A man falls out of the sky.

Well, out of the air, admittedly not very far off the ground. Enough of a distance that he seems briefly stunned by the impact.

He lifts his head, looks around, sees Elodea, blinks at her in total bafflement, and then gives up and flops back into the dirt.

...Well. 

She walks over to him and examines him. 

Tallish, human, unfamiliar style of clothes, looks exhausted. Not visibly injured. Doesn't seem alarmed by the situation, or even annoyed, just vaguely depressed.

...She tries some languages at him. 

She gets back a confused frown and some indecipherable commentary.

Alright then. 

"Comprehend Languages," she casts, then sits down next to him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm... confused."

"That happens," she says reflectively. "What are you confused about in particular?"

"...who are you, where am I, how did I get here?"

"My name is Elodea, this is a random patch of wilderness in the Arethor province of the Kartan Empire, and based on context my best guess is that you ran into some kind of teleporting trap but honestly I don't know."

"Oh."

He contemplates this information.

"I've never heard of the Kartan Empire."

"It's not bad, as Empires go! Excellent law enforcement and quality of life."

Unaccountably, 'excellent law enforcement' makes him flinch slightly.

It is less unaccountable than if he hadn't randomly dropped on her in particular. 

"So what's your story?"

He sighs.

"Why do you ask?"

"...'Cause there's a pattern, here, and you fit it enough to make the pattern obvious but not well enough to not make it a weird variation."

"A pattern of... what?"

"...I'm kinda...cursed. And having a guy who would flinch at 'good law enforcement' randomly teleported at me is totally in line with something the curse would cause to happen but so far you're just...kinda sad."

He snorts. "Oh, that's funny," he says, although he doesn't sound at all amused. "That's hilarious. Ugh."

"Do you want a hug."

"...what? Why?"

"You seem pretty horribly depressed! Hugging sometimes helps with that." 

"I also have a curse," he says.

"...Fun. Tell me more?"

"I'm—I was—"

Whatever he's trying to say, it's not working. He pauses, then starts over. "I can't hurt people. Or want to, or plan to, or try to, or think of it like it's a thing I could do. And I can't get angry. And—it was a justice curse, from a Stonestrider."

"Man, that just makes me wanna hug you more."

"—what, without caring what I did to deserve it?"

"Enh, I've probably seen worse."

He is having trouble articulating his confusion.

"--I'm immortal. And very old. And cursed. I have seen some shit."

"—immortal? How'd you manage that?"

"The god who cursed me didn't want me to be able to escape the curse with a dagger."

"...???"

"What part of that confuses you?"

"...gods don't curse people, heartwrights do. Curses don't make people immortal. Making people immortal... isn't... a thing. If magic could make people immortal I'd've tried it by now."

"What's a heartwright?"

"...Aren't you a heartwright? You did magic!"

"The word for what I am is 'wizard,' but that's a strict subset of the people who can do magic, which is generally 'casters'--unless you count naturalist magic, those don't cast--uh, sorry, this is something of a tangent, but I've never wrought a heart in my life and don't know how one would even do that."

"Not heart," he says, "Heartland—do you really not know what I'm talking about—what's a wizard??? What's any of the rest of that?"

"A wizard is the most common type of non-innate arcane caster. A caster is someone who uses spells. Naturalist magic is power that enhances natural abilities instead of producing unnatural effects. I've never heard of a heartland."

"...Heartlands are... where... magic comes from," he says. "None of that makes any sense."

"Mm, I'm not familiar with magic coming from places--but there are a lot of planes, and magic is weird in some of them."

If he is not careful his face is going to get stuck like that.

"...what's... a plane."

"Plane of reality? Dimension? Universe?"

"...before just now I hadn't heard there might be more than one of those."

"Oh. Well, here they're common knowledge. We summon stuff from them."

"...a Heartland isn't a place, anyway. It's... like the idea of a place. I'm not gonna explain it right if you've never heard of them. But the only magic where I'm from is heartwrights."

"Well...that's not true, here."

"I guess that explains why you don't know what a Stonestrider is."

"I do not. What's a Stonestrider?"

"It's what you call a heartwright of the Wasteland. They're the ones who do curses, and they can only put a curse on someone if they think it's justified. You - weren't acting like you knew that."

...Shrug. "My curse wasn't justified, but I wouldn't swear that Elexarin would agree. But--I got that you probably weren't a good person. I just...don't care. I really, honestly don't. Horrible curses shouldn't be inflicted on people no matter what. If it was that important to stop you they should have just killed you. And, like, even separate from the curse thing, if people are being hurt in front of me I'll stop who's doing it even if I have to kill them but I'm not going to kill people just because they're a hurting-people person, I just...like...people too much. Even the bad ones, as long as they're, like, not the kind of bad person who's an obnoxious twit."

"It's not..." He sighs. "I'm not trying to say you're wrong. Most people back home wouldn't like my curse much either. But I didn't... I didn't want you not knowing if knowing would've made a difference."

"It doesn't, but--I do really appreciate that."

"I don't like being dishonest. It's upsetting."

"Life would be so much easier if more people felt that way."

Snort.

Shrug. "Some people are deceitful by nature. I avoid those far more than I do bad people."

He doesn't seem to know what to say to that.

She flops backwards onto the ground and stares up at the sky.

Sure. They can just be flopped.

So flopsome. 

"Aside from what he did to me...Elexarin isn't that bad a guy. He's, like, a god of the harvest. Loads of people in rural areas worship him."

"...I think gods here must be really different from gods where I'm from."

"You have gods where you're from? I thought heartwrights were the only magic people."

"Yeah, that's what I mean about them being different. Gods aren't... people? Except for the ones who are just really impressive heartwrights. 'Not people' is wrong, I mean... you can't talk to them, or catch them doing things, they're not... around the way you talk about this guy like he's around."

"They aren't usually--he isn't usually--I'm a special circumstance."

He shrugs.

"They're--definitely people, though. They're...people-y. They tend to suck or be cool in the same way as people."

"Yeah, ours are... not like that. Unless they're just really impressive heartwrights getting called gods because everybody's so impressed with them."

"Huh. Well, our gods you can pretty much put in a box with angels and demons and elementals and the likes of you and me. They're--the people who are from a given plane."

"...I'd ask if you were okay but, uh."

"I am not," he confirms.

"Man, persistent states of not-okayness suck."

"Yep."

"Mine doesn't affect my thoughts. But I--can't fight back. If a man is trying to--well."

"...wow. That's - I can't imagine the kind of person who'd think they could justify that."

"Apparently I broke his heart."

"..."

"Yep," she says, lifting her head just enough to bonk it against the ground. 

"Wow."

"He's a shitty ex to his other ex-girlfriends, too, but I'm the only one mortal enough for him to pull this shit."

"That doesn't even—I did things. I hurt people and now I can't hurt people anymore. This is—not that. My curse is outrageously excessive but... it stops me from committing horrible crimes, because I got caught committing horrible crimes. There's a logic to that. Yours is—" He can't seem to find the words to continue from there.

"Pure spite, yep."

He reflects on this for a moment.

Then he says, "I don't think I like your ex very much."

"He sucks--" and then she delivers a series of vicious but untranslateable epithets.

For some reason this makes him smile wistfully.

"--and someday, I'm going to kill him."

"Good luck."

"Thanks."