"He is not from Earth, where he's from men can have magic and he does which is how he got here, he came looking for chamomile and things kind of snowballed from there."

Isabella bursts out laughing. "You're so cute."

"...I was expecting it to turn out that you were from a bizarre Esperanto-speaking intentional community on a remote island, or something, goodness me."

Adarin giggles. "Thanks. I'm sorry for not telling you immediately, but uh - we kind of don't want everyone to find out there's now a new brand of magic running around and freak out accordingly. I'm a nice extraplanar visitor. I would like to keep all of my insides where they belong."

"Oh, sweetie, you couldn't think we were going to hurt you -"

"No, no, Mom, it's just - keeping secrets can be hard. I'm probably going to be taking credit for all the offworld magic for a while."

"Right, no, I didn't mean to make you think I was accusing you of freaking out and hurting me. You are both lovely people. But - yeah, Isabella's taking credit for off world magic. Because we have capitalistic plans to make lots of money off of it."

"Don't tell Grandmother," says Isabella.

"W-well. All right, dear," says Ranata, laughing a little shakily.

"Sorry for startling you with this all, ma'am. If there's any questions you or your husband have, I'll be happy to answer them, or if you don't believe me I can do something more showy?"

"Oh, sweetie, you can call me Ranata," says Ranata. "And I'm pretty sure I believe you."

"Doubt very much I can help with any of this magic business, and Isabella didn't get much of her curiosity from me," snorts Charlie.

"All right, Ranata. Thanks. And the offer's open for just about anything, now, I won't be cagey about things if you're curious."

"It is... I suppose the best way to explain it is that rather than circles or saying things, we have to think and remember all of what needs to happen. Not just what the spell will do, but what we are doing in order to have what we want happen. Sounds simple at first, but it's really not when you do things that are larger-scale than a little light. We tend to specialize in a type of thing that we know really well, and do that because it's hard to remember all of the details to every spell ever on the fly."

"They also have 'mana', like in a fantasy book," says Isabella. "Adarin has more of it than most magic people."

"Did the whistling have much to do with it?"

Adarin nods to Isabella's explanation! "Whistling has absolutely nothing to do with it, I was just trying to think of something that would work. I mean, I suppose it could if I used whistling as a memory aid, but I usually just talk to myself or take obsessive notes instead."

"Obsessive notes. You are really perfect for each other."

"I'm glad you like him. I also like him." Armhugs.

He laughs, looking at her with absolute affection. "I like you, too. I'm happy here, it's nice. Other things about my magic... We are good at scrys, and also transportation." Adarin grins and adds, "We didn't fly all the way here."

"But he can't scry onto clan lands, and he gets a headache if he tries the house, I was curious. We landed on the beach just south of the border."

"Oh, wow!"