He is pleased to observe that he counts as a watchful spirit. He locates the kitten and returns it to the boy, making it appear in a little swirl of colourful lights just for fun.

The obvious solution is more straightforward. So he just - does that.

Well, that's concerning. He hangs onto the followup prayer and looks for context. Who are these people - what do they believe - what can he do about her situation that won't involve mind-controlling her parents?

Her family are Orthodox Salvationists, who believe that all non-innate forms of magic are "traps" intended to prevent unwitting souls from being saved. (Laypeople in Salvationism are pretty unclear on what being saved actually means except insofar as it's better than the alternatives.) Erubia, where they live, is a country almost entirely inhabited by Orthodox Salvationists, though there are some religious minorities and visitors who agree to abide by the laws against wizardry and witchcraft, and there are some Orthodox Salvationists overseas who tolerate what they have to tolerate to live there. They do not, as a faith, tend to expect concrete miracles, and the only known way to accomplish what he just did for this little girl is with wizardry.

He's starting to develop a dislike for this Ryganaav place. He keeps hold of the girl's nonspecific prayer while he takes a look around - where are they, where'd they come from, what's this country's problem with magic things?

This country's state religion, Yaanor, also hates magic - plus people who aren't humans - pretty much in full generality, none of the Salvationist exception for things one is born with. It's not as monolithic as it looks, but advocating for leniency is nearly as dangerous as having magic oneself. It's also a pretty gross place to be female. They don't think magic is a trap that opens oneself up to bad influences; they think it's a symptom of having already done it, so once it's caught, even abstaining for life won't satisfy.

Well - there's not much he can do for her in terms of direct intervention. But he gives her a little boost of luck; the school might still decide to favour other candidates over her, but she won't end up excluded by chance - her application misplaced or overlooked, her interviewer forgetting some positive detail at the wrong moment, that sort of problem will leave her alone.

"Wha' the hell?" says the boy in the blanket, still largely in sleepy mumble mode.

"I'm very sorry," murmurs Keo. "My daughter and her roommate summoned you from your original world as part of a poorly thought out attempt to impress a classmate."

"...Am I dreaming right now?"

"No. I'm sorry."

"Yeah. I heard," he says. "So... where's here? Are you saying somebody did magic to me?"

"The world is called Elcenia, and, yes, there was magic involved. Unfortunately, they did it badly, and can't send you home right away."

"I can let you out if you're safe to let out. Do you mind if I check? I won't see anything in your head I'm not looking for."

"...And what'll you be looking for, exactly?" he inquires.

"Whether I'll regret letting you out. I'm very sorry that you were summoned against your will, but the spell they used chooses a random target, not necessarily a friendly one."

"And you can just - check that, by itself? Hell of a magic," he says. "Sure, whatever."

"Magic in my world kind of defies description a little. What's yours like?"

"There's a lot of kinds. I can do the checking thing because I'm a rare kind of dragon; I'm the only one right now. The kind that was used to summon you is called wizardry; this is a school of wizardry."

"Huh," he says. "Cool. It doesn't really come in kinds at home. People ask for things, and sometimes they get them, but it kind of varies how. I've never gotten anything to work, but plenty of people don't, I'm not special that way."

"Well, worlds can be expected to differ, that way. While you're stuck here, I can get you a room in the dormitories and a pass to the cafeteria," she adds. "And my daughter can take you shopping for anything else you need at her and her roommate's expense as part of their disciplinary process - and if you need to let anyone at home know what's happened, someone more competent with the relevant spells can send them letters, or even summon them reversibly if they'd like to visit."

"I don't know anybody at home who'll miss me," he says offhandedly. "A room and a cafeteria pass sound good. And hey, I get to keep my favourite blanket." He snuggles it. It's so cozy.

"All right then." Keo gets up and leads him out of the room, to the lift, which she directs to another dorm hall.

Under the blanket, he proves to be wearing sweatpants in addition to the shirt. Naturally, however, no shoes or socks. He follows her serenely enough, wrapped in his blanket.

She shows him to a room that looks just like the girls' except for being void of personal possessions. "What's your name?" she asks when they go into it.

"Mm... Teah," he says, pretty obviously out of thin air. "You?"

"Keo." The name's odd for his language, but not unpronounceable or anything; she doesn't comment. "When do you want Korulen to pick you up for a shopping trip for the essentials?"

"Whenever's convenient." He yawns. "I've got my blanket, I'm good."

"Okay. She'll come by this evening, then. If you need me for anything, just think my name very hard." She starts to leave, then pauses: "Can you think of any reason why you wouldn't have an empathic signature while you were asleep?"

"What's an empathic signature?"

"Green-group dragons -" she touches her hair - "are empaths, and everybody pings our empathic sense in a unique way. I didn't get one from you till you woke up and it flickered in."

"Is... that a thing that happens? Or am I just weird? I have no idea, either way."

"I've never seen it happen. It could have happened if you were behind an empathic ward, but you weren't, and I in particular can generally circumvent those with line of sight. But it could just be a thing in your world, I suppose."

"I definitely couldn't tell you."

Keo nods. "Lift will take you to the cafteria, just tell it so. Korulen will cast a translation spell on you when she comes by to take you shopping."

"—huh, I probably should've been wondering how you spoke English," he says.

"Dragons can speak any language," says Keo, smiling. "Any other questions before I leave you be?"

"Guess not," he says with a shrug. "Thanks for, you know, being nice and stuff."

The mage had found herself a spring and is having a drink. The priest is regrouping with the survivors of the lion-devil attack. The sisters are solemnly receiving explanations of what things are like in Esmaar. The dragon has located a dragon who is a wizard, and the wizard is peering intently at the notepaper. The ex-shrens are working on dissolving their institutions without leaving anybody completely uncared for; they're distributing a lot of children back to their parents. The vampire hearer he encountered earlier would still like it very much if her family didn't think she was out of her mind.

"...Do you not speak Leraal?" Leekath asks in Leraal. "Do you speak vampire?" she tries in vampire. The paper has vampire writing on it.

"I can't understand a damn word you're saying," he says. Still in English. "Uh, come in, I guess? You probably can't understand a word I'm saying either."

She offers him the paper and the pencil.

He looks bewildered.

She mimes writing, then repeats the offer. She's not prepared to believe he's illiterate, even if he can't understand spoken vampire.

She listens, then decides that if he doesn't know why she's here one-way communication is not going to suffice. She makes a frustrated gesture and leaves to go look up a translation spell.

Leekath is back a degree later with a book in hand. She knocks again.

She rolls her eyes at him, and casts a translation spell. "There. I thought you would know why I was there and one-way communication would do it. But now we can just talk."

"Why would I know why you were here? Why are you here? I am the most confused I have ever been in my life," he says.

"You made me this," she says, handing him the little bit of paper.

"The symbol on the back is pronounced 'Teah' but I think it's Draconic since I don't know what it means, but the words on the front are 'for you', in vampire. And it says you made it."

"...That's... weird on so many levels I'm not sure I can count them," he says. "I don't speak vampire. I definitely can't read or write vampire. I've never prayed for a little paper with wings in my life. And it has my name on it. Well, the name I picked ten minutes ago when somebody asked me for one. Still my name, sort of."

"Prayed for?" asks Leekath.

"That's - how magic works in my world. You wish or pray for things, and sometimes you get them. I've heard it's different here, though. But I haven't made it any non-magical way either, and I feel like I'd remember doing that, and I have no idea who you are and no way of getting little paper circles to you if I made them, so 'made a weird wish and forgot about it' is at least slightly more plausible."

"It's different here," she confirms. "Or it was, anyway. But a couple degrees ago I got a - a choice if I wanted to keep some magic I have, or not, and I kept it, and I also got this little piece of paper, and the magic I kept lets me hear what objects say, and this paper says you made it, and they're never wrong."

"...Well, were you praying?"

"More wishing than praying, really, my God doesn't go in for this sort of thing, does wishing count?"

"Wishing counts. Okay, so... I guess I brought my world's magic with me? Probably lucky for your world. Magic's nice."

"It seems nice!" she agrees. "Why are you here from another world?"

"Some kind of accident? I was asleep when I got here and half-asleep when I heard the explanation, so I don't remember the details too well. But some people summoned me and one of them's supposed to show up later and cast a translation spell on me - I guess she can skip that part now, thanks - and take me out shopping for general life necessities 'cause all I showed up with were these clothes and that blanket." He indicates the blanket, piled up on the bed. It is poofy.

"Huh. I don't see how someone could have summoned you by accident," muses Leekath.

"Maybe it wasn't an accident," he shrugs. "Seemed like the same general tone of 'didn't expect this to happen, sorry anyway', though."

"Huh." She looks at the piece of paper. "It is very sure that you made this."

"I totally didn't make that," he says. "Unless I have been doing some very weird sleepwalking."

"They're never wrong."

He shrugs. "Okay, so what about it if I did? I mean, I didn't, but you seem pretty well convinced otherwise..."

"I wanted to know why."

"Can't help you there," he says with a shrug. "Other than 'magic's nice', which anybody from my world could've told you. It's weird, but it's a nice weird."

"Oh well," she sighs. She turns to go.

"Sometimes it talks to people," he adds. "I mean, not that often, but it already gave you something with words on it. Might do it again, if you ask."

"Okay. Thanks."

He smiles.

Leekath waves and off she goes.

It occurs to him that he didn't get her name, but - well, whatever. Back to the blanket. The blanket is his friend. Its poofiness is without mystery.

A while later, Korulen knocks.

"Hi!" he says when he opens the door. "You are the summony girl."

"...Did someone already give you a translation spell?" asks Korulen. "Mom told me I'd have to."

"This vampire girl came and tried to talk to me, but I couldn't understand her, so she went away and came back and cast a translation spell and then she told me I'd made her a little paper thing, which I didn't," he says. "And she wanted to know why and I said I didn't know 'cause I didn't do it and then she went away."

"...That's very strange. Anyhow. I'm a little later than I thought I was going to be because the evening edition of the paper was unexpectedly interesting but we can go shopping now."

"Why, what happened?"

"Bunch of things. People all over the world are claiming things have happened that have no explanation. Lights healing themselves, shrens being cured en masse, people being able to change sex without spells."

"...I totally brought my world's magic with me," he says. "Sorry. But not actually sorry because my world's magic is pretty great. What's a shren?"

"It's - well, it was - like a dragon except unable to fly."

"That sounds like it kinda sucks," he says. "'Was' because... they're all cured now?"

"Yeah, all of 'em. It's especially good for the babies, because if they didn't fly it hurt them, but they can't learn to shapeshift until they're twenty."

"No wonder somebody was wishing to fix it."

"Yeah, I guess that's how. How does the magic work exactly?"

"You wish or pray for something, and maybe you get it. Or maybe you don't. Or maybe you get it and a half a ton of jelly beans as a bonus. People have tried to figure out why some prayers are answered and some aren't, but so far all we know is that prayers mostly get answered for a few hours at a time and then nothing for the rest of the day. But sometimes there's stray ones. Really obvious stray ones, too, half-ton-of-jellybeans obvious, not just 'I wished I'd win this race and then I did'. Oh, and it matters who you're praying to. Probably. Sort of. Nobody's sure how. Praying to 'whatever does the magic' definitely works as much as anything ever does, though, so it's not that important to figure out the details."

"That's weird."

"You think?" he says, grinning.

"Yeah. So - entrance hall! - what do you need?" The lift trundles towards the entrance hall.

"...Things? I dunno. What do people usually bring to their dorm rooms that isn't already there?"

"Sheets and toiletries and books and stuff."

"Sheets do sound useful," he concedes. "Sheets and toiletries. And maybe some stuff."

"Okay. Oh, and clothes, I guess."

"Clothes! Clothes totally qualify as stuff."

"Yeah. Okay, I know places to get the basics, at least."

"...Oh, and shoes," he adds, looking down at his bare feet. "Shoes would be nice."

"...Oh, yikes, I didn't even notice. I dooooon't think I can carry you into town shifting or no shifting. I could maybe try to find a pair to borrow that would fit you long enough to get into town?"

He shrugs. "It's not that big a deal. If you know somebody you think would lend me shoes, though, then sure."

Korulen squints at his feet. "I mean, the roads are generally pretty clear, but it's kind of a long walk. I don't usually pay that much attention to how big people's feet are... I guess I can try Min, and Lutan's boyfriend, and Kaylo, and after that I'm kinda out of ideas, my dad definitely has bigger feet than you and I think Daanten has smaller."

"Okay," he says cheerfully.

...Teah giggles. "How many miraculous surprises have there been?"

"I don't know. There are the big sweeping ones, those I doubt the reporters missed any, but people are reporting little things too and some people could have easily kept their mouths shut about extras."

"What kinds of little things? Because I'm pretty sure this is my world's magic doing its thing, and I could tell you what sounds like its style."

"Kinda her fault," he says, indicating Korulen with a gesture. "Not sure about the 'how I got here' part, I was asleep for the getting here and half-asleep for the explanation, but from what I've been hearing all the sudden weird magic stuff sounds like it'd fit right in back home. Basically: if you wish or pray for something, sometimes you get it, but nobody's sure exactly why you do or don't, except that there's periods of time when it works and then it doesn't and then it does again, usually pieces of a day. And you don't always get exactly what you were asking for, but you usually get something that more or less covers it, or at least helps, sometimes with weird extras but they're nice weird extras or at worst inconveniently silly. A lot of the time there's candy. There's some old stories that say if you ask for something really nasty you could end up with donkey ears or food screaming every time you eat it or something, but I haven't heard of that actually happening to anybody for sure in the last, like, fifty years."

"I mean, people have tried studying it, but it's kind of hard. I guess somebody somewhere's probably done some statistics, but I guess they didn't figure out anything interesting, 'cause it would've been all over the news for sure. Uh, I remember somebody tried to figure out what languages it could speak, and they got lucky, and the answer was 'all of them' as far as anybody could tell. But I only read like two sentences about it somewhere, it didn't say how they checked."

"This is going to completely confound every result ever about all other forms of magic. It seems useful, but awfully contrary to the project of figuring out how things work under it."

Teah shrugs. "Pray for answers?"

"So what's the point of the enterprise, then?"

"Systematic bottom-up understanding. Exploration, discovery, not just asking a capricious wad of foreign magic for the answer key from the back of the book."

"Oh well," he says serenely.

"Oh well," snorts Kaylo. "What's your shoe si- oh, you don't know local units probably - well, here, try these." He digs up a pair and hands them over.

He tries the shoes. The shoes fit! Not perfectly, but well enough. "Thanks! Sorry about your science!"

"I'm not gonna steal your shoes, dude."

Teah is content to be ushered.

"Entrance hall," Korulen tells it again. Here is the entrance hall! There is the exit! Thataway is city limits of Paraasilan!

Korulen finds a store that has boys' clothes and gives him a general sketch of what combinations of things make sense in local garb.

Korulen buys him the things. She finds a place with household-y things. Sheets, shampoo, etcetera.

He picks out more things! Sheets that fit his bed and are optimally cozy for their price; miscellaneous items of hygiene and personal grooming.

And here is a shoe store.

He gets a pair of shoes that fit him and go with his clothes. He seems very charmed by the selection, but in the end opts for minimal fanciness.

"Anything else?" Korulen asks.

"Nah, I think that's it. Thanks."

"You're welcome." She leads him back to the road that extends in the direction of the school.

He seems very cheerful for somebody stuck in a strange world. Maybe it's the shoes. He is fond of his new shoes.

Regardless, Korulen says, "It's only going to be a few months before I can safely try to get a familiar, and that will probably let me reverse your summon so you can go home."

He shrugs. "Okay. No rush."

"There isn't anything you want to get back to?" she asks. "Or anyone you want to contact? Because somebody more competent than me could summon anybody who wanted to visit you here."

"Nah," he says. "I'm kinda short on close friends at the moment, and I wasn't doing anything that interesting with my life."

"Okay. So... I guess it could've been worse."

"Bet it could, yeah."

Korulen's fresh out of conversation starters. Silent walk back to the school?

Silent walk back to the school, apparently!

"You're in Mernan Hall," Korulen adds, when she's escorted him as far as the lift.

"Okay. Thanks for all the stuff."

"You're welcome," she says.

And back to his room he goes, to put the cozy sheets on the bed! (Korulen has taken charge of Kaylo's shoes and can presumably be trusted to return them.)

It is a bit later when there is a voice in his mind, Keo's to be exact: <How would you be disposed to spell your name, Teah?>

<...I dunno,> he says. <I kind of just made it up. 'T e a h', I guess? Or - why?>

<Well, most names mean something in Draconic, but yours appeared as a Draconic character as a sort of signature on a piece of paper purporting to explain the miracles.>

<...That... isn't actually the only time that's happened? Some girl came and asked me if I'd sent her this note, and she said it said 'Teah' on it in Draconic. But I didn't actually send her the note. So I have no idea what that's all about. I mean, magic, I guess. But not more specifically than that.>

<You didn't - hear it anywhere, or anything, it just popped into your head?>

<Yeah. Well, as far as I know. Or... I think maybe I dreamed about it or something? I'm not sure. I don't tend to remember my dreams that well.>

<Is it just a sound to you?>

<As opposed to what? I dunno. It sort of... feels meaningful even if I don't know the meaning?>

<It means something in Draconic as written down. If you were just picking a sound it's probably a coincidence, though.>

Well, where are her parents?

They are sitting on their porch in northern Embreyae with iced tea. There is no immediate evidence of newspapers. Maybe they just haven't heard the news.

He checks their recent history. No - there, they've heard. How'd they take it? He watches.

They exchanged a look. They said nothing. Eventually she suggested that they could go play netball the following afternoon if their usual opponents are free then.

Well, now he's just curious - how did the iron girl get to the shren house in the first place? What were her parents like then?

They took one look at the clutch of eggs, and the father said, "I'll find the address of a house," and the mother said, "I'll put the good eggs somewhere else", and then they did that, and soon after there was a shren egg in the mail, neatly dated with a sum of money enclosed, and attached to a letter insisting in no uncertain terms that they never wanted to be contacted about the egg, that if the shrens bothered them about it they would warn all their friends that they'd be better off if they just trod on the striped ones.

Tavan authorities are likely to let the mother in this particular case off with a warning and then tell the boy's teachers to keep an eye on him. They're averse to breaking up families at the drop of a hat.

Sauce fixed in a puff of rainbow sparkles first, then back to the girl in Ryganaav - what's the story with her odious potential husband?

He's older than her, his current wife seems - sad, and his kids do too, and she doesn't like him.

He investigates why the wife and kids are sad, and considers potential interventions.

The wife and kids are sad because the guy is pretty terrible to them, that is pretty much it.

The girl contemplates this choice - and stays put, shivering. But she'll take the luck.

All right. Prayer granted. Has Keo figured out his body is alive yet? How about the air mage and the rescued sisters, how are they doing? He did imply he'd keep an eye on them.

Well, he can't do much about Keo until she tries praying to him again. In the meantime, he's sure there are more prayers to grant. There always are. Maybe some more people will have bad ideas he can gently warn them off of so the Empress of Linnip doesn't have to be the only one.

A girl in Reverni wants her papa and her siblings back - a man in Nirlan wants his husband to just hold still and stop fighting him - a boy in a trained-light academy in Ekanedae wants to pass his exam - a woman in Esmaar wants to teach math at U. Daasen - a girl in Ertydo wants just fiiiiive more degrees of sleep - a woman in Egeria wants to know why she's so confused and so alone and in this hospital without her other half - a man in Gibryel wants mosquitoes to go extinct - a teenager in Rannde wishes he were smarter - a sorcerer in Pra Verian has had an accident with a large object in motion and now his sister is on the floor bleeding and he doesn't want their parents to find out it was him -

About ten years previously she was the subject of a vicious magical attack, which has rendered her husband unable to find her though he'd normally be able to do it no matter how far away her "friend" spirited her on opportunistically faking her death.

Yep, there she is, sitting in the graveyard where her sister is buried.

All right. One dead parent, three dead siblings. He can spare the time. Papa first - one sister, two brothers - it takes him a couple of degrees to get them all lined up, and then he draws miracle-swirls across the ground in rising rainbowed mist and half a tick later unwraps the mist from around four resurrected people with solid health-blessings to keep them going a little longer this time. Who are all probably going to want more people resurrected, but they can pray for them when they think of it; he's busy. (How are Samia and her dragon doing?)

They haven't let up; they keep encouraging each other when one of them is inclined to give up.

The woman in Baveria gets the choice of whether or not to cease being pregnant. The boy in Mekand can have wings, Snitchlike in their spare design and ability to lift a weight far greater than their surface area should allow, able to fold up neatly and comfortably to fit beneath clothing. The pixie can have the reservoir's attention. The rain in Rannde can be gently shooed.

The girl in Larotia will get to her music lesson on time, courtesy of a rainbow-sparkling teleportation. The man's knitting fixes itself, glimmering with coloured lights. The lady in Mekand receives, after he spends a moment getting to know local fashion and her taste, the dress of her dreams. The old woman receives a solid health blessing and particular attention to rejuvenating her voice. The zoologist can have a little mechanical butterfly, closely resembling the species in question, that 'knows' where nearby members are and will happily lead her to them. The jellyfish are called away on urgent business. The man in Imilaat receives the choice of one rainbow-sparkling teleportation to whatever destination he likes.

That one garnet dragon who loaned him shoes wants - contradictorily enough - all the incomprehensible new magic to slow the hell down, and - his parents back.

"No, I did not hear that," says Kaylo to thin air. "Can I get a list of what you've been doing - and what prompts it - and any 'prayers' you heard and didn't do anything about and what you know about why - see if there's a pattern?"

Kaylo starts reading. When he gets a couple dozen items down he says, "Why is it brain stuff is so hard?"

"Complicated, finicky - most other stuff I can fudge some details, brain stuff is all details. Resurrection's actually some of the easiest brain stuff around, because it's just a copy job, but it still takes ages compared to almost anything else."

Reading, reading, "But you figured out dementia as an entire category before? How long did it take?"

"About a month from the first prayer - some planning and figuring and looking at how stuff worked, some waiting for somebody else to make the prayer once I had it. I got lucky with it; it was easier than it could've been."

"So you might have something like that rolled out for depression at some point in the medium-term future?"

"Depression's harder. I've been hacking at it for longer and I'm almost nowhere on it. Cuddly toys are the best I can do."

"I know there's potions some people seem to get better on, so you could look in on that... anyway. What's the complete procedure from when somebody - let's take a simple one, gets a headache - to when you move on from them?"

"Yeah, just update it whenever it's convenient. Why are you rendering it as 'prayers'? What does a person have to be doing to get your attention?"

"Okay. There have to be millions of people doing things that fit that definition at any given time; what elevated these ones to consideration? Or am I wrong and Elcenians don't do this that often for whatever reason - in which case how do you sift through them at home where it's common knowledge?"

"It's kind of noisy. I can filter them a little - like when I got here, that first item covers like a dozen different prayers for candy, I was looking for easy familiar stuff. When I got the wolfrider and the shren I was looking for high emotional weight. When I'm not filtering I just pick at random-ish, whatever catches my interest in the moment - I tend to try to jump around geographically instead of staying clustered in one place, and when things come up that have really high emotional weight or involve somebody I've helped before, they catch my eye a little easier. That's part of what I mean when I talk about keeping an eye on somebody - that I'll recognize their prayers."

"Are there other things you could filter for if you wanted?"

"Yeah. It's kind of like... I can get a sense of what a prayer is going to be like at a 'glance', without going into details, and it's like somebody spilled a bunch of marbles on the floor and I can look for red ones or yellow ones or green ones or spotted ones or stripey ones or purple ones with white swirls. Most of the kinds of common elements a prayer can have, like kind and strength of feeling or like asking for particular types of thing - people stuff, luck stuff, concrete stuff, health stuff, abilities they don't have or don't have enough of - I can recognize as categories and filter for if I want. But sometimes I just grab a red marble and look at it without checking from a distance what kind of spots it has. That's how some things end up getting listed as skipped - I looked and found out it was something I couldn't do."

"But it does have to be something about the prayer itself, there's no - if a hundred people came to me and told me what they were going to pray for and I sorted them into two lists at random could you aim for the one list or the other?"

"Yeah, no, not a chance. But if you sorted them by something and told me what it was, and it was a meaning thing and not 'took more or less than 40 letters to write down in Leraal', I could probably aim for them pretty well. Better if it was something I was familiar with. Maybe not to the point of getting the one whole list before the other whole list, but categories are just squishy like that sometimes."

"What if I was sorting by whether I personally approved of it or something, what would that count as?"

"So you would be making an independent evaluation of what I'd be likely to approve of, not referring to my actual approval from my head or my list or whatever. How many prayers can you hold onto at once?"

"One at a time."

"Okay. Define 'relevant'?"

"I'm not sure there's a definition that isn't circular. Relevant is relevant if I feel like it's relevant at the time. I'm not a hundred percent consistent about it, so the results aren't a hundred percent consistent either. But, say, I don't have to be granting a prayer as long as I'm responding to it - the apple tree of no was still a response, and I can get way bigger than the original scope as long as I'm still basically on topic - like I did with shrens and hearers and dementia."

"Why an apple tree?"

"Her favourite food is applesauce and she's Aleist. When I do a nice no I do a nice no. They're more widely understood back home, weight of history and all, but I figure people here will catch on eventually too."

"But would it have been irrelevant to send, say, the entire city of Peiza a rainstorm with thunder that happened to say 'no' in the pattern of the booms in pulsecode?"

"Nah. I could've if I'd felt like being that flashy and obscure."

"And you had access to memories which could theoretically have included incidental information about Peiza needing rain?"

"Yeah. And I can read the history of the world if I want, find out things like that - and here's what I mean about inconsistent relevance: Peiza did need rain, I just looked it up, and then I gave it some, because it was funny that it did with you saying that and I was still holding onto the prayer for our conversation. That's the kind of weird edge case I couldn't plan for or do on purpose if I tried. You were just making it up, right, you didn't actually know one way or the other?"

"I had no idea," confirms Kaylo, reading the updates to the list.

"Learning anything interesting?"

"Maybe. How long can you hold onto a prayer? What if someone literally prayed for you to be able to do whatever you want?"

"As long as I want, I guess, I haven't tried - and I have to know what I'm doing to grant a prayer. If I had any bright ideas, that would let me try 'em out, but I don't."

"What if somebody prayed for you to be able to hold onto more than one at once?"

"I don't think anybody's ever tried, but it wouldn't make sense for it to work. Same reason as the other thing - I can only do stuff that's relevant to the prayer I'm holding onto, but holding onto a prayer doesn't change how good I am at what it's asking for. You can give it a shot if you want, just to see."

"Maybe. So in general people can't pray for you to be able to alter your own abilities, your status as a prayer-granter doesn't recurse?"

"Yeah. I have stuff I can do, and what prayer I'm holding onto changes which of the stuff I can do right then, but not what stuff. If I can alter my own abilities, it's something I'll have to figure out how to do; just having somebody ask for it won't help with that."

"Can people pray on each others' behalves? Wanting so-and-so to get whatever they want without being specific in the prayer about what that is?"

"Yeah, I guess. I'd just have to figure out what so-and-so wanted, because if they weren't the one praying I wouldn't be 'hearing' it directly."

"But the contents of what they want would fall under the scope of the relevance of the prayer."

"Yeah. And so would, say, asking them what it was."

"The detail work that gives you trouble - like brain stuff - you still can do, but have to do it stepwise. Does altering your own parameters seem like that, where given enough prayers directed at it you could figure out what to tweak to make it come together, or like something else?"

"If you can get Keo something to grab onto she's - good at brain stuff," says Kaylo. "Well, mind stuff, technically. But I'm not sure how she'd interact with you because you're weird. Probably similarly risky to try sending your body back, even if we made plans to resummon you."

"It seems like I came here with no problem, but maybe the mystery coma messed something up, who knows."

"Yeah. There are potions and spells that can wake people, up, too, but likewise, maybe not safe to try."

"Any bright ideas about how to figure out what is safe to try?"

"...I usually avoid them like the plague because they're buggy, but there exist spells to tell the future, and this is actually the kind of thing that they're good at, specific planned action that might do one of two broad classes of things probably based on stable factors as opposed to small perturbations."

"Spells to tell the future, huh? How's that work? What kind of buggy are they?"

"They're kind of terrible in practice most of the time. The ones that work by anything other than random chance are extrapolatory, not prognosticatory. They don't look at the future, they look at - moving parts in the present. Basically what I'd do would be I'd look up one of these spells, and then tell somebody who'd do it on my say-so to go give you a potion at a certain time, and then cast the spell to see what happens at that time, and then if I got a clean result it'd tell me whether to stop them or not. It'd work best if you agreed in advance to do something specific and informative in response to whatever happened. I could give the person with the potion a list of questions to ask your body-self in case he still doesn't remember being you on waking, if that's how it shakes out."

"Like if we agree in advance that unwhat the hell?"

"Huh?"

"You did a thing. I wasn't praying for it, where did the thing come from? ...Also how long does it sit here if I don't juke one way or the other?"

"Sits there as long as you haven't picked something. I'm talking to you, I told you about choices in the list but I didn't go into detail and I figured you might want to know what they're like and that might be something you'd want, so it came under 'talking to you'."

"If I pick 'no' can you re-try or does it stop being relevant then or what? I do not plan to pick no, I'm just - examining it while it's still here."

"Now that we're talking about it I bet I could keep offering it to you all day if for some reason you felt like doing that. Might be a little less relevant to spring it on you out of nowhere again."

"There's degrees of relevance? How does that factor in?"

"There's degrees of relevance, and things are either relevant enough or they aren't, but if they're on the edge sometimes that goes back and forth a little."

"Say more about the going back and forth?"

"Like, if something's really on the edge like that then whether or not I can do it can change from moment to moment, depending on how I'm thinking about it at the time. It usually settles out pretty fast one way or another, but it happens. Mostly when I'm in the middle of doing something and it reminds me of something else through a weird tenuous chain of associations."

"Can I get an example of a tenuous chain of associations?"

"Like - hypothetical example: somebody wants their headache fixed, they're wearing a blue shirt, that reminds me of water, reminds me of the beach, reminds me of that girl who wanted a pretty shell, I go look her up and she needs something but isn't praying for it - I might be able to help her still holding onto the headache prayer, but I probably wouldn't, because it's just too far gone. And I bet it'd flicker like that."

"Can you tell where in a chain like that is the weak link that's making it unstable or untenable?"

"Sort of not exactly. Because what matters is if I think it's relevant or not, and that changes depending how I'm thinking about it - if I look at it and think 'nah, too far', I'm probably not basing that on any one specific connection so much as just a feeling about the whole thing, and if I stop and try to work it out more specifically then how I'm thinking about it changes and whatever weak link I find only counts for the new thinking."

"Hm, inconvenient. What would happen if somebody prayed to be a whatever-you-are?"

"I wouldn't know how to give it to 'em. And I'm not sure I'd want to, depending who it was. They'd better be at minimum as nice as me, for sure."

"I'm making no statements about whether the things I'm asking about are in general wise or not, I'm talking theory," Kaylo says. "Back to the future-telling spell - there are all kinds of probably superstitious ways to go about it to make the results come in clean, but what we'd want to do would basically be everybody involved making up their minds to follow through with the waking potion test, and you in particular making up your mind to react specific ways if you can. Then, if the spell works like it's supposed to instead of falling apart like a badly engineered house of cards, I will see what would happen if you got the potion - specifically I'd see you reacting in some predetermined way, with magic or by talking to my accomplice or whatever - and then we wouldn't have to complete the experiment to know how it'd go. If the results came back clean, which they might not, because these spells are idiotic."

"Define 'idiotic', I'm having trouble finding an example in history. People don't seem to cast them that often."

"That is because they're idiotic," says Kaylo. "It extrapolates the future. The problem is, what I'm likely to do feeds into the future. So if I'm in the wrong frame of mind - it's not even an intentional component like normal spells - when I cast it, then my decisions if I get whatever result will feed into it and I get noise. For the spell to be useful I have to sit on the sidelines enough for it to get a result that doesn't factor me in, but not so far that I can't interrupt if it turns out giving you a potion will be a disaster. And you will too, since I guess you'll be able to both see what results I get and affect the processes that would lead to them."

"Okay. So I have to be - really predictable," he says. "And we have to figure out how to get mortal me to be really predictable even if he doesn't remember who I am? That sounds hard."

"It might work if he'd definitely not do some specific thing that miraculous-you can agree to do. But it might not work for that or any of a hundred other reasons."

"Hmmm... he doesn't speak all the languages I do," he says. "Un-translation-spell him, ask him a really simple question in Draconic or vampire like 'Which way to the bottom of the world', then if he's me he knows to say 'Down', otherwise you're going to get something like 'what the hell?' And that's how you'll know if he either speaks the language or remembers being me well enough to get the answer. And if I'm still out here active, whether he remembers me or doesn't or what, have somebody be praying for a signal and I'll, I dunno, turn the floor purple. Would that work?"

"Translation spells don't work on Draconic, so undoing his spell isn't necessary," says Kaylo. "Okay. I'll need accomplices..."

"Got anybody in mind?"

"Not really, do you?"

"There's that vampire girl, I guess..."

"Somebody who is both here and likely to be on board with the project?"

"She goes to this school. I don't know if she'd want to help, but we could ask."

"Okay. What's her room number? Or do you want to ask her yourself?"

Leekath listens to the note. "What do you want me to do?" she asks.

"Be going to feed you the potion; if the results are good she can follow through, but then so can I - can you manufacture one if I ask or do I have to go to a witch's and buy one? - and memorize a phonetic sentence in Draconic and ask you if you wake up."

"Okay. Give it to her, tell her to wait, I'll go look up what there is in the way of foretelling spells and pick the least stupid one; you can presumably tell her how to ask about the bottom of the world in Draconic and she can get on learning to pronounce it."