if it helps."

"If you can do the same thing without meditation it might not," she admits.

"Practically since I can remember, I've had a pretty solid understanding of which thoughts are and are not safe to think, and I've navigated that pretty damn well given my starting conditions."

"Why would something not be safe to think?"

"If I'd ever once let myself get caught up in the attitude that of course I can solve all the world's problems if I just try hard and believe in myself, I'd have been dead in under a year. And it's by far the most natural attitude for my mind to assume. I have to fight it down pretty much any time I encounter a problem outside the range of what I can actually plausibly solve."

"Oh. Yes. Some problems can't be solved. I'd go crazy if I thought about them all the time."

"But now I am in a universe that rewards you for trying to become more powerful, so I'm going to become a god and solve every problem in sight."

"Same. But some problems can't be solved." She shakes her head. "Sorry, I get maudlin when I think like this."

"Did I hear a 'some problems can't be solved'? Have you tried becoming a god?" he inquires, half-jokingly.

She sighs. "I am twenty years old." She gets a stick and sketches a reasonable approximation of the four seasons, taps it, and says, "year."

"And I'm seventeen."

She nods. She sketches a picture of three people, each visually distinct, two stylized female and one male. She draws lines from the male one and one of the female ones to the other female one. She taps the one the lines are drawn to, and says, "Me. Odette." She taps her chest. Then she taps the other female image, says "Mother," taps the male image, and says, "Father."

"Your parents?"

She nods. Then she draws another figure of her mother, and two parent-figures up from that.

"Grandparents?"

She nods. Then she taps the image of her mother, says, "Fifteen years old," and then firmly crosses out the pictures of her grandparents.

Milan gets a look on his face, at that.

She hesitates, but goes forward. "Fifteen," she says again, tapping the picture with the crossed-out grandparents, and, "Fifty-three," she says, tapping the picture connected to the picture of Odette. "Thirty-eight years. Even if one or both of us became strong enough to resurrect the dead today, they would still have missed thirty-eight years of their daughter's life. That's the kind of problem you can't fix."

"...I think we may have different ideas of what it means to solve a problem," says Milan.

"Er, then what did you mean by having problems outside the range of what you can plausibly solve?"

"Am I going to have to start wearing a sign around my neck to remind people? How do I write 'where I come from, reaching for power to rival the gods gets you fucking killed' in your language?"

"I, uh, don't think you had quite gotten that communicated to me. Do you just have really nasty Great Mages?"

"A god is not a wizard. A god is a god. And they don't take kindly to upstarts."

"You have terrible interventionist deities? That's...that must suck."

"Yes. Also, the universe is shy about its underlying laws and if you try to do science it will kill you in defense of its privacy."

"Step one: become gods. Step two: Find you universe and make it sit down, shut up and behave itself."

He laughs.

"No, that is not step two. I'm leaving my home plane for last. The back of the queue, for after I've solved all the other problems that are less likely to get me killed."

"Okay, valid. I'm oversimplifying."

"Anyway, are you starting to see why this world looks like a personalized hubris trap?"

"Should I feel flattered on its behalf that it seems to be working?"

"If you like."

"I am helping tempt you," she says, wiggling her fingers in a parody of a scary thing. "With flowers."

"Adorable petal hats!"

"Adorable petal hats!" she agrees. "I wear a hat on my head. You wear your pants on your legs. We wear our sleeves," she plucks at a sleeve, "on our arms."

Milan giggles. "Adorable petal hats. What an excellent way to learn a language."

"What an excellent way to learn a language," she nods. "I know five languages. I do not know how many languages you know."

"I know two languages. Pax and Laefarrin. Soon three!"

"Soon you will know Pax, Laefarrin, and Genoshan. You will know three languages. I know Genoshan, Anglic, Germanic, Hebrew, and Ashkenazi. My parents are not from Genosha, so I know their languages."

"Your parents know many languages," he observes.

"I speak Hebrew because I am a Shemeshite. Shemeshism is a religion. Hebrew is the holy language for that religion."

"You lost me there."

"Probably too complicated at this level of vocabulary," she sighs. "Um...Day. It is day because the sun is in the sky."

"Day. Sun. How about night and moon, then?"

"It is night when the moon is in the sky. When it is night, the stars are also in the sky."

"Day, sun, night, moon, stars."

"When it is night, the sky is black. When it is day, the sky is blue. When it is between, the sky is many colors."

"Between?"

"Yes. Sunrise when night becomes day, and sunset when day becomes night." She remembers she is magic and creates an illusion of a section of plains under the dome of a sky, starting it at night and progressing it through sunrise, through the day, through sunset and back to night in a few moments.

"Ooh, pretty."

"You don't have sunrise and sunset?"

"No, we do, I'm just impressed by the aesthetics of the illusion."

"The illusion is pretty."

"The illusion is pretty."

She creates an illusion of a bunny nibbling on a carrot. "This illusion is adorable."

Oh no it's too cute.

The bunny abandons its carrot and hops cutely over to a flower petal to nibble on that.

"This illusion is too adorable," giggles Milan.

"Fear me and my hubristic powers of cuteness!"

He cackles.

"Dirt," she says, pointing to the earth. "The dirt is brown like my hair. My hair is a prettier brown than the dirt. The bark of the trees is also brown."

"Your hair is prettier than dirt," giggles Milan.

"I know. Your eyes are prettier than clouds."

"Why thank you."

"You're welcome," she says. "Thank you. Thank you."

"Thank you. That's a good one to know."

"Yes. Please, thank you, you're welcome. That's a good one to know. That's a good one to know."

"I swear I wasn't this good at languages last time I tried to learn one I didn't grow up with."

"Maybe immersion helps."

"Maybe!"

She giggles. "Not humble of heart. Not humble of heart." Her tone strongly implies this is a compliment.

"I am not humble of heart. I am going to be a Great Mage."

"Yes you are! And so am I. There will be two new Great Mages at the same time. This is unprecedented."

"Really? We're that rare?"

"We're that rare. There are six alive right now besides us."

"How many people are there in the world?"

"Four billion?"

"My Genoshan numbers only go up to the thousands," he reminds her.

"A thousand thousands is a million. A thousand millions is a billion."

"...Four billion people. Six Great Mages?!"

"Five hundred years ago, most Great Mages died."

"And five hundred years later you still have fewer Great Mages than my world has gods!"

"In five hundred years there have been three new Great Mages. Most people never try magic. If everyone tried magic, there would be more Great Mages."

He shakes his head. "I don't think you understand how insane that sounds. Your world is supposedly some kind of hubris-rewarding science paradise, and yet with a comparable population you have six people who've gone for the local equivalent of epic power and made it."

"Magic hurts a lot."

"And there are six masochists on the planet?"

"I wasn't born one! I am very resistant to Sympathy."

"Six in four billion is not many!" he insists.

"I don't know what to tell you!"