The three visitors are all male and have some obvious family resemblance. One of them looks just barely old enough to be the other's father.

"Hello, Mrs. Caivet. These are two of my sons, Adam and Topher."

"A pleasure to meet you ma'am." One could argue that he is more a boy than a man, being clearly in high school age.

"Likewise," Says the twenty-something, more formally and sharply dressed than his dad and notably wearing gloves.

"So polite! A pleasure to meet you two as well. Yes, I think you'll have something important to tell us about, hm? But that can wait until the food is out! don't mind me, I'll just go set the table."

"A pleasure to meet you all!" Claire enthuses. "I'm Claire, that's Andrew, and our son Teddy just graduated high school this morning."

She nudges her husband, who was looking at the trio a bit suspiciously, and he also greets them.

"Hello everyone," Teddy says, adjusting his glasses.

"If you're old friends of Mrs. Caivet's it's a little strange we're just meeting you know." His father mentions. "How do you know her?"

"Do you need any help, Mrs. Caivet?"

"Mostly through a similar social circle. She was friend with some of my uncles, I definitely remember seeing her a couple times when I was little. And she kept correspondence at least a few years ago until the last surviving one passed away."

"Come and set the silverware out, please! Such a polite young man."

"I don't think I've met any of Grandma's friends who weren't - er - around her age before. Not that people can't have friends of different ages."

Topher goes to help.

Adam fidgets a bit. Low-key wishing he had also offered to help out and keep himself occupied and away from the awkwardness.

He pats his son's back. "I am assure you that we the fossils appreciate when you kids give us the attention. How much has she told you about us?"

"She says that you have connections and that we won't regret meeting you," he replies dubiously.

"I won't speak of your subjective experience of regret. We definitely have connections."

"If it helps, I am not thrilled with the whole secrecy business." Adam tells Teddy.

His father is frowning heavily. "Krisana... What game are you playing here?"

"Let's stay off that, dear. At least until the end of dinner. We can be polite that long, right?"

"Oh, hmph. Fine. What do you do for work, Stephen? I'm in finance. Or is that part of the secret?"

"Dear."

"Distribution and Shipping. Mainly, my job is to make sure that trucks and their goods reach the right destination instead of falling off the edge of the world or something." he chuckles.

Adam doesn't comment on this.

"That's a solid job," his father nods. "Until computers take over everything at least, but I hope that won't be for another thirty years or so. Twenty if our son has anything to do with it."

"I'm planning on robotics and engineering, not computer science, dad."

"Robots are computers, right?"

"Er... Not really. Robots are machines controlled by computers. Automation like that isn't even as simple as programming, more like... Machine learning? Computer science."

Stephen nods at Teddy's father. "It will happen sooner or later, but I am not particularly worried."

"Oh, I am on my school's robotics team. I am not sure if I want to pursue it as career."

"Ooh, did you guys do the FIRST competition?"

"We did! Got completely trashed, but it was fun."

Teddy and Adam chat about robotics until his grandmother declares dinner to be served.

Dinner is pasta, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and a fairly elaborate salad.

"Have you told them yet, Stephen? Or are you waiting for me to break it for you?"

"I would never steal that moment from you," Stephen says putting his splayed hand on his chest, on a mock display of shock.

"I suppose I must take mercy on these poor confused souls." She waves at Terry's family, who certainly do look confused.

"Now, I'll just out and say it. I am being deadly serious here and I'm sure Mr. Grayward can prove me right... Magic is real! Your son is something of a prodigy! Something like it, anyway. I didn't notice until recently."

Of course, the family splutters at this. Terry's father leaves the room. He and his mother eventually settle on 'yes, we would like to see proof'.

Stephen takes some pebbles out of his pocket makes a show of letting the Andersons see that they are pebbles and then makes them float in a circle.

Topher takes his glass of water, raises it at eye level and then freezes it with a small burst of blue light. The entire room is a bit chiller, but only the glass has ice crystals.

"...Show me how to break the laws of physics, please."

"That's exactly why your grandmother called us here."

"Break the laws of physics as you know them." Adam says in the tones of a correction.

"-Right but if you - did you create negentropy - this is important!" He mouths to his grandmom, who's snickering.

Stephen and Topher say a tentative "No."

Adam says. "Yes. How do you two do not know this?"

"I never told them anything about it. Claire never showed any sign of lifeforce. And I never bothered looking at Teddy, since that part of my life was behind me."

"I'd appreciate the full story now, Krisa," his mom mentions. "This is something that affects my family a whole lot. I'm not very happy right now to be honest."

"I understand. I wouldn't be either. I just - I wanted to have fun with it, but that's not really appropriate I suppose. The greywards and I will explain everything."

"Forgive her. It isn't anything bad and it's an unique sort of opportunity. And nothing bad will come out of it. You could say a couple of worlds of possibilities opened to Teddy."

"Can we stop with the double meanings? It's kinda cruel to them. I think."

"Well, do you want to start with a history lesson? An explanation to the magic system? Or what I deduce are the likely plans your grandmother has for your future?"

"Magic exists unless you're very talented stage magicians pulling off a very cruel prank I think that's more important here."

"Okay. Magic exists. What we just demonstrated to you is called sorcery. Magic fueled by the five aspects of lifeforce: breath, stamina, wakefulness, health and youth. Your grandmother called here because you're a naturalborn sorcerer. Someone that has extra lifeforce, making it easier to use sorcery."

"You can... test us to see that our powers are not just stage tricks."

"-Well there's probably lots of things I can do to try and prove it but I'm inexplicably drawing a blank. Sorry it's just - two minutes ago we were talking about robotics and now I'm a wizard?"

"Sorcerer. They use the same term for people that practice it and the people that just have more lifeforce, it's confusingly annoying at times."

"To answer your question: Yes. There are magical schools and everything for people your age."

"Yes. Oh, maybe you can combine both things? Magical constructs exist and people are always excited about combining magic and technology in new ways."

"...I'm not going to be hunted down by Obliviators or anything, am I?" He thinks, then hands over a notebook. "Do something magic to that. It's mine so you can't have prepared it. Er, please. I'm - sorry for interrogating like this it's just - a lot."

He winces at Obliviators. "To continue the Harry Potter metaphor, you're a muggleborn and his family, so it's okay for you to know." He takes the notebook, but instead of doing anything to it he gives it to Adam.

Adam frowns at it for a moment, but then quickly makes a origami bird. Which starts flapping its wings and bobbing its head. It doesn't fly, but it clearly moves under its own power.

"...Huh... Are there people who keep the secret? That seems - not okay."

Sigh. "There are. Me and my family have our own reasons to not go public ourselves."

"I can't say I disagree with you. Though, if it helps, mostly the reason why magic is a secret is that naturalborn sorcerers are very rare on Earth."

"On Earth."

He puts his hands on his face. "I'll shut up now please just explain and I'll hold questions until you're done."

Topher pats Teddy's arm briefly. "It's okay. It's a lot. But I will continue the explanation. Sorcery, it's divided into gifts and rituals. You can have one gift per lifeforce aspect, and it will only do that one thing and be fueled by that aspect. What we just used were gifts, the freezing I did was a stamina gift. Rituals are different, they involve steps like actions, speech or symbols and can do many things, as long they are well constructed. They may also mix what aspects they drawn power from."

"Rituals are very much a kind of engineering." Adam tells Teddy.

He nods. "But the - masquerade? And where else is there but Earth?"

"There is Elsewhere, which is where sorcery came from. It's a pocket dimension about the size of Russia. And there are other planets in their own universes: Elan, Efross, Exile and Epoch. The last two don't have native populations."

Claire purses her lips. "...I'm going to go try and get my husband back in here."

Terry sits there awkwardly.

"I am sorry for the inconvenience."

"Are you okay?"

"Not really? I'm just. Re-evaluating a lot of things."

"Yeah, that's reasonable. I guess the nerdy types would be shocked the most."

"I'm not sure how this isn't common knowledge. Er- Please do explain more?"

"I will pass to the history lesson then. Elsewhere is very old. Some wards make the dating a bit unreliable, but we can be very reasonable guess it to be around fifty thousand years old. It was inhabited by an ancient civilization that fell through unknown means. The worlds known as Epoch and Exile were attached to it then and likewise lost their civilizations. Elsewhere stayed empty for a long, long time and then it attached itself to Elan. Meaning that Elan starting to get naturalborn sorcerers."

"That was four centuries ago," Stephen continues when Topher takes a sip of Adam's water - since his own is frozen. "and something we didn't mention is that every naturalborn sorcerer is eventually teletransported to Elsewhere, just once, but always. These first Elan sorcerers found Elsewhere and started exploring, eventually learning how to use magic."

"So if you didn't warn me I would eventually be yanked to - Elsewhere - anyway?"

"Yeah, just stepping through a portal will solve that. And at your age is a possibility, but not 'we should run to the nearest portal possible, right now'."

"It's also why Earth doesn't have that many magic users today. The ones from Elan eventually figured out how to go back, but creating portals is hard to this day and the other end of the portal is pretty much random. When the sorcerers from Earth started popping three hundred years ago, they could either figure out how to get access to the difficult magic - which could take years - then land somewhere random around the world and try to make their way back home. Only to then outlive all their neighbors and possibly all their children. Children which would also be naturalborn sorcerers and face the same thing. Or they could give up and stay."

"Don't forget that they would be welcomed by people who would be oh so very interested in the newly arrived sorcerer, often powerful rich people of marriageable age or with children of marriageable age."

"So portals were impossible for a while and now Elan is a home... I suppose that makes sense."

"...Wait, what?"

"What part confuses you?"

"Outliving neighbors and. Marriage."

"Oh, I guess we didn't explicitly mention that the extra youth and the extra health grant extra longevity."

"I believe your expected lifespan is nearing three centuries. It's also hereditary, so anyone that values their descendants having longer and healthier lives, not to mention easier access to magic, and often social standing... Well, they have an incentive."

(His sons make a face.)

"...Er. Gamete donation?"

He chuckles. "Sorry. I am sure that are quite a number of people that would appreciate that thing. But I wouldn't call it a norm."

"It seems... Kind of obvious?" He shifts uncomfortably. "If there's a way to make people live longer and have magic, why not try it?"

"It's sound logic. But people don't always act logically."

"I am not sure, but I wouldn't be surprise that there would be cultural stigma attached... also, just to make it clear anyone can use or learn sorcery. It's just much easier for us, with our extra lifeforce lying around."

"That just brings me back to thinking it's stupid not everyone knows about this!"

...

(Awkward)

"All my sons agree with you. But while you can argue that it is stupid, it doesn't mean that revealing it to the world without being careful is not also stupid. I hope you understand that."

"Because there's Obliviators. Or something. Please tell me about the people who aren't Obliviators."

"I don't know about obliviators. But very few people know how to make portals and use the exclusivity for profit. The other end of the portal lands somewhere random so it's not that controllable as a means of transportation. People's view on Earth is that we are the warmongering and crazy ones that are about to nuke themselves any day now."

"That's... I guess I have nothing to say to that right now."

His parents come back, with their grandmother. The father looks pale and Krisana is holding an enchanted bracelet.

"Are you alright, sir? Can we continue with the explanation?"

"I'm not happy but I'm fine. I'm anxious and I need to know more. By all means."

"Alright, so should we detail Elan further or proceed with the timeline?"

"Huh. With you Efross you can just say that yet another world was added after Earth, starting from about a century or so ago. Talking about Elan is more relevant for them. I take."

"Well, you explained it succinctly enough, dad. Okay. Elan has native magic, it's called Synth and allows for some limited biological alterations. Nothing like creating fire-breathing dragons. But among its key uses is augmenting people. Which makes them healthier, stronger, taller and longer lived. It combines weirdly with sorcery such that fully augmented individuals have trouble channeling the lifeforce safely, but half-augmented are fine and have an additional boost to lifeforce. An oppressed ethnoreligious minority called the Daliath used this to their advantage and achieve political domination. Which," he waves at Teddy's grandma, "is where Krisana comes from." Pause. "Actually, I am not sure if you're a Daliath, or just a half-augmented former sorceress."

"I disavow any association with them. Mostly from bitterness, I admit. I got burned out rather badly doing something reckless I was pushed into and I'd rather not say more."

"Alright. Anyway, so naturalborn sorcery is a hereditary trait, much like being tall. It sometimes skips generations and that's why Teddy has it. I think the word 'prodigy' is a proper enough descriptor here. You don't need to have extra lifeforce to do ritual research, but opens a lot of doors."

"A lot of open doors. If it helps you deal with the situation, think that he has a new career paths open to him."

"I think I need to read a book about this, or - see it in person and have a look around - this feels unreal and I'm still trying to come up with ways to disprove it."

"Either option can be arranged. It's also okay to take five minutes to calm down."

"I'm still not sure what kind of risk this - sudden development - poses to my family and my son." His father says. "You say it's a career opportunity? Well, I don't know. Krisana is family and she invited you, but you have to admit that you three are still mostly strangers to us."

"Fair concerns. I am not sure if you have something specific to be addressed? I am sorry if calling it a career opportunity was too light of a tone. In reality, whatever life trajectory you're expecting your son to have is different from what it will actually be. Specially, that, even if he does try his best to ignore all of this he would still live far longer. It's strange and thus scary or concerning, but it doesn't have to be. And I do think this is a situation that opens more doors for Teddy."

"We are strangers. I don't know what would you want from us to make us less so? I guess we could come over here again or something. Give out some introductory sorcery lessons in case that will make it something more... familiar."

"...An introductory lesson sounds good but you said there's schools? Do they do campus tours, can we meet the staff?"

"Oh, there are. It's not that different from any other institution of learning?"

"We can arrange tours and meeting the staff. Did you mean going to them or bringing them here? There are no schools on Earth, but there are plenty on Elsewhere and even Elan."

"If I'm - seriously considering going to a magic college - I'd better go see the neighborhood and campus. Right, mom? Dad?"

They nod, dad anxiously and mom eagerly. "We have to see what this is about. There's still a month and a bit before the deadline for class signups at that engineering school so we can see what... Magic... Is like before then."

Stephen nods. "I will help. It's doable under that timeline, though they might have suggestions for better places if they are sufficiently impressed with you."

"What kinds of skills are useful for doing magic? Rituals are a kind of engineering, are gifts more like - what are gifts like, how do you get them? Do electronics work fine in Elan?"

"Some wards interact badly with electronics, but I think they have been mostly fixing that. Though all communications networks are more limited there. Gifts are mostly gotten through meditation that moves your lifeforce around until the gift grows in a way analogous to how one builds up muscular mass. The most important skill to do any sort of ritual magic, or magic in general is being attentive, double-checking your work and being diligently careful every step of the way. Which is true even if you don't plan to invent anything."

"More than that depends on your field, but if you plan to invent things... well, inteligent problem solve, I suppose would be the skill? Being able to make the different pieces of magic fit into something that does what you want to." He shrugs. "With yet another heaping of being careful, because you don't want to find out you forgot a component the hard way. There are other fields? People that explore ancient ruins learn history on top of practical spells. People that do magical medicine still need to learn about the body for a long time."

"Okay... I think I would like to borrow an introductory textbook and arrange a campus visit. I promise not to try anything but I want to read the book."

"Sure. I wouldn't even default to forbidding you from practicing small things, but I would like to give you a safety lecture first. Or maybe you grandmother could give it to you."

"I'm decades out of practice, good sir."

"Y-Yes, safety lectures sound important. Wear your labcoats and goggles and all."

"Fair enough," He tells Krisana. "Don't drink and drive the forces of arcane power off a cliff." He says with a nod.

"Do you have more questions? Or do you want your safety lecture?"

"I have approximately all the questions and no way to put them in a sensible order."

"Fair."

"Anyway, safety lecture? It might be a good idea for your parents to hear it as well."

"Let's wait until we're done eating for that," his father suggests.

His mother interjects brightly, "I think it might be nice to hear about your home!"

Tactical change of subject. Stephen can do that. "I would love to. Our home is quite nice if I can say so myself. I live with five of my six boys and a distance cousin of ours. The property has been in our family for generations and it's quite big..."