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Sarun, Appointee of Rixo, is pacing back and forth in his garden, lost in thought. Around him, the serfs are working the estate; inside, the servants are keeping up the house; his wife is around here somewhere, sitting outside in the cool of the evening with the kids, but he can't hear them, they probably went down to the stream. He is thinking about currency issues; they just keep coming up.
Silda in Cosel
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the-golden-years
She is in a world with MAGIC! This is the BEST!
(Now, now, don't get ahead of yourself, Silda, the likely explanation is not that you are in a world with magic it is that you are in a world with SCIENCE that people don't understand. Actually it is that you are in a VR experience one of your rivals set up to extract information to you / distract you, which, uh, if so, kind of sucks? But it's nicer than murdering her, so, thanks.)
She is VERY ENTHUSED about this. What does he do? Is he a mage?
He's not a mage but his kids are! They come home for dinner around this time and he has them show off bits of magic for her - they can't do that much yet since the oldest one is seven but one shows off how he can squash a pebble in his hands, and one girl demonstrates freezing the water in Silda's glass. "Ice," Sarun says helpfully when she does that.
the-golden-years
COOOOOOOL. Silda is very impressed with magic. Can anyone learn magic, or is it something only some people can do?
Sarun's wife comes in. He gets her a piece of seaweed from a bowl of it stashed in the kitchen. "Not magic," he says, pointing at her slightly swollen middle, and then he gives her the seaweed and she rolls her eyes and eat it, "magic!", again at the bellybutton zone.
the-golden-years
This continues to be AMAZINGLY FASCINATING. So no magic for her.
What's the food like?
The food is bread and lemony lentils and yogurt.
the-golden-years
She will praise it and not tell them that she can make even tastier food, because, let us be frank, she can't. A civilization in which she was born can.
Silda thinks that learning as much of the language as she can is very, very important! So she's going to work on that.
Sarun and his family are happy to keep trying to teach her the language, both directly and by talking to each other in the background.
the-golden-years
Great!
She's still not going to pick up enough to say anything very complicated until the next day, though.
That's okay, they can get across that she's welcome to sleep in their guest room.
Once they can ask her where she's from they do want to know that though.
the-golden-years
She's from Sanand, it's a small city a long way away. She was in the - facilitating-international-trade department of the government? She has absolutely no idea how she got here.
Maybe someone - shadow-kidnapped her?? Except she didn't appear in a very dark location.
the-golden-years
Shadow-kidnapping? She's never heard of shadow-kidnapping before!
Well, you know how Shadow elementals can teleport? They can take passengers!
the-golden-years
... So, uh, where she's from, they don't have Shadow elementals.
Or any elementals.
Or any magic.
They're really good at building stuff without magic though?
...why don't they have any elementals or magic?
the-golden-years
... Honestly she's not really sure. It's a very big universe? Maybe they just don't have seaweed, or... wherever elementals come from?
Elementals just start existing suddenly for no apparent reason as fully grown adults.
the-golden-years
This sounds odd to Silda? Do they know how to talk, and facts about the world, and things?
They do know how to talk, they all start knowing all the languages in the world, but not very many facts.
the-golden-years
Silda thinks this is kind of bizarre.
... Do they know what concepts mean? If they have the concept "calculus -" wait no that didn't translate. If the have the concept "writing", does that mean they're automatically literate? If they have the concept "leatherworking" can they recognize - leatherworking tools?
(Does "writing" translate?)
Yeah, new elementals started being able to read and write about forty years ago when writing was invented! They're not sure about the other details.
the-golden-years
!!!!!
... Writing. Invented. Forty years ago.
She's just going to...
... So, uh.
... Does this apply to - hand-skills, or just mental skills? Like leatherworking... and writing...
!!!!!!
Elementals only know languages - written and spoken both, turns out, but it's possible in another forty years a new way to do language will be invented and then new elementals will know that too.
the-golden-years
... Silda speaks six, and many dialects.
She guesses that many of these languages have ideas that, um, did not exist until she came here.
He, uh... depending on just what different kinds of elementals can do, and how smart they are, and much comes with the language, this might be no problem at all or might destroy all life. She doesn't want him to panic - please don't actually panic - but, uh, she might need to know a lot more so she can fix things?