He seems to be outside. It's warm and the wind blows against him. The air, and his body under him, feels... Different. It's hard to quantify exactly. There's a strange, otherworldly smell in the air. Some kind of unfamiliar plant, maybe? There's also the smell of grass and dirt. No sounds except the rustling of grass and the non-linguistic tweeting of some bird.

That's nice.

He stays right where he is. Whatever is happening if it isn't going to free him he doesn't care.

Well, soon he hears someone walking around and picking fruit and watering plants. After a while it stops and then there are some scraping sounds which also eventually stop.

And then he's poked with a stick. "What're you doing on my island, gix?"

He opens his eyes and looks at the person poking him.

"I'm trespassing."

It's a 40-something human man with a long beard and simple but well-made clothes. "Damn right you are. Why?"

He doesn't have to say anything at all. So he doesn't.

"Kid, you're far from home. You're on my island. I don't like visitors. So I'd suggest acting a little friendlier."

...The connotations of that word he suddenly knows are weird, but it's convenient how he knows what they all are.

"I could be friendlier but I don't feel like it."

For some reason this makes him look amused.

"Fine. You landed here somehow, you don't feel like explaining yourself. Fair enough. But I ain't feeding you or letting you inside the house or nothin' unless you do some work, you got that?"

"I don't want your food, I'm starving myself to death."

".....Why?"

"Because I object to slavery and I refuse to make myself useful."

"Oh, you're from one of them slavery places. My sympathies. Well, I don't own you and whoever did ain't here."

"There's places without it? I guess I could maybe do something for you if you're offering food. What did you have in mind?"

"Yep. And my home's one. Food, place to sleep out of the open air, coin for passage next time a ship shows. Farm chores. And other chores. You ever done farm work?"

"No but I could maybe learn. What needs to be done on a farm?"

"Picking fruit. Watering. Feedin' the pigs... Maybe leave that one to me, you look like they could knock ya over by breathin' hard. Carryin' things, I suppose. Weeding. Any of that sound doable, city girl?"

"I think I can pick fruit. You'd have to show me how much water things need and which things are weeds and which aren't."

"Of course. You work until dinnertime and I'll feed you and house you for the night. If you work as long as I do tomorrow you'll earn food and housing and coin, too. C'mon, let's get you up." He holds out a hand.

Valanda takes his hand and stands. If it wasn't obvious when he was curled in on himself, it's obvious now that he has nothing but his bracelets. Convenient places to hide things are for people who aren't him.

"What do you want me to do first?"

"Let's get you a basket and pick berries. An' something to wear. Follow me. Name's Kar, what's yours?"

There's a crude little house with a couple of outbuildings, which Kar walks towards. He tosses a crude baggy tunic-thing at Valanda.

.....This island appears to be an island in the sky. There are clouds and open air all around.

Kar must be a force mage or have one or several in his employ.

"I'm Valanda." He follows Kar buildingsward.

Kar gets a basket out of a shed, sorting through piles of wooden tools manually. "Here we are. Basket. Fill it up with those berry bushes and then come find me... Red ones are ripe. Sorry if I'm bein' gruff. Don't talk to people much."

"Thanks!"

He heads for the bush and tries berry-picking. It doesn't sound too hard.

It's not too hard to pick these weird berries! Well, he squishes a few by accident, and he has to press aside leaves and thin branches to get to some of them, but other than that, it's mostly just tedious. The kind of task you'd give to a child.

Kar goes over to an adjacent plot containing... Some plant stuck into the ground, and shows him. "These ones are onions. Anything else is a weed. For when you get to weedin'."

And then he wanders off somewhere. Probably to that thing that looks like an animal pen.

He doesn't mind that it's tedious. If it turns out the pay is a lie he'll stop working, but as long as Kar keeps up his end of the deal this is just fine.

He's slow at it, careful not to squish any more or leave any unpicked. When he's done he takes the basket and looks for Kar to hand it over to him.

Kar is at a little workbench near a pig pen containing a bunch of pigs, doing some kind of wood carving. He investigates the berries.

"At least you're not complainin' about honest work like most city folk. Though berry-picking's light work. Let's put these inside and you keep pickin'. I'm gonna make 'em into preserves since I have the help. Might as well have a big batch."

The inside of the house is pretty crude. Three rooms, simple wooden frames, not much furniture. He has Valanda dump the berries into a large bin.

As they go outside, he asks, "Mind telling me your story? How you got here, at any rate? Would've thought I'd have noticed stowaways sooner."

"I'm not sure. I wasn't... paying close attention to things, then I got hit in the head, I think by accident, and then I was here. I didn't mean to come here."

He nods sympathetically. Hit on the head, don't know where you are?

"Well. Hopefully you'll recover. Meanwhile, there's work."

"There's work. And pay. I'm sorry I was rude to you earlier, I thought either you'd stolen me or you were going to send me back."

"And I thought you were sneaking around my island for some reason. Sorry I poked you with a stick. I'll host you 'till a ship comes and pay you a bit besides, aye."

"Thank you. I'll try to make it worth your while."

He nods. "I don't know how you could've ended up here without clear memories... But I dunno how to fix that, so... Back to berry-picking with you for now, then. I think I'll help too. Keep an eye on ya, no offense."

"Of course. I wouldn't expect any different."

They pick berries together for... A while. Kar seems perfectly happy to be amicably silent if Valanda has nothing to say.

Good. This is the best day Valanda's ever had.

Eventually Kar invites him into the little house.

"You can be done for the day if you like. We can weed and water tomorrow. But I need to preserve these smart quick or they'll rot. If you help me make preserves of all these after dinner I'll give you half a dozen jars of it, or two copper pieces. Your choice."

"I don't know how much a copper piece is worth or how to make preserves but I can try."

"Copper piece is worth a copper piece." He shrugs. "A ship'll carry you somewhere else for a few of 'em. I can tell you what to do to make it."

"I'll do my best! What's dinner?"

"Dinner will be berries, roasty onions, and a little salted pork, unless you've got some objection."

"That sounds great."

Wow this language has a lot of words for cooking food. Interesting. Maybe it's because people live by themselves and don't have death mages around to have sterilize things.

He cooks with some kind of glass contraption that burns with a clear blueish flame.

Dinner is served, hot and fresh roasted onions, salted pork, some carrots too because why not, and berries.

He sets on dinner like someone starving.

Since he is. Or was.

It's a fairly big portion. Kar made farmers' portions, and farming is hard work. "Woah, easy there, don't choke on it or burn yourself, eh? You should slow down. Have some water too."

He pauses and has some water.

He finishes a little more slowly.

"You must've been lost for a while. Now that I look at you, you're skin and bones."

"I was skin and bones before. Like I said, I didn't want to let them enjoy their property. They didn't want to let me die but it was inconvenient and expensive for them to force-feed me."

He shakes his head. "Damn onion-hearted slavers. Pig food. Villains. It's one of the worst things a man can do to another. And the ones who try to excuse it are even more scummier than the ones who admit they're cruel and greedy. Training and protection, my ass..."

He hears "villains" and his world turns upside-down. Such wonderful language magic. He would never have guessed that meaning learning this language the hard way. Never.

He wipes tears away so they don't get in what's left of his onions. "I didn't ever expect to hear anyone say that. Thank you."

...Kar reaches over the table and pats him on the shoulder gently.

"Folk need a kindness once in a while. You're free. Not quite as free here as in some big town, it's my place, but free."

"Thank you." He'd be even freer if he could figure out how to convince Kar to get his bracelets off but they don't let him offer anyone any payment for taking them off... he considers the implications of some of the words in this language. "I don't suppose you could help me get these off? They're what they make slaves wear and I can't unfasten them on my own."

"Oh, 'course. I thought they were jewelry of some kind. Sentimental or somethin'... These real gold?"

He reaches for the bracelet and fiddles with the mechanism for a bit, unfamiliar with it. He figures it out soon and does both of them.

"They're a gold alloy, they're not mostly gold." And then his hands are free and he can say whatever he wants. "You can have them if you want. I don't advise trying them on, though, I'd melt them down for scrap if I were keeping them."

"I mean, gold's gold. What's wrong with 'em? They look pretty enough."

Shiver. "They're..." Why doesn't this language have a word for command magic? "They're what they make slaves wear. And you can't get them off on your own."

"Oh, my. Some kind of artifact, eh... Can't trust those things... Bracelets you can't take off aren't worth more than a pound or two of close-enough-to-gold. And I've got a hammer. You want to do the honors of smashin' em up?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'll let ya. After we finish eatin'. Not proper to interrupt meals."

He sets the bracelets carefully down and placidly picks up a handful of berries and resumes eating.

Valanda finishes eating more slowly now that he's less desperately hungry. "You're good at cooking, you know that? This is really good."

"Cookin's not that hard if you know what you're doing. The real trick is I grew all of it m'self." He smiles.

"Farming's important work!" What kind of magic do you have for it, he wants to ask, almost asks. The translation spell gives him a word, but the connotations make him hesitate. Magic is something they've forgotten how to use here, somehow, and they don't have random accidents with children so... everyone's magic is bound somehow? That's a horrifying thought. It makes sense, though, Kar was excited about real gold earlier, if they don't have sun magic anymore...

Valanda doesn't let his smile falter, though. "You were impressed I had gold in my bracelets earlier, are you short of metals here?"

"Metal's rare." He's looking at Valanda strangely now.

A sizeable chunk from the edge of Valanda's wooden plate is suddenly a much smaller chunk of pure titanium. He offers it to Kar. "I'm very valuable, see?"

He stops chewing. Swallows.

"Nope. You're not valuable, 'cause you ain't property. That's valuable. Is it silver?"

"It's titanium. It's strong, good for buildings. I'd use it a little like iron. You can have it. A gift for a gift, since you saved me."

"Nobody uses metal for buildings... I'll probably sell it, to be clear to ya. And I guess you don't want my copper pieces anymore. And, ah, you did wreck my plate for it. I can make a new plate. You may as well use up the rest of that one. Half a plate is junk."

And now instead of any amount of plate he has titanium. It weighs about the same as the plate but it's a lot smaller. "You go ahead and take this too, I can always make more metal if I need some. I won't mention what I can do while you're trying to sell it. Are your copper pieces just worth the copper they're made of?"

"Appreciate the silence. And yep. So I suppose you needn't do any more work for your food and board, since copper will do." He shakes his head. "Where'd you get that trick?"

"People... where I was born," he isn't going to call it home, "can do that kind of thing sometimes. Or other things, for instance..." oh no, local words for father and mother have the wrong connotations, "some people I knew, instead of making wood into titanium, could lift things with their mind or make sugar from thin air. There's a way to make people not able to do that, like if you hadn't gotten those bracelets off me I wouldn't've been able to make metal for you, only for my... owner. I think maybe someone somehow did that to everyone here. That would explain why you don't know how to do these things anymore."

"They say ancestors could do miraculous things, before the Gate closed. I wouldn't know any more than folk tales though."

"That makes sense. What's the gate? Can I see it?"

"Dunno. I'm just a lone farmer, not some city-smart librarian or somethin'. I just know that ancestors came here from another world through the gate, and then it closed, and sometimes people find artifacts that still work out in the stormlands. Sorry. You're from another world, then?"

"I think so. If there were regular flights to a huge private flying island I think I'd have heard about it. Maybe not, but it seems like the kind of thing that would be better-known."

"The whole world's flying islands. I don't have an airship but if I raise my flag sometimes one will stop by. Flag means 'I got food to sell ya'. More or less."

"I'm definitely not from this world. Why can't you live on the surface?"

"Too hot. Maybe poison air too. Mm. Anything else you can remember about how you got here? Could be important."

"Something hit me in the head. I thought it was an illusion or a hallucination until it touched me, it looked like tangled light. I didn't speak this language until I found myself here and that's the weirdest part of this because I can't even guess how anyone could do that. It probably all sounds equally fantastical to you but funny light shows are normal and I can guess what kind of abilities you might have to have to make something suddenly appear in another place. Teaching someone a new language instantly is... even I thought it was impossible."

"...You're right. It all sounds equally fantastical. And I'm just a farmer on a rock. Not exactly the best guy to figure this stuff out."

"Well, now you're a farmer on a rock with some titanium and a funny story. Let me know if you need anything else changed into something else while I'm here."

"Could use metal tools. If you can do metal in particular shapes."

"Sort of but you'd be a lot better off getting a real smith to make things. I can try if you have solid chunks of wood big enough but they have to be a lot bigger than the tools you want to end up with..."

"I wear a lotta hats out here on my own, but 'smith' ain't one of 'em. If you can make a few nice blades that I can sharpen from some big timbers, I'll be happy. City folk are gonna love you for that, though. I think you're going to live like a king if you don't fuck it up somehow. Well, compared to the rest of us, dunno what kind of ancestral conveniences you're used to having."

"I can try! Do you have wood on hand that you want me to work on now?"

"I have timbers. Ship folk buy 'em. Before that, you still want to smash up these nasty bracelets, yeah? Let's go get my hammer."

He throws his - now empty - plate into a corner and puts the hunk of titanium away more carefully. He gets up holding the bracelets and heads outside.

Valanda follows.

And here's a big hammer, a sledge-hammer weighing at least fifteen pounds, and an open spot of ground with the hated bracelets sitting on it. "If it's too heavy for ya to get a good solid swing, maybe you can drop it?"

Valanda doesn't regret starving himself and refusing to do anything, it was the best choice he could make at the time.

But if he'd known smashing the slave bracelets was on the table he wouldn't've let himself get this weak.

He lifts the hammer as high as he can and drops it on them.

The hammer falls on one of the bracelets, misses the other one. The bracelet is dented. The already-beaten up hammer doesn't seem to have noticed the violent impact at all.

He shouts at the bracelets in Ilan, lifts the hammer again, drops it again.

He misses.

Kar doesn't stop him. He knows catharsis when he sees it.

Again. And again if that's not enough.

Eventually the bracelets are mangled, flattened metal that couldn't possibly be worn!

Valanda keeps going till then on sheer willpower but afterward he sinks to his knees panting. He stares at the metal that used to be bracelets, silent.

Kar picks up the mangled pieces and little flecks, investigating them curiously.

"Yep. Yer free, kid."

"If you and your island are representative I think I like Cloudbank a lot."

"Heh. Thanks. Well, some islands are good. Some bad. Same with ship captains. There's pirates and slavers around. Rare, but they exist. And we don't have fancy metal magic."

"You do now! Until whatever's keeping you from doing magic notices me."

"Something keeping us from doing magic doesn't sound any more wrong than all the other crazy ancestor stories, anyway..."

He pockets mangled former-bracelets and picks up the hammer, swinging it onto his shoulder with one arm.

"I'll fetch up some timbers for you to metallize. And after this, feel free to lounge about eatin' my food until a ship sees the flag I raised and comes to say hi. Worth it for metal."

Timbers are stacked up in a corner of that shed. Rough cut. He would be pleased at Valanda's best attempt at a few knives, curved blade like so for harvesting, trowel, rake, shovel head, and so on. He draws the shapes in the dirt.

"If you can't do it you can't do it, of course. Or if you don't wanna." He shrugs.

He tries. One is unreasonably small. One is stuck in the wood by the holes in the tang and might have other problems that aren't visible. One is crooked. One is too thick. He can't do much to control which phase the metal ends up in. ...The rake is probably a functional rake, but not a very good one.

But it's all titanium and even as scrap it's worth a lot.

Well, it's still all metal.

"Nobody can do everythin'. Thanks for trying, that's probably enough attempts, though."

"Any time. So where do I sleep, is there a room I can borrow?"

"Was gonna give ya the bed and sleep on the hay in the shed. Or other way around if you didn't work that much. Sound alright?"

"I'll take the hay, all the times I've been on beds before are bad memories."

A naked girl slave, who hates beds. Well then. Kar's not going to bring it up, though.

"If you say so. Night's not for another few hours, though. I'm gonna put these away and go make preserves, you can do whatever. Just... Careful of the edge. And the pigs. And no fire."

"I'll be careful of the edge and the pigs and not set any fires."

He nods. "Later, then."

He gathers up the attempts at tools and goes inside his little house and starts doing various things to berries.

Valanda vainly wishes he were a knowledge mage. Instead he lies down and watches the sky. The part of the sky that's above him.

There are clouds! There are a variety of birds and floating critters and plants above and around! There are other islands in the distance.

Any of the other islands close enough for him to see what's on them?

Not in very much detail. He can tell a large, lumpy one over there has a small forest on top (and leaning perilously over the side). There's some kind of big tentacled creature resting on that one over there. That one is just bare, blackened rock with a few... Orange things... On it?

He watches the creatures, trying to figure out if they're people, if they're dangerous, if they mind being watched...

None of the creatures do anything particularly people-like. They fly around, they make noise, they eat things (sometimes other critters). The two-foot-long ones with teeth and clawed tentacles that swarmed a diamond-shaped gliding thing and ate it are probably dangerous!

None of them seem to notice they're being watched. Though, after it finishes eating, the one resting on an island clings close to it and turns brownish-green. He probably wouldn't be able to spot it if he didn't know already.

It's nice to watch it all.

He watches the sky until he's ready to go hit the hay.

Kar offers him a taste of preserves - something like strawberry jam, made with some kind of slightly different tangy but very sweet fruit instead - on a piece of hard bread just before nightfall.

The night is uneventful.

It's such a good uneventful night. On such a good island. With such a good host.

It's raining in the morning. And kind of windy. Kar stays inside, wood carving. Seems to be making handles, to try and make tools out of of the various metal bits he has now.

He's not sure what to do with himself. He sits and waits in case Kar comes to ask him for something.

A hermit's life on an island is pretty boring, isn't it?

The rain stops after a couple of hours.

He goes out and looks around. Are the same creatures out? Are the islands the same distance away?

The islands have all moved around! There's a new one and some are missing. That island waaaay over there has a dozen buildings on it, barely distinguishable as squarish shapes in a line against the sky.

The burnt island with the orange things is closer. Now he can see that they are also red, and spiky, and frightening to all the other critters.

Kar's flag flaps in the wind.

He likes the terrifying orange things!

He takes a look at the flag. Maybe he can make some guesses about the people here from what Kar expects will get their attention.

The terrifying orange things do not evince an opinion on Valanda.

The flag is brown and has a crude picture of a pig on it. There's a second one right under it that has a depiction of berries.

That's better than if they thought he was tasty!

With the light-on-dark design that flag could stand out to most species, so there's no telling what sorts of people he'll meet here.

Kar emerges from his house a while later with lunch. The titanium has already paid for it.

And then he starts doing various farm work.

Food! And it doesn't taste like giving up any chance of freedom!

Kar doesn't seem inclined to be particularly social today. Though Valanda could probably learn something by watching him, or maybe ask questions.

He's not going to pay Kar back by bothering him. Kar is out here to avoid people so Valanda makes himself avoidable.

That island over there has windows on it. And some kind of glass structure on the roof. And is heading for Kar's island.

In that case he'll bother Kar after all.

"Hey, I think I see someone coming! Over there!"

"Good! That was fast! Sometimes it takes a few days."

He jogs out to the edge of the island and looks at the ship. He waves, and points to the flag pole before walking over to it. The ship continues to approach. The ship looks very well made. Clean and sturdy. All the various things sticking out of it probably have some useful purpose. That one seems to control how it turns, for example. It turns - there are two large things with spinning blades on a rotating shaft sticking out of them, jutting out of the side of the ship. Now that it's closer he can tell they're making a lot of noise. There is a figure in the room with lots of windows sticking out slightly at the front of it, but it's not clearly visible.

The ship comes to nearly a stop over Kar's flag pole and drops ropes out the side with a thunk. Kar pulls the visiting ship down some, ties one rope to the flag pole and the other to a sturdy-looking tree a ways away. The engines go silent and the propellers stop spinning. A voice shouts down from up above, "I'll come down in a minute! Buying any kind of food!"

"Thank you for everything, I'm glad I got to meet you," Valanda tells Kar.

"Well, you're not gone yet. They might not want a passenger. But good luck out there, if they'll carry ya."

"Thank you." He watches the ship and the indistinct figure inside.

After a minute or two the dashingly-dressed man with a captain's hat slides down one of the ropes and lands adroitly, carrying a small book and a courier bag at his side.

"Good afternoon, hard-working farmers. Thank you for having me. I have a wide variety of goods, conveniences, and luxuries to exchange for your meat and fruit."

"Glass jars," Asks Kar. "Tea. Fancy fabrics. Cookwares. Paint. Rope."

"In a variety of shapes and sizes, two dozen varieties, everything from nylon to silk to gasbag skin, whole crates full, in red yellow blue black white and dark green. Five hundred foot rolls in two different girths."

"Nice. You in the market for metal as well as food? Had a lucky find. Titanium."

"Lucky find indeed! I'll trade titanium as if it's four times as valuable as copper, by weight."

"Fair enough." They start haggling.

He might be able to get passage and can probably stay here and wait for the next ship if he can't, but it doesn't hurt to have a backup plan. He looks for all the visible entrances and wonders how he'd stow away if he had to.

There's a closed door in the glass house on the top of the ship. There seem to be plants up there. There are two open doors on the left side, out of which are hanging the ropes that attach the ship to the island. The underside of the ship looks like it has a few cargo-doors-or-something, there are sections that are separated from the rest with thin lines. There are slatted vents here and there but there's no way he'd fit in one. It looks like the two bulges with the propellers sticking out can open to the outside, but it's not obvious how. There are lines of handholds and ladders and little bits sticking out that a rope can be tied to all over the surface of the ship.

(Kar is haggling hard with the visiting trader, who is being politely charming and happily giving ground on prices just enough to make Kar feel like he won. This guy merchants, if Valanda recognizes the skill at all.)

Those look... useful for someone in better shape than he is. If he has to find a way to stow away it probably can't be by climbing in while the captain's not looking.

(In another, luckier life, if he'd had better magic, more room to maneuver, he might have been good enough to really understand what the merchant's doing. But he has never had the chance to practice. He doesn't know enough to tell a good bargain from a bad one.)

He finishes talking with Kar for now. They shake hands. "I'll disembark your goods soon, sir." Kar turns away.

He turns to address Valanda.

He double-takes and looks very surprised! But only for a moment.

"...Is your name Valanda?"

"...I don't remember ever meeting you, why do you think you know my name?"

An alt, who stumbled though the door somehow? Or are there multiple interdimensional transfer mechanisms?

"That," he says, "Is somewhat of a long story. Somewhat shorter if you have heard of a place called Milliways?"

"No, never. But my name is Valanda."

"So. I can't verify any of this besides by knowing things I oughtn't to, and maybe showing you some things in my ship later, but. There are multiple worlds. There's at least one way of going between them. If you didn't grow up here and haven't heard of Milliways, there's at least two. Milliways is a magic interdimensional bar where I met someone named Valanda who looked a lot like you and sort of held themselves the same way too. The same person happening in multiple worlds is apparently pretty common - it's called 'alts'. I have at least two alts. You have at least one, who I met briefly. Following me so far? Want me to list things I oughtn't to know about you to prove I'm not talking out of my ear?"

"I understand that explanation but I'd like it if you listed the things you know."

"I think you're a - former - slave from a place called the Empire of Har. I think you're a sun mage, going by Kar's titanium. The other kinds of mage are death, force, structure, illusion, command, knowledge, inheritance, defense, heat, and two more I can't remember. Har has a bunch of nasty, backwards-seeming-to-us laws, such as not freeing a slave who doesn't know how to behave themselves and all children being slaves. You have humans and agerah and caralendri and essi I forget what else... I read a bunch of books on Har in Milliways. You desperately wanted your freedom. You're a he, not a she, by preference. The other you was a defense mage and was freed on his majority. I didn't talk too much with him, I was in a bad mood, but he worked with a friend on trying to make humans not die of old age."

"...Yes. All of that. Do you know how he was freed? Do you know why people here can't use their magic?"

"I don't know how he got free. And... As far as I know we don't have any magic. We're still people, still smart - we can do reasoning about other people's motives and internal state, we can do algebra and complex mathematics and planning and so on."

"That's ridiculous, you wouldn't be people if you didn't have magic, you'd be... disgusting fake people or something. You just aren't able to use it right now for some reason."

"We have science instead of magic. Experiments. With science, you figure out the rules and manipulate the universe to your desires with that knowledge. Takes the same sort of people-y skills as being good at magic. And I'm pretty sure we don't have magic at all, but won't argue the point any more than that. Anyway. So, I hang out in Milliways, read some books, bring some things I bought there home, and go back to the wandering trader life for about a year, and now I meet you. It's almost like something out of a story, isn't it?"

"Weird. Are we safe from an invasion by another country through Milliways?"

"I have no idea. There's only one door. But there's nearly infinite worlds out there, so it's probably not impossible."

Of course a safe place was too much to hope for.

"Are you taking passengers?"

"For most people, no. Bad memories. For you, a Valanda, sure. I think you're the kind of person who won't be an ass just for the hell of it, and will follow the rules if they're reasonable and I don't try to control you. And you kinda deserve a good turn after suffering as a slave, you know? It's the morally upright thing to do."

Well, he didn't interact with Valanda that much, this is mostly going off his knowledge of Har and his (don't overestimate yourself, Nick) skill at reading people. But he'll be keeping an eye on the guy and a sun mage is a really incredibly valuable resource, here in Cloudbank, it only makes sense to be as nice as possible and make friends. 

"I'm starting to really like morally upright people. How much will passage cost me?"

"Oh, let's say, half a kilo of gold." He winks.

"Sure, what do you want it made from?"

"I have some scrap wood. Can you make hydrogen, or only make heavier things out of things?"

"I can make hydrogen by taking heavier things apart. Is that how these islands stay up, there's hydrogen somewhere?"

"Nice. Yep. The rock is alive, and makes hydrogen when it eats nutrients and drinks water. A lot of the plants and some of the less Earthly animals do, too, like the ones with the floating seeds. We use those to get it most of the time. Not that this isn't an interesting conversation, but I should probably go start unloading Kar's purchases, we can talk later? Oh, I'm Nicholas Vauners, nice to meet you, Valanda." He holds out a hand to shake.

Handshake! "Nice to meet you, too. Should I be helping somehow with unloading things?"

"Not necessary. Though you can help if you want to learn how an airship works."

"I'd love to learn that."

"Then follow me aboard and I shall ramble as we unload."

He clambers quickly up a rope and unrolls a ladder for Valanda to climb from one of the doors.

He climbs carefully, aware every moment of the lack of force mages.

The ladder sags slightly as the ship adjusts to his weight. 

"First thing's first, let's teach you how to use the safety harnesses. So if you fall off in the open sky I can haul you back in. You probably shouldn't be in places you need the harnesses anyway, but better safe than sorry."

"That sounds like a very good idea."

So he demonstrates the proper use of a safety harness, throwing in a couple of jokes, and making Valanda do it himself with step-by-step guidance so he knows how.

"There's also safety rules on an airship. It accelerates and tilts, so heavy loose objects, or loose sharp objects, are a no-no. And the lifting gas is extremely flammable, so fire is also out. I can cook in a little fireproofed kitchen, though, if I'm careful. Don't throw anything overboard if you can help it, unless I say so. And please stay out of the engineering areas and my room unless absolutely necessary."

"Okay! How will I recognize the engineering areas and your room?"

"You'll get the grand tour in a minute. I think you've got the harness down well enough, though please do ask if you need to use one and can't remember how. Now, we don't have force mages, so the islands and ships stay in the air by the principle of bouyancy. Just like a boat can float on water, a ship can float on air if it's light enough. Hydrogen is very light. I can vent some hydrogen to make the ship heavier and go down, or dump out some ballast - usually water - to make it lighter and go up. My engines burn hydrogen and convert that heat into motion, which can push the ship forward..."

He continues explaining airship fundamentals as they walk through hallways into a large room full of shelves and crates and some strange machines near the roof. "And this is the cargo bay. Let's pile Kar's buys onto the cargo elevator and I'll show you how to work it.

He listens. He'll carry any boxes he's told to that are light enough.

There's some packing of various objects into boxes that he can do, that speeds him up.

The elevator runs off springs and pulleys and weights, and is very clever given that there's no force mages.

"I like your elevator! Are those common around here?"

"This one I designed myself. But things like this are fairly common, yes. We have to move things around without force magic sometimes, you know."

"Oh, wow. Do you design a lot of things like this?"

"Indeed. And I'm very proud of myself - I'm good at it. Built this entire ship about ninety percent by myself, if you don't count sourcing the raw materials."

"Got anything you've been wishing you had the elements to build?"

"I have quite a few ideas, actually! But none of them are something I can jump right on this afternoon. Metalworking takes tools I definitely do not have, since I've never had much metal to work. I was planning on waiting before bringing this up but if I take you to a big town I can park my ship there for a while and work with you to make all sorts of useful metal objects. Like a RADAR, freezers, computers, solar panels, and electric motors. I got some technology books from Milliways, you see."

"I'm guessing a freezer freezes things like a heat mage without the magic, right? What are the others for?"

"A RADAR can detect objects at a distance, even though clouds, using a lower wavelength of light. Very handy for not crashing into things and moving around at night, I would bet. I could do lights, too. And maybe SONAR, which uses sound. A freezer can make things cold without a heat mages, yeah. Electric heaters are possible too. Computers do - a lot of things, mostly to do with information. Hard to sum up and I don't really get them myself yet? Solar panels make electricity from sunlight. There's also generators that can turn fire into electricity. Electric motors are like my engines, force without a force mage, except they use electricity instead of fire."

"Wow. Can't even keep people from doing magic by literally keeping them from doing magic. I'd like to see a big town and I can't think of a better idea than helping you with that yet, the only reason I'm not sure it's what I want to do is because I just got here and for all I know every job here sounds that fun."

"Well, I'm not asking for a binding precommitment here, I just hope you'll strongly consider it. Meanwhile, let me get Kar his stuff..."

He puts the elevator into motion, lowering himself and Valanda and Kar's stuff to the surface of the island, ropes swaying slightly as the ship's balance reacts to the motion.

So cool. The swaying is terrifying but he's good at balance.

And then they're resting on Kar's island, comparatively steady simply because of its size.

Nick shows off all the various goods Kar asked for and helps the man carry them to his shed.

"You made friends quick," Kar tells Valanda. "Good luck out there."

"Good luck to you too! If you ever run into me again you let me know if there's anything I can do for you."

"Got titanium. And the titanium is turning into all this good stuff. That's plenty. You don't tend to see folk again when you say goodbye on Cloudbank. But I'll remember ya."

"I'll remember you, too."

"And don't let that fella cheat you. Never trust a merchant with everything, you hear?"

"Thank you. I think he's figured all my secrets out without my help, though."

"I'm never gonna understand how they do that. Part of why I'm out here. Goodbye, then."

He turns back to looking over his New Stuff, where Nick is still unpacking it.

He'll help if it seems like he won't break things and it's obvious where they go.

Otherwise he'll just watch and wait.

It's not particularly obvious. Nick does also buy some meat and berries and jam and vegetables. It doesn't take too long.

"Shall we be going, Valanda? Anything left for you to do here? Last chance if so, there's really no going back somewhere on Cloudbank."

"I don't think there's any reason to wait."

"Then away we go! We can finish the grand tour. I don't get the chance to show off much, you know."

He heads back to the elevator.

Valanda follows.

He takes the elevator up and resumes the tour! He demonstrates how it all works fairly well, saying how this or that feature is particularly impressive, rambling about science and engineering concepts along the way.

The kitchen and a cozy little dining nook with a shelf of books, the workshop area, the engines, the elevator and ailerons and rudder controls, the ballast system, the lift tanks, the bridge, the bathroom, nooks and crannies of various sorts, and the greenhouse.

"I see two options for where you're going to sleep. I did not optimize my ship for cohabitation. I could set up a hammock in the cargo bay and give you room to stretch out, or I could clean out a closet and put a few blankets in there for you, but it'd probably be pretty cramped. Which would you prefer?"

"I... think I'll try the hammock. It shouldn't be much like a bed, right?"

"Hammocks are a lot less stable and flat and supporting than beds. They have more in common with beds than the floor, admittedly."

"Well, if it turns out it's terrible, will you mind if I sleep on the floor under it instead?"

"I wouldn't complain. Can't be very comfy, though."

"I'll try the hammock, then. Thank you."

"I'll set it up later. For now, want to watch me fly this thing?"

"Yes!"

He undoes the ropes. He turns on the engines. He vents a little gas. He carefully notes down some things in a book. He nudges the controls this way and that as the ship slowly starts moving under its own accord.

He seems to enjoy piloting.

"I was planning on hitting up another farm or two for more food before heading to a town, but I can skip it if you'd rather - a sun mage's output can keep me busy much better than a farm's."

So cool.

"If you'd rather. I don't know enough to care yet."

"One more farm it is, then. Feel free to ask questions, of course. And I'll show you the raw material for my gold payment when we stop for the night."

"Do you know how many people live on Cloudbank?"

"Not to any precise number. If I do a guess based on... Hmm, there's perhaps five to ten thousand people in a large town. Large towns are a hundred or so miles apart... Given the size of the planet is about 20,000 miles... Multiplied by..."

He scribbles some calculations onto some loose paper.

"Somewhere between two and five million. Probably."

"Wow. That's a lot, especially having no magic and just these islands to live on. And I get the impression people live better here than they do in Har."

"...Huh. That's actually really surprising. I would think that mages would make the average Hari really rich. Then again, technology's a wealth multiplier too and we have a lot of leftover ancestor knowledge. Hmm."

"It's not the wealth, it's... Har has more metal, if Kar's home is typical the buildings are bigger in Har and Har has nicer carpets and more convenient windows. But I was afraid all the time there. And no one would ever just take someone in for no reason, just because it was the right thing to do. And I think you might have fewer people dying... maybe not, maybe Har's population is smaller because of pre-empire times, but I think in Har they'd have trouble getting to five million people. And it seems like it was so easy for Kar to just go live by himself. And you..." He shrugs. "You have so much you can just give it away and you can let someone in your home without being afraid even if there's no agent of the law who even knows where you are. Even if you, I don't know, can't stop hurricanes, I don't think Har is better. ...You can stop hurricanes, right?"

"We can't stop hurricanes or firestorms or downwinds, only avoid them or ride them out. Kar's home is small and simple by comparison - and I imagine he has trouble getting everything he needs, he's risking getting sick or get eaten by something. Yeah, there's something to be said for... Peace. Neighborliness? There's pirates and slavers out there, Kar was being very kind actually, but people like Kar are fairly common. Also, I wouldn't let most people in my home, it's a bit of special circumstances here. Also also, I have weapons just in case. By the way."

"I guess we need to figure out how to stop all the slavers before this place can be perfect. Why can they do what they do?"

"Because there's no global law enforcement, probably. And boarding ships and stealing things and kidnapping people isn't generally risky enough that some people won't try it. Sometimes folk become pirate-hunters, just to make the skies a little safer. Sometimes the big towns will pay a ship of pirate-hunters to be on retainer and circle the area hunting pirates. If pirates get taken down a lot, the risk-versus-reward looks different, see. That's too risky for my blood, though."

"I would do it but I might be worth more alive than anyone else on this planet."

"Quite. We actually aren't that used to using metal for things, since we've done without for so long. If you were, say, a force mage, or an information mage, you'd probably make a pretty effective pirate hunter. But as it is, what's best for the people of Cloudbank is probably lots of titanium and copper and silicon and so on."

"We should figure out how to fix your magic, too. Otherwise you'll all have the same problems as before once I'm gone."

"That, I have no idea where to even start - if we ever had magic in the first place, that is."

"Kar mentioned a gate, but he didn't know where it was or how to get to it."

"The Stargate. It's in space somewhere, in orbit. Also, blown up."

"So we'll figure out how to get to space later. And how to survive there."

"And fix it, you suppose? That project may be beyond my ken even with a sun mage helping. I'd think it's better to focus on what you can do for people while you're here."

"I guess."

"We can look into it. It might be possible. I just don't think jumping directly to 'fix the stargate' is a realistic goal yet. It might be later. Especially if I find Milliways again - you could go back to Har, or your version of Har, rather, and fix it if we do.

"I will go back to Har with an army or not at all. But maybe by then I'll have one." Sigh. "Yeah, we'll worry about that later. You're right."

"Armies are a bit hard to come by. Armies that can stand up to death and heat and force mages moreso." He shrugs. "The other you seemed to be dealing with it alright, but it's your choice. Back to airships one-oh-one, then?"

"Yeah. That sounds more productive for now."

Nick is well equipped to teach airships one-oh-one. He's not a teacher, but he really knows and loves the material.

Valanda pays close attention. Airships are great.

They are! Also complicated, but you have to start somewhere.

He tries. He's not terrible. He might be better when he's less starved.

Evening comes.

You don't fly at night unless you're desperate. Collision hazard. Nick finds an island to set down on. This part is a bit tricky and involves getting over an island, venting a bunch of gas to settle on it, and then quickly going out and trying the ship down before the wind knocks it off.

And then he makes a simple dinner for the pair of them and brings a chunk of scrap wood about the right size for his gold to it.

And then it's a much smaller chunk of gold. "What do you do if you don't find an island in the evening?"

"Shiny. Fly through the night, don't sleep. It doesn't come up much."

"Sounds tiring, I guess it's a good thing there are so many islands. So why gold, are you going to use it for alloys?"

"Gold is shiny and rare - for now - and therefore very valuable. Until people get used to a sun mage existing and people who have a lot of gold panic and desperately try to sell it all at once, I can get lots of various useful things for this little chunk."

"Will that hurt people? If they have their savings in gold? Should I stay secret for a while?"

"It will hurt people, but people who can afford it more than people who can't, I think. And you'll make everyone richer and better off on average after a few months or years, so some short-term turbulence is likely worth it in my opinion."

"Okay. I'll trust you."

"Trust, but verify. If you don't actually make a lot of gold that would probably help soften the blow. You can be a worrying rumor rather than a terrifying reality for most people. Though, gold will be useful for some alloys and, say, integrated circuits."

"What do integrated circuits do?"

"Complicated information handling, reacting to inputs and producing outputs. They're crucial for computers. I could make a RADAR unit that automatically stopped the engines if it detected that the ship was about to hit something with circuits, and integrated circuits are a compact and efficient way of making circuits. More or less."

"It's amazing how much magic you can get done without doing any magic."

"That's a charming way of putting it, you know. It's more science than magic."

"I guess so."

It's an uneventful night.

The next morning Nick does a little work in the rooftop greenhouse after setting the ship in motion again. Brunch includes fresh-picked tomatoes, some of Kar's pork, and bread (the origin of which might by mysterious to Valanda).

"What's this thing? Is it a plant?"

"It's bread. It's made by cooking a plant, but is not one itself."

"Huh. Bread. It's some kind of grain thing?" That's what he's getting from the language magic, anyway.

"Yep. Grains, ground up, some salt and sugar and butter and water and yeast."

"Butter... oh, I've never eaten dairy before. Guess no one in Har thought of trying it."

"Yeah, there's some dairy cows around. Apparently some people can't have milk or cheese or cream, but butter is usually still okay, according to the books I got."

"Which people can't have those? You don't have a word for most of the species I know."

"Some humans can't have dairy, that is. I don't know about other species of sentients seeing as we haven't got any."

"Oh, weird. I guess that explains why the first two people I met happened to be human."

"Yeah, I don't really know what's up with the menagerie of people Har has. That seems weird to me."

"I can't wait to see what your cities are like."

"Beautiful, I think. The well-made ones, anyway."

They approach a farming village. It's a loose collection of little islands with rope-and-wood bridges between them. Some houses are built right into the side and bottom of the islands rather than on top. One almost looks like a little face, with windows for eyes, a door-nose, a catwalk of a mouth, and a field of grain on top as hair. The place also has a pair of tall poles with booms and ropes that makes the process of tying the ship down much easier than on Kar's undeveloped island.

Maybe someday he'll stop being excited about every new person here but this place is great.

"Will we tell them, or not?"

"Well, they won't necessarily be able to use any particular metal we give them, except as trade good. Maybe tell them we have cheap pure copper or bronze or iron? That's relatively easy to smith, I think. Can you make alloys directly?"

"It's not impossible in theory but I can't guarantee even if I make the right elements it'll be what you want, structure matters too."

"Well, it's possible they can do something useful with a lot of cheap iron or copper. Even if that's just 'sell it'. Up to you, I suppose."

"I'll make some from whatever scrap you want me to use and you can tell them whatever you think is best about where it came from."

"Alright. And do you want ownership of the food I get from it, or just an acknowledgment that I owe ya, or what?"

"If it's not too much trouble it'd be more convenient if I didn't have to figure out what to do with all the food, if we could just agree on how much you owe me for it until I figure out what I can actually use. What kind of cut do you want for bringing me here and negotiating the deals?"

"There's only so much food that can fit in my hold, only so much they have available to sell all at once. I'd honestly want a pretty large cut since this deal is also an opportunity cost for me, but I'm not sure what you would think is reasonable. Fifty-fifty?"

"Sounds fine to me."

"No more scrap wood, really. Let's get you some buckets of water to metallize. If it looks like random lumps one could have found in an island somewhere, even better."

Once that's done, he goes out and merchantizes! He's still good at it. Valanda could probably talk to some of the villagers.

He makes himself visible and looks around at things but he's not sure if it's polite to just start talking to people. If it is maybe someone else will just strike up a conversation with him so he doesn't have to figure out how to do that.

"You his kid or something?" Asks one woman holding a wooden cage with some kind of weird bird in it.

"He's giving me a ride to a town, we just met a few days ago."

"Kids your age always want to go off somewhere else and never be seen again, what happened to family, what happened to working the farm? Bah."

She moves closer to where Nick is haggling with three people at once, leaving him alone.

Well, that could've gone better.

He'll just wander anywhere that doesn't look like private property and hope no one else wants him to have been born on a farm.

He seems to want to be left alone - most people do that. One adolescent boy asks where he's from in defiance of the silent agreement.

"I'm from Anavel Sani. It's pretty terrible there, they have slavery."

"Ewwww. My papa said his mama was a slave in a big town, but she snuck on a ship that was leaving the evil slave town and came here."

"Yeah, if I'd had a chance to choose, I'd've done the same thing. Is she doing okay now?"

"Yeah, grandma's okay. She says she wish pa and I didn't look like her owner did though."

"Yeah, that sucks. If I were somehow pregnant now I'd kill it."

The kid nods, frowning. "I wanna go fight slavers when I grow up but pa says it's too dangerous."

"Yeah, I want to find some way to stamp out slavery, it's pretty bad. But that's a job for someday when I'm rich."

"I don't think I'm ever gonna be rich. I'm probably just gonna farm forever."

"Is that why people quit farming? Because it doesn't pay well enough?"

"I dunno. Farming is kind of boring."

"Do towns have food shortages because lots of people think it's boring?"

"I don't think so? We get ships buyin' food and sellin' town stuff all the time, and we usually have enough food for 'em?"

"Then I guess there are enough farmers. I wonder why the other person I talked to thought there was a problem with people leaving farms."

"Oh, you mean Verona. Her daughter had a big screamin' fight with her and ran off with a freighter and she didn't get to say goodbye."

"That's terrible, I'm so sorry."

"Verona's mean. I miss Lara, she was nice, but I don't think she was wrong to run off."

"Is this something I should be trying to do something about?"

"You're an outsider. She won't listen to you."

"I guess I won't try, then. Thanks for telling me about her."

The kid wanders off. Nobody else seems particularly interested in talking to him.

After about an hour of trading, Nick is ready to take off again. "Learn anything during the wait?" He asks.

"I heard some gossip. How about you?"

"They do in fact have someone who can do smithing here, and cheap iron is a big hit. So thanks for that. Also, I remembered something I learned in Milliways you might want to know - a technology that, unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to easily make here, but which you could probably buy if you find Milliways some day. Though, I'm not sure if you would enjoy knowing it exists but not being able to get it yet. So I'm asking if you want me to tell you first."

"What is it?"

"...Okay. There are ways to turn a person with a female body, into a person with a male body. Medicine, surgery. There's basically no way I would be able to do this safely in Cloudbank - but Milliways has every technology for the right price."

"At least it's possible! Is there a way for me to get to Milliways?"

"You have to hope you get a door. Milliways steals doors at some kind of whim. I got one once, but only once so far. Some people only get one ever so I made use of it... Some people get many. All we can do is wait and see. And maybe open a lot of doors, but there's no reason to think this actually helps, it just feels like it might."

"Well, I guess opening doors is my new hobby. I'll let you know if I get one."

"I'll tell you if I find one, too. And now I have a full hold so we're heading to a proper town. Probably two days."

"Did you get the same kind of food here as you did from Kar?"

"More variety. Kinds of meat, kinds of fruit and veggies, cheese - which you maybe should try only small amounts of at first - eggs, pepper, tea. I do like my tea."

"Can I try some tea? I've never had that before."

"Sure, I'll put a kettle on once we're underway. It's different than most foods. It's a drink, doesn't fill you up really, but wakes you up, and I like the taste."

They get underway. He manipulates the ship's controls adroitly, and starts a slow descent. Once they're in the open sky, he steeps some tea and eventually pours two steaming cups. "Some people like a little honey or cream in their tea."

"Well, I've never had cream, might as well try two new things today."

"Cream is in the category of dairy, so no more than a spoonful or two to see if your body reacts badly to it, I think."

He brings out the honey and cream and uses a small wooden spatula to scrape a little honey into his cup and stir.

He tries his tea, first a sip without cream and then he adds cream and tries it again. He's not sure what he thinks of it.

"You've turned cooking the diseases out of food into some kind of edible art, it's nice."

It's green tea.

"There are other varieties of tea, if you want to try those some other time." He sips his own. "And I do agree with you that cooking is something of an art form. There's even a word for it. Chefs."

"That must be nice. Do chefs make a lot?"

"I think a chef usually has a bunch of cooks and assistants to work with, but a fancy restauraunt can serve hundreds of people a night with a staff of ten or twenty? So they make a fair amount of food. And they probably make a lot of money, too, yeah."

"It might be nice to do that but it'd probably be an unconscionable waste of time. I should probably be making metal every waking moment, once we get somewhere with enough spare wood for me to make it from."

"Not necessarily every waking moment. There's only so much one can use metal for so quickly. You could totally buy cooking lessons, or just eat at nice restauraunts a lot, though."

"Restaurants! I love this place. I can't wait to see a town."

"Two days. Maybe one and a half if we're lucky. I can try to cook something slightly more elaborate than usual, give you a taste. Maybe mother-and-daughter soup. Chicken and egg being the main ingredients, hence the name."

"Morality doesn't apply to chickens, does it?"

"A few folk think it does but most people don't care about animals, no. Especially dumb ones like chickens."

"Why is there disagreement?"

"...Because people care about different things? And think different things are wrong sometimes? Ethics isn't, like, a code of laws."

"Are there books or teachers I could learn about morality from? It's starting to seem more complicated than I thought."

"I have ever heard of a book on ethics. Ethics being an attempt to formalize and think about and study morality, sort of. We can probably find something for you."

"That sounds good, it seems like this is the second most important thing in the world. And the most important thing isn't my job!"

"Oh, what is number one? Skies free of pirates and slavers?"

"Yeah! ...I guess you don't have that. And you're better than Har. ...Maybe that's second most important and morality is first."

"It might be a bit simplistic to say that one place is better in all respects than another. Some people here might prefer Har even with institutional slavery. Some people from Har might prefer here, even with the danger of pirates."

"Har is really bad. I guess if you were free it wouldn't be so bad." Shrug. "Have you really never been to the same place twice?"

"Well, yes, being a slave is awful. But there are slaves here too, you just haven't seen any. I've been to Jubilee maybe half a dozen times, Jubilee's nice. Most of the others aren't super memorable but I've probably been to some of the big towns two, three, four times each."

"What's Jubilee like?"

"They do this thing with stained glass and dye and fabrics and light-colored wood everywhere and lots and lots of cleaning. The whole city is bright and colorful. And it's very neatly laid out and clean. And they had this sort of - acoustic layout - where singing and music in a big amphitheater in the center would radiate out and be heard on a few of main streets and there was singing and music most of the day. I don't really know what the government was like, but the place was very, very pretty."

"It'd be nice to get to see it. But maybe all the towns are nice and it wouldn't be better to keep moving around."

"Not all towns are nice. I want to scout around a bit when we land, and if the first town we find is awful or unstable or has an evil government, move on. They wouldn't use you properly. That sound okay with you?"

"Yeah, that sounds smart. How good do you think we should hold out for?"

"I think 'would respond well to suddenly being richer' is probably a good heuristic. I can probably judge that alright."

"Sounds good."

...He finishes his tea and gets back to flying the ship. Valanda could bug him for lessons some more, or just... Relax. Maybe read one of his books (he gave permission).

He looks at the books, trying to decide which one seems most useful to read right now.

There's a bunch of books! Maybe thirty or so, mostly hand-written. Books on weather, on engines, on plants, on something called 'game theory', on using weapons, on science. There's also some fairly fantastical tales and stories, novels, which are fiction but he might not be able to tell as much.

This place has fundamentally different, and less controlled, nature. He'll read about the weather.

Firestorms! You can get caught in an updraft and go up and up and up and up until you're in the part of the sky where there's mostly hydrogen and suffocate before you burn to death.

Toxic ash upwells! The nasty sulfurous stuff from the surface can get spewed high into the sky sometimes. Volcanoes or something? They're not sure. But it sure isn't fun for anyone who has to live inside an ash cloud for a couple of weeks.

There's also more mundane weather, rain, wind, and so on. The book goes into a lot of detail on how to make decent guesses without too much calculation or fancy tools.

Better to find out about all that now than when he's desperately trying to make breathable air faster than the wind blows.

He might be useful turning ash into air, but he's not about to ask Nick to go looking for any to practice on.

If he still has time to kill he'll read about the local plants.

Plants are like so! There's a bunch of kinds! The book on what they're useful for doesn't much distinguish between local and Earthly, tarrus root is listed right next to carrots, but the scientific botany book talks a lot about what structures and traits the plants have and their evolutionary history and so on, and how you can tell whether something is Earthly or not.

He thinks he likes plants.

After a while he goes to see what Nick's up to.

Nick is still flying the ship, and eyeing a big colony of the orange-and-red spiky things nervously. "Fireflowers... Those things are dangerous, best to give them a wide berth."

"How far do you have to stay? Will they try to attack us?"

"The further the safer. They won't hunt us or anything they just like to blow up and burn, keeps most things from trying to eat them, and explosions and fire will be exceedingly bad for my precious ship."

"Yeah, it seems like it would be. Can towns avoid them like this or do they have to chase them away?"

"I think they have to chase them away. Or, like, use a bow-and-arrow to kill them from a distance? There's these things that hunt fireflowers, they can shoot spines and feast after the explosion, they just can't hunt much else because they're sorta specialized for it."

"...And you can't fireproof anything, can you?"

"Nope. Some materials are less flammable than others - my ship uses a floatstone outer hull, and I painted it with a suppressant - but fire is a real and constant danger."

"I wonder if we can do anything about that now."

"Aluminum skin for ships will probably help a lot. Or an even lighter alloy, there might be a candidate in my handy dandy computer library. Or even, say, fire-suppressing foams. There's options."

"Want me to look at materials and tell you what I think I can make that might be useful?"

"You mean, look through my library for things that you might be able to make, or what? Sounds productive, anyway."

"Yeah, that. Do you have any books that describe the chemical structures of lots of things or should I just read all the books in case there's some things here and there?"

"I think I have one paper chemistry book-" He gives the title, "And a few more on my computer, but I don't want you touching the computer without me there, mind if we go over stuff together tonight?"

"Sure, sounds good."

And evening comes without them finding a town Nick likes the look of - there were a couple, but too small for their purposes - and he opens up his fancy Milliways-purchased laptop and shows Valanda lists of useful materials that Cloudbank might enjoy.

Most of the medicines have structures too complex for him to make without spectacular amounts of luck. The interesting things made of simple materials under pressure are... maybe possible.

"We might be able to combine my magic with some other way of making things. Or maybe if I go really slowly, atom by atom, they'll just... choose to bond. I think that's how molecules work, right?"

"Problem is molecules are incredibly tiny, doing things to them one by one would take a while. We could try some tricks with film deposition, or other chemistry stuff. I think using technology on magic will work better than trying to get magic to cover the whole gap."

"Whatever you think will work. What're your priorities for introducing technology?"

"I'm still thinking about it. I think - things that will be popular and relatively easy first. Metal tools and containers and walls. Weapons if we think we can trust the folks we're making them for. Then improving access to food, navigation, and medicine. I should probably write out, like, a project plan, but it's not my strength exactly. Maybe I can find someone who's good at organizing, but bringing in someone new also introduces new risks."

"That sounds as good as anything. Will we be able to sell metals and technology to everyone if we stay in one place? Will they all eventually come find us?"

"We need a project plan. If we sell useful things extremely cheap, they'll percolate around the world - not as quickly as we might like, admittedly. Maybe we can build communication systems and fly around hooking up as many cities as possible to those, so we can know who needs what."

"That sounds useful, if we can figure out how to find everyone to give them the communicators in the first place. Will the communicators be able to... see each other's locations, somehow, so we can find the people who call us?"

"I think at minimum I can get them to read direction and distance and we can have people make maps based on that. Do you think you can make metal into the shape of a wire, with practice? I saw the lumps you made for that farmer, but would practice help with that? It's not essential but it'd speed things up a bit."

"I think so, wire should be pretty simple. What kind of wire?"

"Copper. Or gold, gold is like copper but moreso if you try to do wiring things with it. But for now, copper, don't want to shock people with fabulous opulence too much right away, yeah?"

"How even do you need the thickness, how thick should it be, how long do you need it to be?"

He consults a notebook and reads off some stats. The thickness should be really even, ideally.

"Just a couple feet long for the test runs. I'll want more to try and make an electric motor and generator with if it works well."

"I'll have to practice but at least if I make a mess of it you can still sell it as scrap. Do you have anything you want me to work from right now or should this wait till we find another town?"

"I have a bin of scrap and recyclables and compost. Copper scrap is strictly more valuable than any of that."

"I'll see what I can make out of that. Want me to go work on that now or have you got anything else you want me to do first?"