[You may have ended up farther off course than you know. Please land; it will be easier to explain if we don't have to say everything through this channel.]

She is greeted by a girl who in the sunshine has an awfully healthy glow about her. "Hello. My name is Elspeth. You should be aware that you're in range of a mind-reader. If you don't want to be in range of a mind-reader we can have the rest of our conversation somewhere else."

"In that case, would you like to come in?" Elspeth gestures at a building. "He's of the opinion that you're not hostile."

"Sure. Only hostile to things that blow up cities. I think I'm in an entirely new world, do you have Neuroi here? ...Your magic is very, uh, eager. You can use it on me if you like."

"Welcome," says the woman with the crown. "My husband here says you're from another world."

"Apparently so. I hope I can return at some point, I might as well be twenty different Witches so of all the people to get stranded losing me hurts the UDF the most."

"Unfortunately, we don't have interdimensional travel available, and you're at least on the wrong planet - itself not trivial to fix - and probably in the wrong world altogether. The latter's likelier, since you're speaking something mutually intelligible with English."

"At least I'm used to moving from place to place by now. Lived in Greece when the Neuroi first hit it, moved homes half a dozen times since then."

"Well, we don't have Neuroi here."

"Good. They're terrible and honestly I'm pretty tired of sortieing to fight them nearly every day."

"At any rate, I'm Empress Isabella Cullen, this is my husband Edward, you've met our daughter Elspeth, and the other people who happen to be in the room at the moment are Alice, Jasper, Renata, Santiago, and Emmett."

She starts and gives a little bow. "Your majesty. I am Grendyne Nylund, Witch Second Class, 42nd Witch Wing, United Defense Force. I did not realize I was in the presence of royalty, and I swear that I have no violent intentions to you or yours."

"...Yes, I know, my husband reads minds and you landed in his range. If you had violent intentions I wouldn't have sent Elspeth. You may be slightly misinterpreting my title, though. I don't rule a territory per se; I run the global vampire shadow government."

"Ah. That was a reflex. Most nobles take it badly if we neglect etiquette, even if they can't actually do much to the UDF. Vampires?"

"Vampires are a sort of creature with assorted superhuman powers. We happen when vampire venom is applied to a human. I also claim jurisdiction over hybrids, like Elspeth, and werewolves."

"What a lovely fantasy world I seem to have landed in. I should probably ignore all my mythology. Though... I guess you could call a Witch superhuman as well, so who am I to talk?"

"Funnily enough, 'witch' is also the English word for people like, say, Edward, who have extra supernatural powers, whether they're vampires or humans or hybrids or for that matter wolves."

"Interesting. In my world, witches... Let's call them Strike Witches, after my unit's nickname. Strike witches can fly with the right tools, we can put up shields and launch energy blasts and make ourselves temporarily stronger. And each gets one 'special'. Mine is copying... I think I can copy your kind of witch, but it'll probably take sitting down and staring at one for ten minutes. They're dry and slippery. Oh, only girls are strike witches, and our powers come in when we hit puberty and they decay with age, or sometimes go away if you get hurt badly."

"Witches here only get 'specials'. Idiosyncratic personality-suited powers. ...We have a witch who copies other witches, but I'm not at all sure I want to introduce her to you. She's a little difficult to keep well-behaved."

"I think it'd be fascinating to talk to another copier. Nobody I've ever met understands what copying is like, the sense of trying something new. They keep me too busy to really play with magic. The little stuff I manage to keep permanently eventually adds up to having a dozen specials, so it feels like I end up doing a dozen times the work."

"...Well, I can't say she wouldn't want to play with magic with you, but most people don't find her particularly pleasing company and I'm worried she'd go out of control if she managed to keep something from you that turned into a power multiplier. She's sometimes better at using things she copies than the people she copies them from."

"...Can't your precog, uh, Alice, take a look?"

"People's choices can throw me off and she's not bad at exploiting that, and I have blind spots that Addy sometimes has legitimate reasons to pass through."

"Some of the people nearby are only all right with me reading their minds because they know me personally," the mindreader remarks.

"I can certainly try to copy him. My primary limit is mana - using too much magic at once will knock me down, and using too much in one day makes me literally not able to do any more. How long I can do anesthetize people depends largely on how expensive it ends up being."

"Even if all you can do is give him a break so he doesn't have to stand in one place for three days straight every time we turn a batch, it'd be very useful. Addy can do that too, but she's useful elsewhere too."

"I see. Do you want me to try copying him?"

"Are there any circumstances under which you could affect his power while it's in use? If so, you should wait until he's between batches."

"No. I copy, I don't steal. It's theoretically possible to disrupt powers if I try to use it on the same area or person as him, but I just won't do that."

"Okay then. ...The place might be disturbing to look at. Everybody's conscious but not of their bodies, and we do the batches with as many people as can fit in his area at a time for efficiency, which means stacking them up so they just barely have a way to breathe. They can't feel it, and we have someone showing them illusions of subtitled movies to pass the time, but it'll look weird."

"If it doesn't turn out his power is an elaborate lie, I promise not to freak out and think you're mistreating them like how they used to stack up slave ships going to Liberion."

"Alec's power is as described," says Elspeth helpfully.

"I didn't think it wasn't." Walk, walk, walk. "This place is built weird."

"Most of it was put together by a witch who can manipulate the classical elements. My mother-in-law designed it. And it's intended for principally vampire occupants, and we don't need things like chairs. What's strange about it to you?" asks Bella. She and Elspeth fall into step with Grendyne and lead her down a few flights of stairs into a basement.

"All this perfectly flat glass. Light without lanterns. And no chairs or anything, but you just explained that part."

"The glass and electric lighting are common. Maybe you're lower tech in your world? ...Vampires don't need the light either but it's easier to go fetch a chair for a human visitor than it is to wire the place new every time one shows up, so we have them. And Elspeth does need it."

"If my tech level is in doubt, here's some of our recent inventions: Steam trains. Penicillin. Morphine. Printing press. Telegraphs. All invented in the last thirty-one years since the Neuroi obliterated Greece and Ostmark."

"...Well, that's a very compressed technological advance timeline, some of those things were hundreds of years apart here, but it is well behind us."

"There's no war between countries anymore, no angry Church spitting blood and fire at anyone who dares to ask questions. Everybody's too scared of the Neuroi, everybody's trying to cobble together anything that can possibly give us an advantage. Maybe that's why."

"I'm not sure how that would help with penicillin, which here was discovered by accident, but it makes at least some sense as an explanation, wars can be very motivating. What are the Neuroi?"

"Giant black and red things, sometimes walking but mostly flying. They're faster than trains, but not Witches. They... Shoot red beams of light, except it's not really light, but they still destroy things. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, almost always unique. They regenerate in less than a minute from anything short of destruction of their core. The biggest Neuroi I ever fought destroyed 27 ships in less than ten minutes, before the lead striker on the 39th wing finished it off. They're exceedingly nasty."

"Did they come from the sky, or, say, a magic portal, or do they just show up from nowhere in particular...?"

"The first time anyone saw a Neuroi, they were coming out from the giant hurricane that appeared over Ostmark with no warning. Presumably they got here somehow but now they come from the permanent climate-disrupting large weather feature."

"Where is Ostmark? We have a Greece, but not an Ostmark. Or a Liberion."

"In this world the area of Ostmark is occupied by several different countries. Some of the other borders mostly match but with different names -" She points them out. "United Kingdom, consisting of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Germany, here." She notes other differences from what Grendyne has marked.

"Interesting that the two worlds are so similar and yet so different."

"Might be that the history only diverged when the Neuroi arrived, or not too long before. European borders haven't been stable indefinitely. What year is it for you?"

"Thirteen hundred, two score and one years since the death of Jesus Christ. Does this world use the same calendar basis?"

"Okay I think I've got it. I think I'll be able to keep it if I spend a couple of hours around Alec, too. Who should I test it on?"

"...Actually, try it on me first, it probably won't work but I'm curious."

"I'm a witch. Powers that affect the mind don't work on me. It would have been worth knowing if your copies were exceptions."

"You can try me next, I don't have anything like that. Maybe when Alec's between batches you can see if it works on him or if he's still immune to his own power, but not right now."

"Yeah, I'll bet you want to know if the unknown threat goes through your shields. Elspeth, can you stand a little away from everyone? I don't have great precision with this."

Elspeth stands well away from the stack of turning people.

And then she's under the effects of Alec's power, for about half a second.

She falls over, but kips up again unharmed a moment later. "Well, that worked. Did you not sustain it because you can't or because you didn't want to?"

"Didn't want to. Seemed rude. Even with that short a use I could tell it's barely eating any mana compared to some of the other things I've copied. I think I can cover this whole room for, mm, at least two or three hours a day without flirting with mana deprivation."

"Not enough to give Alec entire batches off, but enough to spell Addy... but it might be more efficient to have you replace some of her functions and have her replace Alec more often, since a lot of what she does is short-term and incidental."

"I'd have to, you know, sleep even if I had enough mana to keep it up for days."

"Yes, but if you and Addy traded off it could have let Alec have more time free. It would also make it impossible to keep her away from you, but that might be untenable in the long term anyway."

"I suppose how useful I can be depends on how much mana other things cost. What else will I be attempting to copy for you, your majesty? I could probably keep the communication thing you first talked to me with if I met its owner, and I already have a really well optimized whisper spell I can use as a base so I bet it'll cost just a squeak more than that."

"Copying Dwi - the communicator - would be useful too, and we have a teleporter, and according to some theories of how Alice works you might be able to get around her blind spots... What exactly do you need to be able to copy something?"

"I'm not sure. A lot of strike witch specials come with multiple parts. Lytee can teleport small objects, and herself, and large objects, and other people. By line of sight, to previously visited locations, to specific people, to arbitrary well-specified coordinates. I can only manage the first two in each category, and it costs me a lot more mana and it takes a lot more focus from me than her. I have literally never run into magic I could not copy at all until today."

"I was wondering if you could copy magic belonging to dead people, specifically. It probably wouldn't be safe for you to use Aro's power with a human brain, and Chelsea's is very low on ethical uses, but they're only the most obvious dead witches..."

"...Do you have their body? Or at the very least, something that smells like them? I doubt I can manage it, anyway, I can't copy dead strike witches."

"There are some ashes, and old clothes, but if it doesn't work it doesn't work."

"That's all right."

A quick tour of other commonly-used and relatively innocuous witches reveals that she can copy all of them with varying difficulty, with the lowest mana cost being on Dwi, Renata, and Jasper.

"There's also the matter of I haven't exactly negotiated a wage or working conditions yet. I can deal with emergency short-notice work, especially if it doesn't involve combat this time, but my pay needs to be almost as good per-hour as it was at home. Different currencies - A nice shirt costs 40 Svalten." She names a figure that will work out to roughly $8000 a month.

"That's actually low for specialized magic work, so for the first while I'll throw in a dedicated native guide on top of the wage and after you don't need them any more you can negotiate a raise, does that sound good?"

"Yes. What was this about meeting Maggie?"

"She lives in Ireland. Some people find they can't sleep on airplanes, and I imagine you don't know if you can or not, so you might want to fly already rested. And with your native guide picked out to accompany you so you don't get lost in the airport. It's probably best to find you someone from among the werewolves; they can go in public more easily than we can, they're all already in the know, and some of them don't have much of anything to do at the moment. I can probably offer a selection, although it narrows if you don't want to risk meeting an unimprinted male werewolf... Wolves do a thing where occasionally they see a female human and fall in extremely irrevocable all-consuming love. Alice can't predict it because she can't see events involving wolves. I can still probably find you a female werewolf, though."

"That sounds... Unpleasant for the werewolves involved. If they are okay with the risk of this happening then I am, I suppose. Ireland is where Brittania is and we're not even in Europe... Are airplanes faster than two hundred twenty miles per hour? That's my top sustained airspeed on my trusty old model 1336 Steelwing."

"It's not intrinsically unpleasant. I have a wolf and it worked out. It often does; a lot of them want to imprint, especially the children who grew up with imprinted fathers. It can get unpleasant if for whatever reason the imprint doesn't want an eternally devoted werewolf companion, such as if she's gay or married or spooked by the entire concept. And yes, airplanes are much faster than that, although it will still take hours to get across the Atlantic Ocean."

"I am not those things, except very slightly the last one. This is working out far better than I would have guessed if you told me this morning I'd be teleported to a random dimension. Let's go find a werewolf, then."

"If you don't mind going among unimprinted male werewolves you could have dinner in the wolf village and Jake, my wolf, can announce that you need an escort. Anyone who's not willing to risk it will eat in their homes."

"I'm willing to risk it... And dinner sounds very nice right about now."

"All right, this way. The wolf village is a ways away from the coven part of the compound because vampires and wolves dislike each others' smells, and because not all the wolves want Dad reading their minds."

She follows. "Mind reading is a bit of a loop. But again, only surface thoughts, and I'm not thinking anything particularly private right now."

"A lot of people don't feel like they have enough control over their thoughts to avoid thinking private or embarrassing things."

She shrugs.

There is an underground tunnel between the coven and the village. Elspeth sticks to a human walking pace.

"Benjamin made this one too?"

"The tunnel? Yes. He likes using his power for building things. He used to belong to a coven whose leader wanted him to use it in combat a lot; he's happier with us."

"I'd imagine so. Freya would much rather use her power to chat with random folks instead of coordinaing Neuroi fights, but sometimes you have to fight anyway."

"Yes, but the Golden Coven has enough witches with combat-applicable powers that we don't need to use Benjamin, whose options are mostly too lethal for our tastes anyway."

"Good for Benjamin and good for you, I suppose."

"Anyway, if a wolf imprints on you that one will be your guide by default, but if no one does, you'll probably be escorted by Beatrice or Kelly. Also, you'll notice that almost no one in the village looks like they're between the ages of twelve and twenty-five, nor do many look older than twenty-five, even though there are plenty of children. That's because wolves activate when they're about twelve or thirteen, and then they mature physically very fast. They don't grow mentally any faster than humans, though, so you should be aware that people who look like adults could be children."

"I suppose your magic system isn't any weirder than mine. Witches all get their magic during puberty, and lose it sharply as they age. At age 20, you're still close to full. At age 25, you're significantly weaker. By age 35, you have so little as to be useless in combat."

"Half-vampires stop aging when they turn - turning children has terrible results - and hybrids grow up very fast. I've stopped growing but I'm actually eight years old."

"Maybe I should turn. I wouldn't put it past the world for that to not actually preserve my magic, though."

"Well, Alice should be able to see, and I imagine your application would look pretty appealing."

"I mostly want to go home. But that seems unlikely... If I manage it, no reason not to try and come back stronger."

"...There would be a problem with turning you and then you going home, in the sense that you'd probably find it very tempting to turn lots of people for increased durability in the fight with the Neuroi and Mama would not like an uncontrolled explosion of vampires in a world she couldn't monitor and enforce important vampire-related laws in."

"The Neuroi need to die, one way or another. They regularly turned cities to ash before the UDF got itself organized."

"Vampires, unchecked, eat several people a week until someone manages to kill them, and they are hard to kill."

"Neuroi, unchecked, kill thousands a day and spawn scheduled hurricanes that likely starve a similar number due to crop damage. The total death toll from direct Neuroi attack or the fires or floods they cause last year was an estimated 483,000. We still lose ground steadily. If you won't give us vampires, at least give us weapons tech or something."

"That's probably more negotiable. It isn't that Mama doesn't care about forms of death and destruction that aren't vampire-related, it's just that the size of the vampire project is already a little ambitious and she doesn't want to spread thin. The ideal would probably be for there to be sufficiently reliable interworld transit that she could just have jurisdiction over both worlds' worth of vampires."

"I just want the damn war to be over already. Then everyone could go home. Not that I don't like my squad, but it's a bit sad that a common enemy is all that holds us together."

"I understand. But if you add vampires to the world it might just make things worse if it were done clumsily. Morphine doesn't work on turning, vampires are overwhelmingly stronger and faster than humans, new ones have little self-control and at any age human blood is much more appetizing than the alternatives, some people acquire witchcraft on turning even if they didn't already have it, and because it's contagious it can't just be a handful of trustworthy people. Vampires also do a thing sort of like werewolf imprinting that under unpoliced circumstances usually results in non-consensual turning."

"Ironically, as much as I hate not being able to fight Neuroi, I think I could use a few days where I can't help but not fight Neuroi. This is a long tunnel, isn't it? Do you mind going into a run?"

"I don't mind. I could also pick you up if you want to go faster."

"I'll just run, I won't get tired unless it's more than ten miles." She runs, only about half again as fast as a quick human.

Elspeth keeps up with her easily, long braid bouncing after her.

"Don't, hah, suppose you can make me a half, hah, half-vampire?"

"Sorry, no. If you start human, it's full vampirism or nothing."

"That sounded like Romangan. I never learned much of it, though. This place is very nicely laid out. The 42nd's base is a damp old castle that used to belong to the third princess of Suomus."

"We have a Rome, too, it's even the capital of Romanga. Nice to meet you, Jake. Gren is probably an easier thing to call me, if you don't want to use my squad's nickname of 'copycat'. How many wolves are there, anyway? Are there more packs than just those three?"

"Lots more. Wolves have to reproduce to make more; vampires can just turn humans in batches the size you saw as often as every three days - or twice that if we wanted to lock Addy into one job."

"I was imagining both populations having been around for a while. Witches have happened as long as we can remember, more or less one every five hundred female babies. There's even books- Could you be a Witch? Here's how to tell!"

"Wolves aren't a very old population and the phenomenon was isolated to a particular small tribe until recently. The vampire population used to be more limited too, because the previous vampire government was concerned with secrecy more than we are and turning used to be very difficult for most vampires to accomplish without killing the person instead, but it's always been global."

"Hm. What's dinner going to be? I'll be very glad if the answer is not 'salted fish and rice,' which is what we have the most of back home."

Jake speaks up: "It's taco night. I think there's fish, but you could just go for the ground beef or the beans. And there's other stuff too if you don't like tacos. Nobody goes hungry in a wolf cafeteria."

"Never heard of 'tacos'. Beef is rare where I'm from, though. Is there coffee or tea? We get a little box of the stuff with every week's rations delivery, but it's never as much as I like."

"Ah, clever. Can't wait to try it."

Gren has a cup of coffee and two new kinds of tea. Her tacos follow some popular examples. Meat, cheese, sour cream, salsa. She doesn't eat nearly as much as the wolves, but that's rather expected. "Good stuff. Just what I needed after a hard day."

After Jacob eats all three of his tacos he goes back for side dishes, of which there is an assortment. "Wolves eat a lot," he explains unnecessarily. "The houses have kitchens, but even people who like to cook can't keep up cooking for themselves all the time. So all the villages have cafeterias."

"At least I won't have to worry about food here."

"Hullo. I'm a stranger from a strange land. I can copy magic, so apparently I'm useful, but just about everything here is new to me."

"Yeah, that's what the Princess said. Apparently the idea is you need someone to take you to Ireland and back and figure out where you want to live if you don't want to move every few months when the Capitol picks up and moves?"

"I'm visiting Ireland because the lie detector lives in Ireland, and trust is an easily overused currency. I'll probably want to live where Ostmark was in my world. One of the countries between Greece and Germany."

"Ech, I don't speak Romanian or whatever, might be an obstacle. Don't think any of us do," says Kelly.

"I only know English because it's the standard language of the UDF." She's still wearing her uniform, and points to the patch. "I know Suomic, Ostkav, and some Karlslandish, but there's no reason to think those languages are consistent with something here. Perhaps I should stick to somewhere that knows English, then."

"It's very internationally popular, but if you want somewhere where it's the primary language your choices are the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand," says Elspeth. "We're in the United States right now. I know most languages and can check to see if your others are intelligible with something if you like."

She says a few sentences in each. Suomic bears strong resemblance to Swedish and Finnish, and should be mostly mutually intelligible. Ostkav is a mishmash of a dozen different eastern european languages, not bearing enough resemblance to declare it 'ukranian' or 'bulgarian' or anything in particular. Karlslandish shares grammar but not vocabulary with German.

"You might be able to get along in Sweden or Finland with Suomic, with some difficulty. The others don't match anything."

"Do any wolves know the languages for Sweden and Finland? If not, I'd better just stay in America, which I'm beginning to suspect is this world's Liberion."

"I think Brooke picked up a little but not really enough. America's easy," says Kelly.

"I probably don't officially exist here. I don't think my Witch registration counts in a world that's never heard of them. Can the Golden Coven take care of that?"

"Yes we can," says Elspeth.

She applies salsa and hands it back, then turns to go back to her table.

"Um," says the wolf. "Um, I."

She spins. "Huh? ...Oh, shit. Well, I did say I didn't mind the risk of imprinting. I... I'm Grendyne Nylund."

"I-I'm Shawn."

"Bloody hell. This is like when I joined the UDF all over again. Thirteen is a hell of an age for life-changing events."

"I wanted tacos," Shawn says, looking at her pleadingly. It is very important to Shawn that she forgive him.

"It's not your fault, exactly, not any more than it's my fault. Just an unfortunate coincidence of both of us deciding to take particular risks. Nothing to do about it but push forward."

"It would probably be for the best to have someone else. I don't want to cause any... Incidents, and thirteen-year-old-me might have. Better safe than sorry, sorry Shawn."

"I may as well say now that I'm not particularly romantically inclined. Haven't had much time to think about that sort of thing, between fighting Neuroi and patrol missions and so on."

"That's okay," says Shawn. "Whatever you want is good."

"Well right now what I want is to go fly for a bit. Helps me think. My steelwing will seat two, if you'd like, Shawn?"

"You might fall off? I can do telekinesis for thirty seconds no problem. With that much weight I can't keep flying but I can still make a soft landing. There is the problem of aerial objects being unusually visible, though. I get the impression that... All this... Is a secret from most humans?"

"Cold is alright. I'll have to think about it. For now, let's go out to sea. Where can I borrow a boat?"

"I'll show you," Kelly says. "Do you know how to sail? There's a motorboat too."

"I know how to sail, technically, but I probably could just tie my steelwing down on top of it 'fly' the boat. A motorized boat would be just as good."

"It's out on the beach near the main compound, unless someone moved it. I have Dwi's magic still, who should I call to ask?"

[...Sorry! Hey, this is useful, we can talk when I'm floofed! I can't talk when I'm floofed. I'll be careful with your thing, promise.]

[I can't literally do it all day, but it'll be handy, yeah. See you in a minute.]

He's back in less that that, gently holding her steelwing in his jaws. He sets it unharmed on the sand and then transforms, then realizes that he is totally naked and grabs his uniform.

She doesn't bother deliberately not looking at him, but she doesn't stare as she inspects the steelwing, dries it off with a short gust of hot air, and hefts it into the boat almost as effortlessly as he was carrying it. "Good to go."

He finishes making sure all his magnets are lined up and hops into the boat, grinning.

"Kelly, you can get a chance to fly too, if you like. My top speed with a passenger is closer to one fifty than two twenty, but I can still pull off some nice maneuvers. Have you ever heard of a split-s turn?"

"...No?"

"I flip over and then pull a half-loop. Great for changing directions quickly. How about a cobra roll?"

"Assume I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Alright then. I'll just show you once we're far enough out."

"Yeees? For my guns. I'm a Strike Witch, I fought Neuroi before I got teleported here by accident."

"Oh. I thought I smelled something weird. I don't think guns now even use powder."

Shawn sits there enjoying the fact that she exists and has a face.

Kelly looks around. "Yeah, looks good."

"Right then." She jumps onto the steelwing, and it shifts a little on the boat's deck. "Hop on behind me. You won't stay attacked to this thing by magic, like me. You can hold on to these handles, but they're a bit awkwardly placed, so hold on to my waist if you have to."

Shawn does not wait to have to. Huggles.

[WOOOOOOOO!] is Shawn's reply. [You're so awesome this is awesome!]

[Flying is awesome! We're almost never allowed to fly people on these things, but it's so fun!]

[SO FUN! How come you wouldn't be allowed?]

[These things are pretty expensive. Not that expensive, but enough that they're careful not to give us too many chances to accidentally crash them.]

[But you could fly on a broom? What's special about this thing that makes it go fast?]

[Something to do with the mechanical bits inside. I'm not actually sure. I know how to maintain it, but not how it actually works.]

[Maybe somebody could look at it and figure out how to make better ones. If it's just mechanical.]

[That would be neat! Do you know anybody who'd like to do that? I am pretty sure it's just mechanical, no magic involved in making them.]

[Jake maybe? Or, um, what's her name, Rosalie, the doctor who likes cars, sometimes they both do cars together.]

[You think they'd be mad if I called them out of the blue?]

[Jake's probably not in the middle of anything yet. Dunno about her.]

[Not really?]

[I think my steelwing is only better for flying than a broom because of its mechanical parts. Shawn suggested that, since you and Rosalie know about cars, you might be able to make it even better. Does that sound like an interesting project?]

[Hey, sure, why not. If you don't mind us taking it apart.]

[You could probably put it back together again the right way if nothing you try improves it, yeah?]

[Probably, yeah.]

"That's okay," says Shawn magnanimously.

[Yeah, sure. Don't drop me in the drink.]

And Shawn lets Gren go with a minimum of pouting and Kelly sits and holds the handles.

Kelly declines to "woooooo". But she seems to be enjoying herself.

Gren flies her around for maybe ten minutes, about the same time as she did Shawn, or until she expresses a desire to land. It's easier to think when you're not having a conversation.

Shawn waits in the motorboat, waving. Kelly doesn't request a landing early.

"Shawn's turn again. Maybe ten more minutes, hard flying is tiring after a while and we can do it again tomorrow."

"You don't have to if you're tired," Shawn says.

"I'm only a little tired, and it's fun for me too. In ten or fifteen more minutes of that I'll be tired enough that it isn't worth it to keep going."

"Okay!" Shawn hops on. Hug!

[Yeah!]

So she lands again. "Thanks for this, you two. I still don't really know what comes next, but a little flying makes everything better."

"Next I guess you show Jacob the thing and he fiddles with it?" says Shawn. "And I can show you the guest house, you can stay there overnight."

"Sounds good." She sits next to Shawn but doesn't outright cuddle up.

[Garage is on the north end of the village, your wolf'll know where it is.]

"Yeah, sure!" says Shawn. He trots up away from the beach into the village and shows her a building where Jacob is hanging out, Elspeth nearby. There are cars and a couple buses and other miscellaneous vehicles.

"D'you know if the pointy bits are for... aerodynamics somehow... or something else?"

"Brooms don't work well unless they have bristles. Or are at least slightly asymmetrical. I think they might help the magic do stability, somehow."

"That's... weird. I'm not sure I'll be able to get very far on the shape without knowing what the magic is doing, but maybe the interior is doing something engine-y. How's it open up?"

"I recognize some of these parts... Can you describe what you're doing when you fly it?"

"Do the mechanical things do anything if you just treat this like it has no moving parts, or do you also have to mana at them?"

"No, the mana definitely goes through the moving parts. It starts in these two flywheels. It's like flying a brick if you don't do it that way."

"What would happen if those moved some other way?"

"Not sure. I'm guessing I don't have to put mana into keeping them running, but that's just a guess. We don't have steam engines small enough to test that kind of idea."

"...Steam engines are kinda obsolete here. We can make something to spin your wheels if that'll help."

"It's worth a try. I think the mana does something else with the insides than just spin the wheels, but that might be bad intuition talking."

"I'll talk to Rosalie, rig something up. If that doesn't work, I don't have another great idea right now but one might come up."

"Thanks. Should I go put it somewhere else for now, or is here fine? Actually, I should clean and oil it. Do you have any good lubricant here?"

"If engine oil'll do, yeah, over there. Leave it by the motorcycles." Point, point.

Shawn helps. "Me?" he asks. "I only just activated, I haven't gotten to go flat out anyplace big yet, I dunno. I think most wolves can do... maybe two hundred miles an hour on a straightaway? We can catch vampires as long as they're not going into small places or up cliffs or something."

[We usually don't have any injured humans around who aren't planning to be turned, but we might be able to think of a way to apply that. The limit on whether you get to meet Addy is about her, not you. Mama's talking to her and Dad is listening in now, but you probably won't get to before you go to Ireland.]

[She'd be hard to contain if she decided she wanted you more than she wanted to keep working with us.]

"Still warm. It's almost like more contained fire. Not an engineer, right. That's okay, I'll find a library sometime. Could you explain, uh, how the bath works? Haven't had a good bath in a week. Hot water rations."

"Yeah -" He demonstrates the faucet and how to prevent the bath from draining. "You could take a shower too, that's when this thing sprays the water and then drains right away? Most people do that. But baths are still a thing."

"You know what, new world, new day. I'll try a shower. Are there clean clothes I could borrow somewhere?"

"...Probably but most of it is sized to fit wolves or kids. Um. I'll find something," he says. "Uh, soap, shampoo... girls sometimes condition their hair, right, there's conditioner here... razors washcloth towel bathmat... I think that's probably everything?"

"Yeah, that's plenty of stuff. I'm from a low tech place compared to here, right, we got soap and a brush and that's it. If you can't find anything the right size, maybe wash my uniform really fast? And... Thanks."

"You're welcome," he chirps. "Um, you're wearing your uniform right now so I can't wash it."

"I'll toss it out the door in a couple of minutes."

The uniform is gone, but Shawn found her an outfit. Shorts and a blouse, twenty-first century underwear, pair of sandals. (It's Florida. It's warm.)

"In the living room! Your uniform's in the dryer."

She walks down to the living room. "Thanks. You gonna want to sleep in this house, or go home? It's not gonna be in the same room as me, or not yet at any rate."

"I'll stay here anyway if that's okay," he says.

"That's fine. I think I'd better meet your parents. You expected this could happen and you're not too upset, it sounds like, but it seems like the curses in a faerie tale to me. Would they still be awake?"

"They're dead," he blinks. "I'm a Nor- I'm a pack kid."

"Yeah, it was her. I'm okay. The packs are good about looking after us."

"I've had a long day. Gonna get some sound sleep before flying to Ireland. Could you wake me up in time for breakfast?"

"Yeah, sure. Do you sleep light or will you be okay if I go get supper and come back?"

"I sleep like the dead against anything but alarm bells. Go ahead."

At nine in the morning, Shawn knocks on her door.

"There's always eggs and sausage and bacon and toast and cereal, and I think today it's muffins too."

"Right after breakfast's probably a good plan."

"I was under the impression that the planes worked like steamer trips, and we need to be there to board it at a particular time? If you say after breakfast is fine, then after breakfast it is."

"Oh, I mean, usually they do, but we're taking a Coven plane and I know how to fly it and we can leave whenever we want with some delay for air traffic control to find us a slot."

He can totally explain those green and red lights!

"If you meet Siobhan maybe don't tell her that. She's touchy about the place being Ireland and in no way subsidiary of the UK," says Kelly dryly. "Might not run into her though."

"I suspect history is very different in my world. It used to be the Kingdom of Ireland until the United Defense Agreement. I won't mention it, though."

"We really probably won't run into her unless she's curious about you. Her Majesty gave her some rights over her island when the Volturi went down and we did register this trip with her - and it'd be amazing if you can copy her witchcraft - but it's her prerogative," Kelly says.

"She'd take offense if I tried the copy without permission?"

"Yeah. Addy copied Siobhan without permission once, that was... okay in the long run sort of but still."

"Alright then. No copying Siobahn."

"Maybe copying Siobhan, just, don't count on it."

"Got it." So she resumes quizzing Shawn about this 'internet' until they land.

They land at another airport. Kelly rents them a car and drives on the other side of the road from before, which Shawn also explains.

It seems really weird to her that different countries have such different rules.

"I dunno how it happened," says Shawn. "It just did. There are other countries that drive on the left too, I think mostly islands."

"I guess it's not that odd. I know Continental telegrapher's code is different than it is in Suomus. It just jumped out at me."

"Sure, why not. I don't actually work for the Coven on a regular basis, you know, I don't mind being replaced."

"That's always a bit of a worry when I copy someone. Glad it's not an issue." She follows Maggie in.

"Medicine is technology and it doesn't need wall electricity, right? I learn by being near her and smelling her power, then practicing it. It smells like pine trees, for some reason. I have no clue why powers smell how they do."

"Huh. Addy says my power tastes like milk."

"It would be more surprising if our synesthesia matched up, I think. There must be millions of possible combinations of smells, and millions of tastes. I get sounds too, sometimes, but not from yours."

Maggie shrugs, accepts a wad of play-doh from her child and responds to the command "fix it!" by smoothing and pinching it until it is a neater version of whatever it was shaped like, and returns it for further addenda.

"Got dolls and felt stuff and stuff rabbits."

Maggie keeps an eye on the half-pint, "fixes" play-doh creations on request, fetches Molly apple slices when Molly wants them and offers Gren an apple too, and otherwise plays computer poker with about a third of her attention.

"Ooh ooh," pipes up Molly at once, "I am a vampire!"

"Hah, yeah it's working. I think I've got it, your power is the kind that is, mm, well-defined. It's obviously messed up if I mess it up even a little, which helps me remember it better."

"Is that all you need from me?" Maggie asks.

"Yeah. It's a very clean and neat power, I like it. I'll be going, thanks for the apple and it was nice meeting you two."

So she goes back out to the car. Along the way, [Shawn, could you say something true and also a lie? But don't say which is which. I want to see if I can use Maggie's power through this.]

[Yes?]

[What is it?]

To both, [I've got Maggie's power, and it works over Dwi's. Anything else I ought to do while I'm in Ireland?]

[Siobhan has agreed to meet you at the airport and let you try to copy her. I was about to call Kelly.]

Which he also knows things about, if with the spotty understanding of a thirteen-year-old boy who does not always do his homework. Kelly fills in where he draws blanks.

"If you've still got formal schooling left, that should probably continue happening. Come to think of it maybe I should do some sort of school too. Haven't had formal schooling since I got out of Witch training at age 14."

"I don't have to go to school anymore since activating unless I want to," says Shawn. "If I'm missing stuff the pack will fill me in when we're all being wolfily telepathic."

"...Telepathic? Please explain."

"Oh, when we're wolf shaped we can all hear what everybody else in our pack who's wolf shaped is thinking."

"I was imagining a certain... Trajectory, here. In a few years. If it turns out I really can't go home. It's just how all the 'love stories' end up and most of the time they seem to be content. But this might change it. Does this mean that either we never marry, or everyone in your pack eventually gets to hear what you think of me naked if you happen to remember it in the correct shape?"

"I won't make you quit your wolf, then. I'll think about the other thing, it's a ways off at any rate."

"Don't bother until I've thought about it some, Shawn. But yeah, it was a metaphor. And I'm done talking about this for now."