"Well because it's likely it'll be very boring on your end, unless you have a mirror around?"

"I have a mirror." She unsnuggles and fetches it.

"Yes? It can't be anything but, mages have zero ability to see the past or future."

"But - that's the old lady's house. It barely looks any different. Those flowers are annuals, they'd have had to be replanted, why would they be the exact same flowers she had me plant hundreds of years later with her dead and me gone...? The shutter's still broken - why would the shingles still be there, they're wood, shouldn't they have had to be replaced...?"

"I - have little to no idea? You left Tayane with a method we know nearly nothing about. It might have had strange effects?"

"Maybe. Can you find the magic I fell into? I can look up in my notebooks where exactly it was, if that's not specific enough."

"That - seems like it's likely? What would you like to do?"

"I'm not sure. I wasn't even considering this possibility. I suppose it's a good thing I wasn't in a hurry to resurrect my parents, that would have been confusing."

"A little, yeah. ... Do you want me to try and look for your parents? Or anyone in particular?"

"If they're still alive they're more urgent than I'd previously thought, though mostly as a subset of the dealing with slavery thing. Meanwhile, the fallen wagon probably hasn't even been reported yet. I've been technically free since the first time Ice resurrected me, any magic that rids a slave of the heel mark frees them - Aelare's blessing, it's called - but they won't have that on the books, and that annoys me."

"Me too. You're not a slave."

"That sort of depends on what you mean. They don't have meaningful power over me any more, and haven't since I fell into the magic, but they do have a piece of paper that says they own me."

"... The former. A piece of paper that says something but can't be enforced is a piece of paper. But I would still like to make it go away, because a piece of paper shouldn't have any capacity to turn people into chattel, in any circumstances." Pause. "Thoroughness, and all."

"Well, that and if I'm going to do anything in Eseo I will need legal free status."

"That, too."

"Not that very many people would recognize me, and I do have a clean heel now, but just in case."

"Yeah. .... What circumstances happen to get the heel tattoo?"

"In my case they did it when I was a baby, because my parents were - are, I suppose, probably - slaves. Freeborns are sold into slavery if they have debts they can't otherwise pay or if they commit certain crimes."

"I don't remember how my parents wound up in their situations, but they were freeborn, I remember that."

"We can always ask them, if we get the chance to meet them."