Eventually Vanyel wakes up. Yawns. 

"- Jisa, pet, are you still here?" 

"Yes! UncleVanUncleVanUncleVan look! I did new wards for you!" 

He sits up, stretching, and smiles tiredly at her. "Thank you! It looks beautiful." 

"Sandra taught me! She said this sort of shape is for making shields that're fireproof, and then this one I just made up, it's for making wards that tell you if there are dragons, and this one is so that you can talk to cats - UncleVanUncleVan you should help me, what else do you want wards for -" 

"Yes, all right." 

And so Herald-Mage Vanyel Ashkevron, called Demonsbane and Hero of Stony Tor by his allies - and the Butcher in White by his enemies - slips down onto the floor and sits next to his six-year-old 'niece', accepting a bit of chalk from her and absently adding some more random decorations while he half-listens to her chatter. 

In the middle of Jisa's anti-demon ward with some Van-added curlicues there appears - someone.

"- wow, this is so not safe, what are you doing?"

In front of him is a small girl with brown hair in two braids, who immediately bounces up and down like a pogo stick and makes a high-pitched noise of excitement! "Eeeeeeeee you have WINGS are you a dragon-person can you fly -"

And an overly-thin-looking man with heavily silver-streaked black hair, dressed in white, who takes half a second longer to respond but is then suddenly on his feet, shoving the little girl behind him and flinging up a hand - an invisible wall of force comes out of nowhere and tries to smash the unexpected arrival into the floor, and then a shimmering bubble-like barrier appears to pin him there. 

"What–"

The unexpected arrival is smashed! And pinned! He looks startled but not hurt. "- what the -

- what language is this -"

Vanyel is sufficiently nonplussed by this question that he doesn't manage to answer, just keeps staring at the strange winged and tailed person sprawled on the chalk circle on his floor, a half-formed levinbolt crackling in his palm. 

"Look, from my perspective I appeared here very much invited, there's no need to be slinging around, uh, lightning magic, I'm not going to hurt you."

Jisa thinks her Uncle Van is being very rude. 

"Valdemaran!" she says brightly, wriggling past his legs while he's still frozen in confusion. "My name's Jisa! What's yours?" 

Vanyel is, at, this point, mostly frozen because, contra all of his screaming combat reflexes, it is PROBABLY a bad idea to turn this person into a smear of soot on the floor. Not to mention the collateral damage that would do to his room. He's having a hard time convincing his mind to calm down about it, though. 

"I'm Cam! It's nice to meet you, Jisa! You shouldn't draw on the floor, it's not safe, but this time you were really lucky, okay?"

"What do you mean, drawing on the floor isn't safe? Why's it any different from drawing on the walls or on paper? I mean, besides how Mama gets mad if I make messes where I'm not supposed to, but I think floor messes are probably easier to clean up than wall messes?" 

Vanyel is NOT ANY LESS CONFUSED, but he does manage to lower his hand, and make an effort to control his breathing. 

"Well, it's because it can summon demons, like me, and most demons are pretty nice people but sometimes there's a mean one."

Jisa gives him a thoughtful, suspicious look. 

"You're not a demon," she declares finally. "I saw a picture of a demon in a book and it was really ugly, and you're handsome, so you can't be a demon. Also demons are stupid and can't talk and none of them are nice." 

"Well, I think maybe I'm not the kind of demon you usually get around here. You could call me an apsel instead if you like."

"Did you just make up that word right now? It sounds made-up." 

Vanyel takes a deep breath, lets it out, and with considerable effort of will, plus the help of some of Melody's Mindhealing redirects that she put it when he left the Border, manages to relax his shoulders, and focus. 

"Where are you from and how did you get here?" he asks the stranger, very levelly, while at the same time playing his mage-sight over him - does he look like an Abyssal demon, or elemental, or human, or something else? 

"It's in another language," Cam tells Jisa, "I didn't make it up. Uh, we call it Hell, and you - or possibly she, I'm not sure - summoned me."

He doesn't look like any of those things.

"I don't understand how we could have. We," an apologetic glance at Jisa, "weren't doing real magic, we were just playing." 

Jisa is, fortunately, far too captivated by their shiny and exciting winged guest to take offense. 

She tugs at Van's sleeve. "Hey you're being rude, you should help him up and offer him tea. Cam do you like tea?" 

"I'm more of a coffee person."

"Ooh, what's 'coffee'? Is it delicious?" 

Vanyel tries to shush her with a gesture and a pat on on the shoulder. "One moment, pet." And to Cam, "I'm - sorry about all the confusion, but - I don't understand at all what just happened, and we're– well, it's complicated. I'll let you up but I...need to ask you some questions first under Truth Spell." 

He starts casting one, first-level version only for now. 

"Perhaps you could explain what a truth spell does exactly."

"Oh, right, sorry." Not even everyone in Valdemar has heard of Truth Spell yet. "The first level version will just mean I know if you're telling the truth or lying." 

"I haven't been lying and don't especially plan to," says Cam.

"I mean, I hope that's true! But I kind of have to check, right, sorry." Looking faintly sheepish, Vanyel finishes casting the Truth Spell. Waits to see if it will even work on this non-human, not-anything-he-recognizes person. 

"Oh, sorry, I thought you already did it. I have not been lying and don't especially expect to," Cam repeats.

The blue halo stays in place. 

Vanyel takes a deep breath. What are the most key questions here, that he should ask even if it's rude and awkward...

"Do you in any capacity work for the Karsite government or priesthood." 

"I don't even know what that is."

Vanyel hesitates. Glances back at Jisa. Goddamn it. 

After another long hesitation, he switches to private Mindspeech. 

:Do you work for, or have you ever encountered, a man who calls himself Leareth: 

"AH warn a guy before you talk in his head."

Vanyel ducks his head, blushing crimson. "Sorry! But, uh, have you?" :Don't say the name out loud in front of her, please. It's, er, classified: 

"No."

Jisa can TELL when grownups are having secret Mindspeech conversations right in front of her, and she's sulking about it. 

Sigh. "And you have no intent to harm anyone here?" 

"No! I didn't even know here existed!"

"Right." 

Vanyel drops the Truth Spell, then releases the barrier, and - somewhat tentatively - offers Cam a hand up. "Er, welcome to Haven, I guess. I'm Herald Vanyel." 

"It's nice to meet you." Cam accepts the hand and gets to his feet and shakes out his wings a little.

"So what's it like where you're from?" Jisa says brightly. "Does everyone have wings like you? - Ooh you have a tail too! Neat!" 

"I do! And, yes, so does most everybody at home - the wings, not the tail, tails are a minority decision."

"Ooh what you got to decide to have a tail? Can you give other people wings too? I want wings." 

"Jisa." 

"What? Don't you want wings?" 

"I can give other people wings but it's hard for humans to learn to fly, and they won't grow with you so you have to wait until you're a grownup."

"Awww." Jisa looks disappointed for a moment, then bounces again. "Is it magic? What kind of magic?" 

"Apsel magic! Apsels can all make things."

"Like what? Can you make houses? Can you make pretty clothes? Can you make flowers? Can you make puppies?" 

Vanyel sort of feels like he should interject and get this conversation back on track, except that he has no idea what track it should be on. 

"Not puppies, if I make animals besides bugs and stuff like that they come out wrong but the other things sure."

"You can make bugs? What kinds of bugs? What's your favourite bug? I like the kind of butterfly where the caterpillars are yellow and blue and poisonous." 

"I like crickets."

"Crickets are pretty but sometimes they wake me up early by being loud by my window," Jisa says, plopping herself on Vanyel's bed and swinging her legs. "Uncle Van can we have a tea party?" 

It's really hard to concentrate when Jisa won't stop talking. 

Vanyel ruffles her hair. "Listen, pet, I think I probably should, er, tell your parents about this?" 

"I guess," Jisa mutters, somewhat resentfully. "Ooh! Cam can you make catapults? Can you make catapults that throw barrels of oil that're on fire? I read about that in a book once and maybe we could kill all the Karsites that way." 

"Jisa." 

"How bloodthirsty of you," Cam says blandly to Jisa. "I just finished telling you guys I wasn't going to hurt anyone here, though."

"Right, but you wouldn't hurt people here with it, it'd be people in Karse who're trying to kill our people, so really you'd be helping people here." 

"Jisa." Sigh. "I'm sorry, Cam. Jisa, I don't think we should talk about this right now. I need to, er, find out if your papa is busy, probably call a meeting or something..."

It sounds like so much effort and he's supposed to be having a vacation, damn it. 

"Can I come to the meeting? I think I should get to come because I drew most of the anti-demon ward, except apparently it's a bad anti-demon ward that does the opposite of keep demons out - sorry, apsels, I guess that's different - I should tell Sandra though..." 

"Jisa, no, you can't come to senior Heralds' meetings." 

Scowl. 

He's so tired. 

"Has this sort of thing, er, happened to you before?" Vanyel asks Cam. 

"Being summoned is a regular occurrence. Being summoned to this planet absolutely not, nobody I've ever heard of has ever had that happen, it's very interesting."

"This– wait, where do you usually get summoned to? You're saying there's - an entire other planet, not just that you're from another plane we hadn't discovered yet..." 

"That's right! It's fascinating. I look forward to getting to know this place."

Jisa grins. "I could show you around! I know where everything is in the Palace. Do you like playing hide-and-seek?" 

"It's been a long time since I've played! I'd be able to cheat, though. I don't know if it'd be fair."

"Ooh, how could you cheat? Is that another kind of magic?" 

Vanyel sits down heavily on the bed beside her. "Please, er, give me a minute, I need to talk to some people." He closes his eyes. 

Cam waggles a wing at Jisa.

"Oh, you just mean you could fly on top of buildings? Hmm, if we made a rule that you had to hide inside, then it'd be less good for cheating..." 

Cam nods. "But also I can make stuff that shows me where people are. I guess you could make a rule against that too..."

"I guess that'd be a lot of rules. - Oh, but I can cheat too! Because I have Thoughtsensing now. But I think it'd be more fun for hide-and-seek if there was a rule that neither of us could cheat." 

"- Thoughtsensing? Like mindreading? Don't do that. Regardless of whether we are playing hide-and-seek."

"I wasn't!" Jisa protests, with the affronted indignance of someone accused of eating cookies that in fact she was virtuously ignoring even though they were RIGHT THERE. "Uncle Van said I shouldn't." 

"I'm so glad to hear that. Continue to not."

This interaction seems to throw Jisa off her question-asking game for a minute or two; she kicks her feet and stares at her knees, her expression sheepish and sullen at the same time. 

Eventually, though, she looks up again. "What's it like being summoned?" 

"Feels sorta like pulling a loose thread on your clothes, and then you're somewhere else."

"Whoa! That sounds amazing. Can you decide whether or not you want to go, or does it just happen to you?" 

"I can decide! If I'd rather stay home and read I can do that."

"But you must not know who summoned you until you get there, right? Or you'd've known we're from somewhere different." 

"That's right! If someone was summoning me in particular, I could check, but if it's just a summon for any apsel, there's not enough time, somebody'll take the summon before anyone can check."

Jisa nods, then frowns. "Right when you got here you said it wasn't safe for me to draw the circle on the floor? But people do it on purpose to summon you or other apsels?" 

"Right, if you do it correctly it's safe. It takes a while to learn though."

"Huh. What's complicated about it?"

"Well, you have to write in bits that say what the apsel - or another kind of daeva, there are three - is not supposed to do, and my circle didn't have any of that."

"Like what? Could I make a circle that says you're not allowed to cheat at hide and seek?" 

"It's much more complicated than that, but you could make one that said I couldn't fly, if that was the kind of cheating you had in mind."

Jisa is immediately distracted. She bounces up and down. "Can you take another person flying? Like me?" 

"I've never tried to carry a kid but - maybe? I might not be able to take off from a standing start, though, which means jumping off something, which your parents might not like."

Jisa leans closer, lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "We don't have to tell them." 

"As long as we don't in fact jump off anything, we sure don't!"

Jisa thinks hard for a moment. 

"You could make a giant enormous feather bed!" she suggests eagerly. "Right under whatever we wanted to jump off. I think the astronomy tower would be good. And then it'd be safe because even if I fell I'd just land on the feather bed. ...Also it'd be fun to have a giant feather bed. Especially if it was bouncy. Could you make it bouncy?" 

"Yes, I could make something bouncy to land on. I still think your parents might want to have veto power over this plan."

Jisa nods, but is clearly already distracted by wondering about other things Cam could make. 

"- Could you fill my whole entire bedroom with beans and then we could swim in them? I read a story once where someone swam in a giant bucket of beans and I want to see if you really can." 

"I really can but I can't get rid of them afterward so it would be better not to."

"Oh. I guess Mama would be mad then. Maaaaybe we could...sell them at the market after. Or give them to beggars or something? Although beans aren't very tasty. Can you make cake too? How much cake could you make at once?" 

"Beans you have swum in wouldn't be very sanitary. I can make cake too, more than you could eat before it went bad in just a second."

Jisa seems kind of baffled that anyone would care about the sanitariness of beans to that extent. 

"- Can you make snow? I always thought it be fun if you could make it snow in summer sometimes." 

"I can but it would be bad for plants."

"Could you fix that by making new plants?" 

Vanyel interjects at this point, clearing his throat. "Cam, er, I'm afraid I need to interrupt you two now. The senior Heralds want to have a meeting. Are you up for coming and introducing yourself to them?" 

"Sure, I don't mind."

Vanyel pulls together a weary smile for Jisa. "Sorry, pet. Maybe I can ask your mama if she wants to have Cam over for dinner tonight? Er, if Cam wants to." 

Jisa turns imploring eyes on Cam. "Pleasepleaseplease? My mama's really nice!" 

"Sure, I can come over for dinner. I'll even make dinner."

Jisa narrows her eyes. "Are you going to try to sneakily make me eat vegetables?" she says, suspiciously. 

Vanyel starts trying to shoo her towards the door. 

"I'll take requests," snorts Cam.

"Because I can tell," Jisa says, as though Cam hadn't said anything. "All right see you then bye!" She allows Vanyel to shoo her off down a different path, and takes off at a run with the absurd energy that only children under ten can muster. 

"This way," Vanyel says. 

Outside his room is a plain stone hallway, leading to a door; outside that is a field, with gravel paths through it, and trees, and stone benches, and some gardens. The season appears to be late summer or early autumn; the air is pleasantly cool, the leaves turning colour, and there's a smattering of fallen leaves being tossed around by the breeze on the path. 

There is absolutely no sign of roads, or electricity, or really any technology more advanced than torches and candles - and whatever equipment was used to construct the long, low stone buildings, which all look very ancient. 

There are some white horses meandering around in the distance. 

"Okay, so, uh, the other planet I mentioned is higher tech than you by a lot," says Cam.

"Oh," Vanyel says, blankly.

It seems like - probably very important information, something that has huge ramifications, but right now his mind feels slow and gluey and stuck on thinking them through, and all he's really coming up with is 'Leareth would be so impressed'. Which is very apropos of nothing since it's not like he's going to TELL Leareth, that would be the worst idea. 

"Like, 'please point me at somewhere I can make you food and do medical research', a lot, what must your child mortality be like - maybe magic is handling it, I don't know whether you have local magic for that -"

It takes a long time before Vanyel finds the words to answer. He swallows; for some reason his throat is tight. 

"We...don't have magic for that - not enough of it, we have Healers who can treat illnesses, and mages who can - do a lot of things - but only a few of us in the Kingdom have Gifts. And there's the war. Lots of combat magic, disrupts the weather, makes crops fail. It's - things are pretty bad." 

"Okay. I don't know if you have the diseases I know but if any of them are mosquito-borne I can get rid of the mosquitoes, everything else can at least try broad spectrum antibiotics and antivirals while I figure something else out, I can make more weather tolerant seeds, I'm not going to be partisan to one side in a war so I hope you are not specifically relying on starving your enemies or killing them with malaria..."

"...Um. No. Gods, you need to talk to Shavri, she's going to be..." Vanyel trails off without finding an appropriate superlative for how DELIGHTED Shavri will be about this, and just speeds his pace a little. 

Cam slips on a fallen leaf and lands flat on his face. Gets up, brushes himself off.

"Er, sorry, should I slow down?" Vanyel says sheepishly. 

"I could fly but then you'd have to speed up, how far away is it?"

"It's that building over there - I guess you can fly and I'll just catch up?" The building is about another two hundred yards away. 

Cam lifts off and alights at the building.

Vanyel, who can run just fine, catches up at a jog. Though even this brief exertion leaves him feeling tired; he's not out of shape, exactly, just out of...everything else. 

"In here." He swings open a heavy oak door, gestures for Cam to follow. 

A ways down the stone hallway, an older, silver-haired woman wearing the same white garments as Vanyel is standing outside an open door. "Van! Sounds like you owe us quite a lot of explanation!" 

Vanyel ducks his head. "Savil, er, this is Cam. Cam, this is my aunt, Herald-Mage Savil Ashkevron." 

"Hello, nice to meet you. Where's the meeting happening, I find that I feel myself in a bit of a hurry."

She eyes him curiously. "Right here, we're just waiting for the others. Did you, er, misplace your shirt or something...?" 

"I don't like any designs that can be fastened around wings and don't like destroying a shirt every time I want to do laundry but I can put one on if it's not suitably formal."

Her eyes flick briefly to his pecs. "Well, it is a little distracting. If you wouldn't mind." 

Oh gods why did she have to say that, Vanyel was doing just fine at not being distracted by this via failing to register it, and now he cannot unsee the fact that Cam is shirtless and also attractive. 

No longer is Cam shirtless.

"Thank you. ....Wow, was that your making-things magic? Can you make something else so I can watch more closely? Oh, er, you can come in and have a seat." Savil ushers Cam into the room, which contains a long table and about a dozen chairs. 

Cam makes a donut hole. Allows Savil to inspect it. "Those're tasty if you want one."

Savil stares in amazement. 

(Does her mage-sight notice anything?) 

There is the briefest instant of bewildering power blooming when the donut hole comes into existence and then vanishing as suddenly as it appears, barely detectable in its swiftness except for how bright it is, but nothing about it is comprehensible even in the afterimage.

"Huh!" Savil says, blinking. "Where does it come from, when you, er, make things?" 

"Nowhere. I'm making it, not swiping it."

"You're wha– but that's– Sorry." Savil rubs the tip of her nose, still staring at him. "Our magic can't do that. I - guess I shouldn't say 'that's impossible' since, well, clearly..." 

"Clearly! So what do you wish to cover in this meeting?"

"Would you like to have a seat?" Savil pulls out a chair. "I'm not sure exactly what Randi is going to want to cover, but - well, I think we all want to know what you're planning to get up to here in Haven." (Since they clearly can't stop him, whatever it is, but Savil doesn't say this out loud.) 

Glance at Vanyel. "- Oh, and apparently your world has more advanced Healing? Er, non-magic Healing, I mean." 

Cam sits sideways in the chair for wing reasons. "Yes, we have advanced nonmagical medicine in addition to completely different medically-applicable magic. I don't have to stay in Haven - Vanyel gave me several languages with the summon, I'm assuming it was him because it would be odd for a six-year-old to speak that many, if you want rid of me I can go somewhere else. But I generally favor the eternal flourishing of all sapient beings and in this situation that probably means dealing with disease and parasite burden, leveling you up a bit in the agricultural sector, that sort of thing."

Vanyel suddenly has a very odd expression. 

"You... Wow." Savil doesn't seem to know what else to say. She sits down. 

There are footsteps in the hallway. 

Shortly later, a man also dressed in white reaches the door. He looks tired, like someone who's been staying up late working every night for months, and he's a little out of breath from the fast walk over. He also looks very young, maybe twenty-five. 

He smiles warmly, though. "You must be Cam? I'm King Randale. Welcome to Valdemar." 

A woman wearing green robes, with tightly curled dark hair trying to escape the leather thong tying it back, follows him in and sits quietly beside him. 

"Hi - yikes, are you okay, dude -"

Randi looks confused. "I'm fine?" 

Shavri isn't saying anything but she's suddenly tense. 

Vanyel shares an inscrutable look with her. 

"...if you say so. Uh, are we waiting for anyone else, might as well minimize how much I repeat myself."

"Tran's almost here. I think we can go ahead without Keiran and Jaysen, for now, they've got competing engagements." 

Indeed, a moment later they can hear the outside door thudding shut, and more footsteps, these ones moving at a jog. 

"- Heya. Sorry. I'm Herald Tantras." The new arrival doesn't sound out of breath at all, despite running here. He smiles, and squeezes Vanyel's shoulder affectionately before taking his own seat. 

"Hello! So, I'm Cam, I'm from another universe with better tech by hundreds of years, and I can make arbitrary material objects."

"You're - um, right - sorry, Vanyel says you're telling the truth and I believe you but it's...going to take me a bit before it stops sounding completely crazy." Randi rubs his chin. "You ended up here basically by accident, is that right?" 

"Yup! Being able to summon daeva like me is common practice on another planet but we didn't even know about you guys existing."

"Right. And - there was something about the way it happened that wasn't safe? That usually people in the other world summon, er, daeva like you with - some sort of safeguards in place? And whatever my daughter managed to draw on the floor by sheer coincidence didn't have that." 

Randi seems not that surprised that his daughter helped accidentally summon a powerful magic entity from another world; he shakes his head slightly as he says it, lips twitching. 

"Right. I'm not gonna hurt anybody but some daeva look for opportunities to do so and it would've been bad if one of those had caught the summon instead so you shouldn't try to replicate it without me telling you how to do it safely - and maybe making sure that whoever you summon is cool with being an experimental subject, since I don't know why this would happen to be the first valid circle ever drawn in this world."

"Do you have a way of communicating with other daeva back in your world, to ask that question? I'd've...expected that to be a tricky problem, if the only magic you have is making things." 

"I can communicate with other apsels by writing them letters and not sending them! The other kinds would be harder."

Randi seems confused by this statement, but Vanyel smiles, straightening a little in his chair. "Oh! As in, they can make 'Cam's most recent letter' even if they don't know what's in it? And you just have to, what, have an agreement that you both check whether trying to make that works every so often?" A pause. "What would happen if you tried to make something that didn't exist, like if one of your friends from home hadn't actually written you any letters...?" 

"Then I get nothing. I can check whether things exist and how many there are that way."

"That sounds really useful in itself!" 

"Hmm, at some point we should probably have you go through the list of all the not-immediately-obvious things you can do with this magic. But - er, first I want to make sure we're not trapping you here against your will, or something. I don't know how similarly this works to elemental summoning. Could you go home if you wanted to?" 

"I don't want to! I want to end material scarcity! I cannot go home of my own volition, I need the summoner for that."

"Which we're pretty sure is me, right?" Vanyel says quietly. "I'll - let you go home whenever you want to, obviously. But if you'd rather stay and help us - fix things here - then we're incredibly grateful." 

Herald Tantras seems kind of suspicious, and less sure that gratitude is the appropriate response here, but he doesn't interrupt. 

"All right, then." Randi folds his hands on the tabletop. "What do you need from us to, er, start making your plans here?" 

"...honestly not that much, I'm just attending this meeting as a courtesy. I guess I could use consults with your Healers about what the disease priorities are since they probably don't match Earth diseases in every particular. Once we have a test subject I can't perform a summoning myself and need a human for that. And if we don't want to just summon a bunch of fairies to go hither and yon with all the food you'll probably want to enlist local shipping infrastructure at least at first, though that will be so slow..."

"Fairies?" Randi says blankly. 

"There are three kinds of daeva! I'm an apsel, we make things; angels change things, fairies move things."

"Can you explain more specifically what 'changing things' means, here?" 

"They transmute matter into other matter. They're usually where you wanna go for medical applications, though apsels are ideal if you're, say, missing a limb, and there are some uses for medical fairies too. I went to med school myself."

Shavri immediately lights up, looking a bit like she wants to reach into his skull and drag out the contents of his entire brain to spread out on the table. 

"Your world has specialized schooling for that? That's incredible! I have so many questions! ...Although maybe now isn't the time. Our biggest problems right now aren't really cutting-edge Healing, just - crop failures on the Border, the usual illnesses you get in overcrowded military camps, most of our mages out of commission with serious injuries..." 

"I can do my best with the injuries on not much research and assuming you eat what I expect based on your human-looking-ness I can also do food and more robust higher yield seeds! Diseases may be trickier if I don't know what they are but I can look at 'em under a microscope and stuff and see where I get. I'm not super prepared to take sides in this war that I met half an hour ago though."

Unhappy frown. 

Shavri, though, nods and smiles at this. "Of course. And, I mean, I would understand if you wanted to go talk to the Karsites too -" 

Her smile fades. "Though, er, they're likely to be a lot less friendly than us. Especially if they find out that Vanyel summoned you."  

Vanyel winces. 

"...It would mean a lot if you could help with their crop problems too," he says quietly. "It's - they've got children starving too, and it - just, I'd sleep better at night if I didn't...know that was happening and mostly my fault." 

"Vanyel, it's not your fault." 

"What is the war about, anyway?"

Savil rolls her eyes. "Gods, I wish I knew." 

Shrug. "What are wars ever about? Land and resources, politics, which gods people worship... Reckon this one's a mix of all of them. But right now it's mostly the politics and religion, I think. There was a coup by the priesthood, they killed the King and elevated the Son of the Sun as ruler of the country, and...now they're being even less reasonable than before." 

"Gosh. Okay. Uh, I might want to have some controlled tests done on my vulnerability to local magic - daeva are indestructible but this hasn't been tested against your kind of magic in particular, you see - before I go through a warzone to offer them famine relief."

"Daeva are indestructible? What, er, sorts of weapons has that been tested against?" 

"...probably most of them at this point, I'd expect there's some weird project somebody is doing somewhere where they get their friend to attack them with everything anyone has ever heard of being used as a weapon. Including some stuff you almost certainly do not have here. The risk would be if your magic goes around or through that in some way, but we can test it on one of my wings, which are pretty easy to replace."

"Right." Glance at Vanyel. "Well, conveniently, we do have the most powerful mage in the known world right here." 

Vanyel makes SUCH a face. 

Tantras, belatedly, grumbles and sits forward in his chair. "I know you'd rather not take sides, here, but - look, I don't think this is symmetrical. The Karsites attacked first, and we're not trying to take their territory. Valdemar does not invade and conquer." The last bit comes out in a somewhat rote, singsong voice, like it's a long-memorized saying. 

"I'm glad that your go-to story is that and not something nastier but it is in fact just a thing you are telling me."

"That - is a difficulty we have here," Randi agrees. "Do any of the kinds of daeva have something like Truth Spell?" 

"No, we do not. Apsels have forensic applications but not to the point of determining who in a war is right."

"Does knowing the languages I know cover writing as well? Because you'd be welcome to make, oh, all the diplomatic correspondence sent back and forth between Valdemar and Karse in the last twenty years - and there's no way I could be altering that now after the fact to account for you arriving, right..." 

Vanyel trails off. Shrugs. "Although I don't think 'Cam determines who's right in this war' should be the top priority, right now. Honestly, at this point both kingdoms are being stupid." 

...Oops, he probably wouldn't have said that out loud if he were any less sick and tired of the Border. He doesn't care enough to take it back, though. 

Tran scowls, but doesn't say anything. 

Savil reaches under the table to squeeze Vanyel's hand. 

"Yes, I can read all your languages as well as you can, so I could check the correspondence, and if it seems like, say, the Karsites will set fire to my grain deposits if I don't denounce you, or something, I suppose I'll have to look into it, but I agree that it's not a top priority right now."

Suddenly he's feeling incredibly weary and all he wants is to be alone in his room. 

"How urgently did you want to test the magic vulnerability thing," Vanyel says tonelessly. 

"If you've got questions on how our magic works in general, I'm happy to answer those anytime. We should get through whatever Vanyel's needed for and let him duck out, though. He just got back from a year of being the only mage guarding the entire Border." 

Oh no why does she have to draw attention to him. 

"I don't think I need the most powerful known mage for this, I just need somebody to try to damage my wing and I'll see if it does more damage than normal things and if it doesn't heal like normal things. Whatever you'd do to a regular person you wanted to injure more than a papercut is fine. I can anesthetize myself for it."

"No reason I can't do it, then, I'm not that old and decrepit. Anything else urgent that you need Van for specifically, as the one who summoned you?" 

"Nope!"

Randi pinches the bridge of his nose, as though he has a headache. "Any other plans you want to finalize now? I would rather you ran it by me before, er, summoning a lot of fairies or whatever they're called, but it sounds like you need a local human for that anyway, so I guess let us know? Tran can be your contact if you need maps of the Kingdom or other information." 

"Maps would be great, actually."

"I can get you some, that's easy! Some books on our history, too, if you want. Oh, and do you need a guest room to stay in?" 

"Wouldn't hurt! I mean, I can make myself a house, but then there would just keep being a house indefinitely."

"Is there a...size limit? On what you can make?" 

"A rate limit. But a very high one. Some apsels make planets or stars recreationally."

"What? Stars?" 

Vanyel's imaginary Leareth is narrowing his eyes about this, which for Leareth is approximately equivalent to screaming in shock. 

"...You could destroy the world. If you wanted to." Shiver. "I - guess we're lucky Jisa's floor-drawing got someone who doesn't want to."

Shavri keeps to herself, and doesn't say out loud, the thought that they only have Cam's word on what his motives are. Though Vanyel did Truth Spell him - but Truth Spells are possible to get around, if someone is smart and quick on their verbal feet - it seemed fine when Cam was someone who could just make a lot of bread, but someone who can make entire planets is...a lot more terrifying. 

"I acknowledge this but I super don't want to. I guess it would be responsible to ask if there is mind altering magic..."

"Um." 

"...Yes. There is. None of the Heralds here in Valdemar would ever use it, of course, it's very unethical." 

"Wouldn't put it past the Karsites, though. Given that they're throwing blood-magic right and left, and - Van, did they...?" 

"I saw compulsions being used out there. Not...often. Takes a lot of training, to be useful. Blood-magic is...well, half the problem is that it doesn't, right." 

"I lack context in much of that but if there is a defense against mind control I want it."

"We can get you a shield-talisman against Thoughtsensing and one against mage-attacks of any kind. If you want them powered all the time then one of us will have to re-power them once a day or so - unless it'd count as something you can make, once you've seen one? Van, any other ideas?" 

Vanyel shakes his head, wordlessly. 

(He's thinking that if there are any additional precautions that would make someone immune to compulsions, Leareth would know them, and also he DEFINITELY CANNOT ask Leareth for advice on this question.) 

"I - probably cannot make magical items, though I guess I should try it, anybody have one on them I can just copy?"

The Heralds all glance at each other. 

"- Sure, go ahead." Savil reaches into her shirt, pulls out a sort of quartz nugget held with silver wire onto a leather thong, and tugs it over her head. "Here." 

Cam glances at it and makes an identical necklace. "Is this one magic?"

She only glances at it for half a second before shaking her head. "No. Oh well. If it's easy for you to make the quartz blank, though, it will save us time and materials on making them." 

"Sure, I can make blanks to be enchanted for my not destroying the world plan. They only last a day? That's not very long."

"It's not. We usually keep ours at much lower power unless we're actually in a fight, that's why." Frown. "You probably wouldn't need it at the combat-power level all the time here in Haven, but - given what a big deal it'd be, and - how much attention you're going to get as soon as you start making a lot of things - I kind of want to play it safe." 

"Yeah. Does kind of reduce my ability to independently operate. Uh, is there a - relatively noninvasive test - it's possible I'd nope mind control magic just like I nope drugs, but I don't know -"

"I suppose we could try a second-stage Truth Spell on you? It's very limited, all it can do is force someone to answer a direct question truthfully, and it's - well, I don't think either of Van or I would be very comfortable placing a compulsion someone even as a test, but we use Truth Spell in our courts here in Valdemar." 

"I assume there's some technical difference there. It sounds relatively noninvasive, at least."

"The mechanism is totally different - it's not ordinary mage-work at all, any Herald with any Gifts can cast it, it involves a sort of modified summoning of air-elementals called vrondi. Air elementals have an affinity for minds, but the vrondi aren't anywhere near smart enough to read your thoughts, or care, they're just very sensitive to picking up intent-to-deceive. With a compulsion, you can make someone do anything; with Truth Spell, you can only do the one thing. Or, well, maybe there are other ways to use summoned air-elementals, but you'd have to invent a completely different spell and this one took our colleague twenty years of research to work out." 

Vanyel is noticeably more animated when he's talking about this; it's evidently a field of interest to him. 

"You have elementals! That's interesting - are any of those smarter - do you have anything besides humans that is -"

"There are nonhuman species which are as smart as us - hertasi are one I've encountered, there are others as well. And, yes, elementals vary a lot in intelligence - just like animals do - and some are probably as smart as humans, supposedly some of them can talk." 

"And then there are Companions, of course! Though they were sort of just made by magic." 

"And a god." Vanyel doesn't seem especially happy about this fact. "...Oh, sorry, Cam, I don't think I ever explained. What makes someone a Herald - which all of us are - is if they're Chosen by a Companion. Companions are - people, but horse-shaped, and pretty magically powerful." 

"...gosh, okay. I will be polite to any horses I encounter and only giggle when I offer them sugar cubes a little bit."

"It's not most horses! Companions are white and blue-eyed and look different, once you've seen one it's pretty easy to tell."

"They don't normally talk to anyone but their Heralds, but they can," Vanyel offers. "If you wanted to specifically ask a Companion some questions." 

"I will bear that in mind. The talisman won't prevent voluntary telepathy?"

"It doesn't for Mindspeakers. Admittedly I don't think we've ever tested whether if a non-Mindspeaker wears one, it prevents us from talking to them, since it's - pretty rare that this actually comes up, usually we don't do that." 

"...well, that can go on the list of things to test." He materializes his computer, lists "telepathy through talisman" and "damage wing" and "second stage truth spell".

"Right." Savil strokes the tip of her nose again. "You know what, keep my talisman for now, I'll have Sandra make the new one to replace it. It's more critical for you to have it, I can manage my own shields. ...That one's only against mage-attacks, not Thoughtsensing. Van, any chance you have a spare for that -?" 

Shrug. "I think there's one in the bottom of my saddlebags - I, er, haven't finished unpacking them. It took a hit from some mage out on the Border and got finicky, but I bet Sandra can fix it." 

"I guess that isn't urgent urgent but it'd make me feel better."

"I can check if Sandra has anything half-finished in her workshop? She was making a lot of them for during the war, protecting our top Guard commanders against spies and all." He closes his eyes briefly. "- She must be in the workshop right now, I can't reach her with Mindspeech, but I can go over right away?" 

Randi slides his chair back from the table. "It sounds like we're wrapping up here, then? Tran, you'll grab those maps he wanted?" 

"Mmm-hmm." 

"So I should go with you?" he asks Tran. "- you can also just, like, tell me what maps you have in mind and I can make copies."

"They don't really, um, have titles or anything. I guess if you can work off 'the map that's pinned to the wall of my office'...?" 

Map! - in a little stick of metal that he pokes into his computer and then displays. "This one?"

Tran peers closer. "Yes, but - whoa. How did you do that? Mine is on canvas." 

"I can format-convert things!"

"Wow! That's - so useful - could you do something like, copy a stone building into a scale model made of wood -" 

"Or the reverse! That'd be pretty useful too." Savil stands as well, taking Vanyel's elbow. "Come on, ke'chara - have you eaten, you should get some supper..." 

Vanyel rolls his eyes in a very 'I am being involuntarily mothered' sort of way, but goes along with it. 

"I can do materials replacements too but it's not really the same thing as a format conversion - format conversion makes more sense as a concept if you're used to computers, inconveniently."

Vanyel half-turns, suddenly curious. "What are 'computers'?" 

"Machines that store and manipulate information. They're great."

"Oh! Like...paper and books except moreso?" 

"Much moreso! Fits orders of magnitude more in much smaller spaces, you can look for specific things you want to find much more easily with much less library science, and you can do all sorts of other cool things that books can't even sort of manage."

"That's amazing!" 

...Leareth would want to know everything about it right now. 

"Do you need more maps or is that one enough?" 

"Maps of more of the world would be good if you have them."

"Of the entire world? Er, no, we don't. I can probably dig up something in the archives that covers most of the continent?" 

Leareth would probably have a map of the entire world. 

Vanyel doesn't say this. He turns to follow Savil out. 

"I will settle for most of the continent for the time being."

"Want to come look at the Palace archives with me, then? You might see other things you want to, er, format convert and put on your computer." 

"Good luck! Tran, let me know if he needs anything else." Randi slips out. 

Shavri hovers, looking at Cam. 

"...are you joining us?" Cam asks Shavri, making to follow Tran.

"...Sure." She lowers her voice. "I, um, wanted to ask you about something. Can wait till we're there." 

"All right." His tail swishes as they walk through the corridors of the palace. He makes a to-do list on his computer as they go.

The archives are by Cam's standards not that impressive! There's a narrow, dimly-lit room with a long table in the middle, stools tucked under it; one stool is occupied by a young woman in Whites, who glances at them, does a double-take, exchanges what's probably some Mindspeech with Tran, and goes back to her book. 

There are shelves of books, and further back, shelves of boxes and crates. Maybe a couple of thousand books' worth of writing here, in total. 

Tantras heads for the back, starts searching for a particular box. 

"Um." Shavri glances over at the young Herald working. "Is it - all right if I use Mindspeech?" 

"If you can avoid accidentally reading anything I don't try to tell you, sure."

"...I'm not sure I can avoid reading anything if I'm trying to read your answers with Thoughtsensing, but I can avoid reading anything period and you can just answer without being too informative?" 

"Let's go with that."

"Right." 

She closes her eyes. Takes a deep breath. 

:...The King is seriously ill with - something. We don't know what. We don't know how to cure it, or if it's possible. It's not showing many symptoms yet but it's getting worse over time. I haven't told him yet. No one else knows but Vanyel and Tantras. It...seemed like you noticed something, though? When he came in?: 

"Not enough to go on," Cam says, after a moment of considering whether responses are oblique enough.

:But you studied medicine, right? What would you do next, if you were treating him and wanted to find out more?: 

"Investigate conjured samples. Screening questions."

:- Would you be willing to help us with that?: 

"Uh, it might not be priority one but in principle sure."

:Fair enough. It's not that urgent? Whatever the illness is, it's not fast. But - Valdemar is going to have a lot of political problems, if it gets worse down the line. Randi doesn't currently have an heir: 

"Why not?"

:It's, er. Complicated. ...His father died before he could inherit. Randi wasn't supposed to be King until decades from now: 

Shavri doesn't seem very enthused to talk about it. 

"Is it that Jisa's a girl -?"

:No! It's not that at all. Randi's grandmother was Queen, we're not - Valdemar's been about half and half, historically, when it wasn't two married co-consorts. It's just...:

She half turns away. Stares at the floor. :Jisa isn't his legitimate daughter. Randi and I never married. We're lifebonded, but...I...: Shrug. :They wanted him available for political marriages, and I didn't - I would never want to be a monarch. I don't want to force my daughter down that path: 

"...that does complicate things but I'm not sure what good the availability does if it's not being, uh, employed for the conventional purpose."

:Don't ask me, I'm not the Council. Er, they were working on arranging something - a marriage to a Karsite princess - but the talks for it were happening about six months before Elspeth died and the Karsites immediately started a war. It fell through: 

"I see. Uh, anyway, I can try the thing with the samples and microscopes at some point but not until I don't think anyone is imminently going to, like, starve."

:That makes sense. Thank you:

She nods to him, and turns to head out. 

Herald Tantras is still digging around for maps. He has a couple of rolled-up canvases tucked under his arm already, though. 

"I could just put this entire library on my computer," Cam mentions. "If that would save you some time. Is it all in the one alphabet?"

Tantras blinks, looks up. "- Er, almost all? There are a decent chunk of books in Rethwellani, they have some scholarly academies there and a lot of schools of magic. But they use the same script as Valdemaran." 

"Cool, I'll just teach my computer the alphabet and I'll be good to go." He inputs the Valdemaran script into it.

Tantras stops hunting for maps, and watches in fascination instead. 

When the last letter is in Cam conjures another little metal splinter of a computer chip, tucks it in, and starts hunting through the library for maps.

Once he's including everything in the library including little maps drawn in-line in books, there are several hundred! 

Most of the small ones are either very un-detailed, clearly wrong or incomplete or outdated, or of individual towns rather than countries let alone the continent. 

There's one huge map that gets nearly all of the continent though! It's three hundred years old and was made by a scholar in somewhere called the Eastern Empire - the main difference is that the western area shaded out as uninhabitable stretches a lot further east, eating a lot of Valdemar and Rethwellan - and the annotations are all in a different alphabet, but it's otherwise workable.

He can also find pretty up-to-date individual maps of all the countries bordering on Valdemar, and many of their neighbours on the other side; the list ends up including Rethwellan, Karse, Hardorn, Iftel, Menmellith (only showing up on some maps, it seems to go in and out between being Karsite-held territory), two teeny places on the western edge of Valdemar called Lineas and Baires, and some southeastern countries - Jkatha, Ruvan, Seejay. 

"Does Karse own Menmellith right now?" Cam inquires.

"- No, not right now. No one, er, really knows what goes on there - it's in this little triangle of horrible mountainous land, it's mostly mountain clanspeople, they keep themselves pretty isolated and don't have a lot of trade right now."

Cam makes a note of this. "Anything else these aren't going to be up to date on?"

"Hmm. Let me look... The Hardornen map is old, a bunch of their southern bit is Karse's territory now. And Rethwellan's expanded some to the west. Valdemar looks accurate, that map is new from Queen Elspeth's reign." 

"Cool, thanks." He annotates the map. He appears to be controlling the projected image with his mind. "Anything else that's in here that you wanna call my attention to?"

Tran peers at the map. 

"Situation's heating up in Lineas and Baires recently." He points them out. "Some sort of dispute about whether the heir to one of them is illegitimate. We're - taking measures about it, but it's not like Valdemar has a lot of slack right now." 

"You're at war, that kinda eats slack, yeah. Is the one of them without the succession dispute involved somehow?"

"Yes. There's - all right, so a couple decades ago they were fighting and Queen Elspeth sent some Heralds in to try to calm things down, and there was a peace treaty. With an alliance marriage - the King of Lineas and the fourteen-year-old daughter of the ruler of Baires at the time. Except now there are rumours that the boy looks exactly like his uncle and people are claiming he's a bastard - worse, born of incest, that his lady mother bedded her own brother before she was married off. It's...gross and implausible, but it's causing an enormous fuss. ...Also, supposedly a lot of people think the boy isn't quite right in the head, which doesn't help." 

"And I suppose doesn't help convince anyone that he isn't inbred, yikes. Okay. Uh, so, food. I can just fly around and leave packages of food lying around, but will people eat that or will they be too freaked out? Should I have it delivered in some more locally conventional way?"

"Er, what do the 'packages' look like? If it's unusual enough people might not realize it's food." 

"I'd want to copy local styles. Maybe adding some features to keep pests and such out but I could at least make it look superficially like what you'd expect."

"Probably wagons left at the edge of town would do better than just randomly? And, hmm, maybe with signs that it's approved by the Heralds. Crates and canvas or burlap sacks are the most common packaging for transporting food. Or wrapping in paper, for cheese and things." 

"Right, and nobody's going to have can openers, are they."

"- what openers?" 

"There's a way of preserving food where you put it in a jar, and seal it, with some complicated associated cooking process I don't know offhand, do you have that?"

"Oh, like making preserves? We do have some of that, though it's usually glass jars sealed with wax, and mostly foods in brine or vinegar or sometimes sugar to help with keeping it from going off." 

"Right, so, with somewhat higher tech you make the whole jar out of metal and you seal it so that you can't open it without a specialized tool and you have shelf-stable canned beans or fish or whatever."

"Huh! That's really clever. Can you make the cans and the opener for them too?" 

"Yes, though that won't help if people are bewildered by both."

"Fair enough, I guess we'd better check how hard it is to learn before we try that. And there's plenty else that would work fine in the meantime, probably. If we wanted to be really careful about not confusing people, maybe I could show you the food-storage behind the kitchens and you could just copy some of that, if it works that way?" 

"It does work that way! Lead on. Hopefully no one will be alarmed by a layer of plastic under the burlap."

Tran doesn’t comment on this; he’s a little curious about why the layer of plastic, whatever “plastic” even is, but mostly his brain is kind of hurting from sheer information overload. 

He shows Cam to the kitchen storeroom. There are sacks of wheat and oats and dried pease, and some ceramic urns of milled flour, and lots of potatoes and other root vegetables plus some slightly withered apples in baskets, and dried cooking herbs hanging from the ceiling, and lots of cheese of varying ages. Meat and milk are usually brought in fresh from the relevant barns, rather than stored here. 

Cam takes some photos. Designs a wagonload of groceries he can leave lying around wherever. "Okay, is there any reason I should not go fly around and leave a bunch of food wherever I see houses someplace nobody's obviously looking all around the hungry regions? With, in Valdemar, a note saying the Heralds are behind it."

"- Hmm, one moment." Tran closes his eyes. 

After a few seconds he frowns, and looks over at Cam. "Taver - my Companion, the Groveborn - has a bad feeling for some reason. But he's being cryptic about it and he said he wouldn't override me giving you the go-ahead, and Randi approves. It's...sort of not my business if you want to do places other than Valdemar too, just be aware that you might want to be extra careful about not being seen in Karse. The new priesthood after the coup is especially horrible, apparently." 

"Just because they'd tell people not to eat it, or is there something else?"

"They've...been systematically murdering anyone who has Gifts and isn't aligned with the priesthood. Including kids. Usually by burning them to death, I hear." 

"...wow. That's not going to, like, actually damage me, but it would certainly be annoying. - do you suppose your Healers would let me do some cursory experiments to make sure people on this planet react as I expect to various drugs so I can harmlessly knock assailants unconscious?"

"Ooh, yes that's an excellent idea. Can you, er, easily drug people from a distance?"

"Yeah, I took a class on it! - it was, like, part of a course on how to drug people for beneficent medical purposes, but yeah, it will also let me knock people out."

"Pretty useful. Er, assuming you use it for good purposes and not to mug people or something, but that doesn't seem like something you'd be that tempted to do."

"What on earth would I mug people for?"

"I mean, you clearly don't need their stuff, but neither do any of the nobleborn youngsters around the Palace, and every once in a while they go do it for 'fun' or something." 

"I can fly," snorts Cam. "Also, in my universe, they have invented video games. I do not need to mug people for fun. Anything else before I go drop off a ton of food?"

Tran is suddenly really curious about 'video games' but also his head kind of feels ready to explode. "No, I don't think so. Good luck." 

"Great! I will try to be back in time to accept Jisa's dinner invitation, I don't expect to cover the whole globe in one trip."

And he goes and makes a little shuttle and some cloud cover and a very small camera drone to fly below the clouds and he places wagonsful of grains and legumes and cheeses and dried fruits and roots and herbs wherever there are more than two houses kind of near each other.

This goes fine! Nothing happens to stop him. Some people seem weirded out by the sudden clouds, but no one notices the drone. 

(Back in Haven, Savil is trying hard to figure out how to make the Web chill out about all the strange magic being done; she's sick of checking up on the alarms to make sure that they are, yet again, the obvious thing.) 

Cam, ignorant of such alarms, circles back when the sun starts to go down, on the theory that this is probably about dinnertime and also he cannot see in the dark particularly.

He doesn't actually know where to go to find Jisa and her family for dinner, but there are a few Companions and/or their Heralds in the field or heading down the various paths. 

Oh, they do look kind of different from regular horses. He doesn't know if they can talk out loud, though, and Mindspeech is apparently dicey on the mindreading front. He will ask a Herald where he'd go to keep a dinner appointment with little Jisa.

"Oh! With her parents, I'm assuming? It'll be over in the Healers' housing area, want me to show you there?" 

"Yes please!"

The Herald politely walks Cam over to another long stone building on one side of a courtyard. He points out a different building opposite before leading the way inside. "That's the actual House of Healing over there, in case you need to find it at some point." 

Shavri answers the door promptly when the other Herald knocks. "Oh! Cam, welcome, come on in. Jisa's just helping me set the table." 

"Oh good, I was hoping I guessed reasonably about the timing. Can I make you dinner or is it already made?"

Jisa patters over, almost colliding with Cam. "Hi Cam! You make it. I wanna see how you do it!" 

"There's not a lot to see, but okay! What do you want for dinner?"

"Ooh, do I get to pick? I waaaant...hmm..." she hums under her breath for a few seconds, "fish - the nice white kind - cooked inside bread. And pickles to go with. And one of those egg pies with cheese on top. And biscuits with jam for dessert." 

Shavri sighs a little, though she's smiling. "Jisa, I like to have at least one vegetable with my dinner. Can you pick one?" 

"Ew." 

"It can be in bread. Or with cheese. Just, something green, please?" 

"Fiiiine. The egg-pie can have spinach in." 

"Maybe you would like a vegetable you haven't tried before! Have you had... artichokes? Celery root? Seaweed? Eggplant? Peppers? Bamboo?"

"You can eat seaweed? Huh! I thought bamboo was a tree. Not a vegetable. I read a story about a merchant in Seejay who had a house made of bamboo." 

"Bamboo is very versatile! Parts of it can be eaten as a vegetable. Do you want to try it? Or seaweed?"

"Are you going to make me eat all of it before I can have any biscuits?" Jisa says, suspiciously. 

"That doesn't seem like my job."

Shavri ruffles her daughter's hair. "You don't have to finish everything this time. It's a special occasion." She looks over at Cam. "What are 'artichokes' like? I don't think I've ever had one." 

So Cam will make halibut-filled buns with a little lemon and bayleaf, and a cheesy quiche, and a selection of various pickles from capers to pickled green beans, and spinach artichoke hors d'oeuvres on tiny toasts, and seaweed snacks, and a bamboo stirfry, and biscuits with assorted jams.

Jisa's eyes go HUGE as the food appears! She looks pretty suspicious at some of the unfamiliar kinds of pickles, but Cam's presence, and the sheer excitingness of food appearing from nowhere, gets her to try at least a bite of almost everything. 

She declares that the bamboo 'isn't a real vegetable' because 'it's not green' and eats several pieces, but mostly she chows down on the fish - eating a lot more of the bun part than the fish part - and the quiche. 

Shavri is mostly quiet during the meal. She smiles at Jisa's chatter and occasionally reminds her not to chew with her mouth full, but she's clearly preoccupied. 

"Are only green things real vegetables?" Cam wonders, appearing on Jisa's plate a bit of eggplant and a bit of cauliflower and a bit of fennel, all infused with various flavors demon-style.

Jisa seems kind of suspicious that this is a SCHEME, but the bamboo was actually tasty, and after some indecision and mostly playing with her food, she does eventually try a bite of each. 

"That one's good!" she acknowledges about the cauliflower. "It's sort of like bread." She's less a fan of the fennel, which 'tastes like medicine tea', and the eggplant, which is 'slimy', but - after a quelling look from her mother - she doesn't spit out either one, and thanks Cam diplomatically enough.