She has landed in a copse of trees, winter-bare and snowy. In one direction there's a tall iron fence; in the other, a taller building, with stained glass in all the windows and a set of bells in a tower on one side and an open gallery with columns facing the yard she's sitting in. A human child is walking along the gallery, nose in a book; she's wearing a long, large-buttoned coat with upturned cuffs and a deep upturned hem which has been secured in place so it can serve as a kind of pocket, containing additional books and various other human implements. There's a snood-hood on her head and shiny shoes on her feet. The whole shebang is a dark phthalo green with gold detailing.

Cold cold cold cold cold cold COLD COLD she had no idea human bodies were so weak about COLD

(But eeeee, she has a human body and everything is so pretty and intricate - )

She calls out to the human child - she does not call out to the human child, right; she wheezes slightly at the human child - she - smacks one of her hands against her other arm??  - She grabs a stick and hits it against a tree, trying to get it to be as loud as she can.  She sure hopes it works; Plan B is crawling on her belly naked through the snow.

The human child glances up from her book! And looks in the direction of the noise! And yelps and breaks into a run, not remotely toward Cyllene!

Nooooooooooooooo.

. . . Maybe she just magically knows how to walk.  She should try that; it's hardly going to hurt anything since she's going to end up on the ground anyways.

She lunges for the nearest tree, hauls herself up with great effort, and picks up one foot.  She's seen humans do this, both just now and before, sticking her head out of the water to catch snatches of their lives until she fell back under the waves, gasping - she puts that foot down, closer to the building.

That wasn't so bad.

She picks up the other foot, and can't really put it closer to the building than the first foot is without letting go of the tree, so she does that.  She immediately falls, and not even in the direction of the building or the right way up, and it does hurt because she hits the tree on the way down and the bark scratches her back all up.

The small human is back a minute later, trailing an adult still in the process of putting on his coat, whose uniform is similarly constructed but red instead of green. "I told you it was a for-real-nonmagic emergency!" says the child.

"You sure did!" acknowledges the adult, doing up one button on his coat so it'll stop flapping open and leaving it at that as he takes long strides toward Cyllene. "Ma'am, what's your deal*?"

*More polite than it sounds but still kind of abrupt.

She wraps a hand around her throat, teeth chattering.

"- okay, well, obviously part of your deal is that you're freezing, come inside -" He holds out a hand.

Cyllene smiles, big as she can manage, and extends her arm.

He pulls her up but appears to expect her to be able to walk from there.

Maybe if she clings to him very very tightly she can prevent herself from falling over again despite this misunderstanding?

...sure, he will support her on the way into the building.

It's toasty warm inside, and there is a bench right next to a heat vent he deposits her on. "Sinzy, go get her a spare coat or one of the naproom blankets or something."

"Yes Preceptor," says Sinzy, and she runs off again.

Whether or not these people have a gesture to indicate gratefulness is not something her uncle's spell was designed to teach her.  She does her best to convey it with her face instead; hopefully humans don't use their faces in wildly different ways than she does.  The ones she used to watch didn't seem to but who knows.

What a good human-cave, what good warmth, what a good invention this bench is.  Not only does it have warm, but she can sit without having to fold up her legs or stretch them out too much.  Ingenious.

"Do you need some hot cider or something?"

. . . blink blink.

"Are you allergic to hot cider? You must be so cold and it's what we have in the hot drink department."

. . . Actually her skin - especially her feet and fingers, and especially her toes - is stinging like she touched a jelly, and it's definitely Very Temperature but she's not quite certain it's cold anymore.  She pulls a foot up to investigate it, running her fingers over the toes (toes!!!  they're so stumpy and funny-looking).  But they don't dissolve even when poked at, and the stinging hurts worse than dissolving did but lacks the element of terror and fundamental wrongness.  And her toes are more of a sea-creature color right now than a human one but maybe that just takes a while.

She looks up and mouths, Cider?  There's absolutely no noise when she does so, not even a whisper, despite the fact that the rest of the time her breathing is a normal amount of audible.

"...do you speak Kusan?"

The gestures she's seen and the words she's heard so far don't leave much room for nuance - Yes, Preceptor.

"Do you know what cider is."

Drink?  Hot drink?

"Yep. I'll be right back." He goes and gets her a paper cup full of hot cider.

Apparently a drink is a very very very small really weird sea!!  It is indeed hot, and it makes the stinging in her fingers way worse.  Cyllene manages to hold onto it for a few seconds before half-dropping half-setting it down on the bench next to her.  Some splashes onto her fingers and she shakes out her hands trying to fling it off.

"...if it's too hot for you now give it a minute, I guess. - Sinzy!"

"Sorry that took me so long, Preceptor and freezing lady!" says Sinzy, dumping two folded blankets on Cyllene's lap.

Oh they're so soft!!  Wow!!!  She has never in her life felt anything like this!!!!

Cyllene curls up around them but still doesn't have any words for thanking people.

"They'll work better if you put them around you," says Sinzy. "Preceptor, I have Sigils and Symbols now.."

"Yes, go ahead, Sinzy," says the Preceptor, and she runs off.

Cyllene uncurls slightly and - okay yes this object is made of layers and can unfold, that's so clever - oh now she sees, it's a lot like a sail (only soooo soooooft).

One not-sail goes around her shoulders and the other one goes over her knees and she curls all up again.

"Can you write?" the Preceptor asks her.

Blink blink.

...he will try handing her a scrap of paper and a pencil from his coat hem anyway.

She investigates the pencil, and investigates the paper, and fails to experience any enlightenment about what she might be supposed to do with either.

"You can hear, right?"

Yes, Preceptor.

"...okay. I'm not actually good at reading lips, can you just nod and shake your head when you're answering yes-or-no questions?"

- Nod nod nod!

"Great. Do you need me to call you an ambulance or are you warming up all right?"

. . . Probably humans - or, people who have been humans longer than her - know more about how their bodies are supposed to work than she does.  She extends a foot out from under the blanket for him to investigate.

He looks at her foot. "Okay, I don't think you're obviously frostbitten... do your toes hurt?"

She nods, but just once.

"...I'll get the school apothecary to have a look at you, wait here." Off he goes.

She's capable of waiting here!  There's architecture and miscellaneous objects around her to admire so it isn't remotely boring.

There are posters on the wall and the floor tiles are many-colored and form interesting patterns. A blue dog with a duster attached to its tail walks through the room and dusts a set of cubbies that hold various objects like hoods and lunchboxes and books. The wind clatters a treebranch against a window.

What a strange creature!!!  She stays put, though, except that she startles enough at the clatter to fall off the bench, spilling her cider in the process.

The dog sniffs the cider and sets about licking it all off the floor.

- Oh that's very close to her, and all of the ways her body has changed are in the direction of making her smaller and weaker and softer.  But she can still haul herself back up on the bench and press herself against the wall, away from the dog.  And in the process she notices that her skin is stinging a lot less now; that's nice.

The dog cleans up all the apple juice and then goes to the next room, duster wagging.

The Preceptor is back a moment later with a short plump woman in a different colored uniform accompanying him. She's carrying a bag. "Let me see that foot of yours," says the woman.

Foot: procure!

The apothecary takes firm hold of the foot and inspects the toes. "I believe you'll be quite all right," she says, "but here." She pulls out some chemical handwarmers and gives them a shake apiece before handing them to Cyllene. "And here's an infirmary gown to wear, it's hardly appropriate for the weather but should be better than nothing once you've called a ride to pick you up."

Oh, cool magic.  Waaaaarm.  There are several probably-important words she's missing concepts for but that doesn't prevent her from accepting these objects.

The apothecary puts more of the warmers on Cyllene's toes, feels her ears and deems them acceptable, and bustles off, leaving the Preceptor to demonstrate the hospital gown's workings and then try to convince Cyllene to wear it.

She's perfectly exuberant about putting on the gown, although her attempt at doing so demonstrates a frankly shocking level of incompetence.

The Preceptor seems confused about this but gets her into the gown with some ado and belts it shut and then reblankets her. "Is there someone I should call to come get you?" he asks.

Headshake.

"...do you have... a house."

Headshake!

"Can you tell me how you got here?"

Headshake headshake headshake!  . . . Throat tap-tap.

"Right. And you can't write either, are you dyslexic?"

Blink?

"...writing? On paper?" He points at the scrap he gave her, mimes a bit.

With the help of the miming Cyllene can develop a pretty good guess about how to use these objects!  She's not so sure about which end of the stick thing goes up, though.

...he will draw a little squiggle on the paper to demonstrate, though he doesn't look like he expects this to help.

It totally helps!!  Oh wow.  She grasps the pencil in her fist and creates squiggles and lines and hatches of her own, filling up the entire scrap.

But she produces no words at all, which is what he would have called the best case scenario.

"Do you have any way to communicate besides mouthing words for people to lipread?"

Headshake headshake.

"Well. I'm not very good at lipreading and don't know if anyone in the school is. Can you read?"

Blink?

"I don't want you to freeze, so you can stay here for now, but we're really not equipped to play host to an illiterate mute."

Nod nod.

"I'll go tell the rest of the faculty about you - as much as I know, anyway, which is hardly anything - have you even got a name -"

Cyllene.

"Sallin?"

Sssssssssai llllllllllleeeeennnnn.  Cyllene.

"Saileen?"

Nod nod nod.

"Okay. Cyllene. I'm assuming you have no idea how to spell that."

Ssspell? she asks.

"What letters someone would write, like on paper, to be writing your name."

Blink.

"Have you seen writing, ever?" He gestures at one of the posters, which says West Springs School of Magecraft.

That's not doing anything for her but then she can't really see the poster very well; maybe it only works up close.  Cyllene wraps her blankets around her more thoroughly, tips off of the bench, and crawls/landswims/The Worms over to the poster.  And very shakily stands up when she gets there.

Oh wow.

Oh, wow.  Okay, this explains a lot of her uncle's decorations, why he put these same(ish) sorts of squiggles all over everything - she runs her fingers across the lines of text, twice - that's so smart . . .

Cyllene hiccups, voicelessly but definitely audibly, and clearly finds it immensely startling.  She turns back to the Preceptor, hand on her chest and eyes wide.  And then after a beat she loses her balance and falls over.

He sort of almost catches her, enough that she doesn't hit the ground at full force. "I think maybe you need a hospital, only if you don't have insurance or anybody to pay it for you that's a nightmare and a half and you don't seem to be dying... did you escape from a cult or something?"

Maybe.

"Maybe you escaped from a cult. I didn't even know there were any around here..."

She hiccups again and looks equally shocked.

Nnno, dyinng?

"...you think you're dying? Or, uh, maybe dying?"

Cyllene starts to mime hiccuping but is interrupted by an actual hiccup.  Point point point at her upper chest.  Dying???

"...it just sounded like a hiccup to me. I'll get you another cup of cider since that one looks like it spilled, drinking something sometimes helps." He picks up her cup and goes to refill it.

She tries to stand up and look at the poster again while he's gone.  Are there any other words on it?

Established 2724

"An Enchanting Education"

It's incredible.  And the material it's made of is so fascinating . . .

The Preceptor comes back with cider. "If you're still wobbly sit down before I give you this," he says.

She sits.  - She stands back up, with somewhat more effort, and points at 'Education' on the poster.  Cider?  Education education.

"That says 'education', not 'cider'."

Nod.  (Oh, of course they match up with spoken words, that makes perfect sense.)

"If you don't want this I wish you'd said before I went to get it. Or, well, shaken your head about it. Are you going to sit?"

Yes, she can re-sit.

Cider.

She . . . holds it??  It's nice and warm, but so are the handwarmers and those aren't even a little bit the sea.

"Does your head hurt?" he asks her after watching her hold it for a while.

She shakes her head.

"Does your stomach hurt?"

Another no.

"Then... why aren't you drinking the cider."

She . . . sticks a finger in the cider and stirs it around??

"Are you one of those people who only drinks through straws?"

She sighs, silently, and reaches up to tap the poster.  She doesn't quite land on the part that says education because it's too high up but she's definitely aiming in that direction.  Drinking?  Tap tap up at education.  Cider?  Tap.

"So you don't know how to drink out of a cup?"

Nod nod!!

He goes and gets another cup of cider and demonstrates.

Oh woah humans eat the sea??  She did not expect that; it's very surprising.  But she can totally copy it - this sea is incredibly delicious.  This sea is incredibly delicious???  This sea is solidly one of the best things she's ever tasted.

"...glad you like it."

Inaudible giggle.  - Oh hey the hiccups haven't happened in a while; that's nice.

"Uh, my next class starts soon," he looks at his watch, "so I'm going to go tell the admin office about you... insofar as I have any clue what to tell them... and I can check on you end of the day."

Nod nod.  . . . Nod.

"Don't wander off. I mean, you can, you're not, like, being kept prisoner, but if you wander off I won't be able to find you."

- Nod.

And he disappears.

Okay, probably this is the part where she learns how to walk.  The cider is long gone; she sets the cup aside.  And after some thought she tosses off her leg-blanket but keeps the shoulder one.

Hup, leaning on the wall, one foot in front of the other.  Between having something to hold onto and being able to devote her full concentration to the task it's not so hard to stay upright, although the going starts out pretty slow.  She makes it to the next poster without falling.

The blue dog swings back through the room after a while of work on walking.

The dog is definitely distracting enough that she shouldn't try and walk when it's too near; she waits it to go away before resuming her attempts.

But what does the next poster say?  Posters are so important and intriguing and potentially useful.

A West Springs mage is prepared! Check: do you have your...
- spellbooks
- solo assignments
- reagents
- lunch
- personal elixirs
- pencils and other school supplies
- uniform

There are so many words she's not getting there but what she does pick up is very exciting.  Writing is already so smart but using it as a memory aid like that is just impossibly clever; humans are the best.

She tries to rely less on the wall as she heads back in the other direction, and accordingly falls twice.  But she makes it back to the original poster with her hand mostly only brushing the wall, and from the original poster to the next one on the other side with only a few touches at particularly iffy moments.

Event Calendar

Orientation Week
Exchange Student Signups
Exchange Student Week
Springfest
Summer Jewel War Tournament
Astronomy Overnight
Sigils and Symbols Showcase
Nature Spirit Ceremony
Concert Week
Autumn Dance
Potions and Brews Showcase
Theater Week
Prospective Mages Visitation
Snowy Jewel War Tournament
Winter Dance
Awards Week and Graduation Ceremony

It fits with what she knows of humans that they'd have wars but keep them neatly scheduled, although it's a little surprising that there's only two of them, and - she's not getting a lot of information from the dates but it doesn't seem like they last very long either.  That's got to be a big part of the obvious prosperity everywhere around her - it speaks so well of this culture that apparently everyone just holds to that - humans are so good.  And now she's one of them.  She hopes it's not too much to live up to.

She's not quite sure what counts as wandering and so resolves to stay within that three-poster range until she can competently run.  It's not too long before she can walk without touching the wall or falling - her uncle would not have given her bad legs, or at least he would have warned her if he did - but in trying to jog she takes a slightly nastier fall, so she decides to take a break and investigate all the cool surface stuff, the windows and what's beyond them, the flooring, the walls, the bench, the lighting, her gown, the cup, the blankets - anything and everything around her is worthy of fascinated scrutiny.

The window is glass, stained on the top half in the image of a uniformed child raising a pen in a dramatic gesture to cause the tip to burst forth a white light, and clear on the bottom half. Outside is the yard whence she came, with the trees and the snow and the grey sky and the iron fence. The lights - wall sconces with colorful glass covering them - are a bit warm to the touch. The bench is made of varnished wood. The cup is stiff paper. The blankets are one fuzzy fleecy one and one patchwork quilt.

It's all so beautiful, and so unlike everything back home; there are so many straight edges and smooth curves.  The outside is much more like home, but still strange and fascinating, and beautiful in a way that she can appreciate much more now that she's not risking dying in it.  She wishes she could sing to the lights and learn how they were done, see whether they use the same techniques as she does or if humans' magic is as smooth and straight and novel as everything else here.

The seams on her gown and on the quilt are the most interesting; she spends a good few minutes working out what's going on there with the thread and marveling at how neat and even it all is.

And then it's time to learn how to run.  It's a bit harder because she hasn't seen people do it as much, at least when she had close attention to spare, and because you have to do it faster, but it's easier because she already knows how to walk and really it's just an upgraded version of that.  She doesn't fall all the way over, but she does have to put her hands up and catch herself on the wall in the process of stopping at the next poster.

SNOWY JEWEL WAR TOURNAMENT SIGNUP

Ruby Team:
CAPTAIN: Nistam
Kessy
Doathinal
Chavik

Emerald Team:
CAPTAIN: Sazer
Zupais
Vinna
Ausdi
Clohei

Sapphire Team:
CAPTAIN: Avuron
Pesh
Larand

Diamond Team:
CAPTAIN: Naqualah
Omindo
Verely
Sinzy
Tham
Wikke

Oh, so it's probably soon.  She hopes she doesn't have to pick a side, or at least that she'll have access to good information about what side to pick.

The spell doesn't let her know how to pronounce any of these words except Sinzy, but maybe she can pull the Preceptor over here to read them off later and then she'll be able to choose a way to write her name, if that's important.

Run run run - hop?  Fall.  Back up, jog.  To the next poster.

WINTER DANCE TICKETS
8 in advance - 10 at the door - free for setup/teardown committee
Buy ahead of time through Aspen
Cast catering votes on Nibbler
Talk to Wikke to join the committee

It looks like Wikke is probably expected to survive the war, if Cyllene is understanding the timeline correctly; that's tentatively good.

Even now that she can run it's probably good to limit her wandering to a five-poster diameter.  She does a few more laps, tries out a couple more ways of moving, and then gathers her items at the bench and lies down, enblanketed.  She didn't wake up that long ago - the sooner they sent her here the longer it would take her father to notice she's missing - but enough exciting and exhausting things have happened that she doesn't have much trouble dozing off and on until she's interrupted.

She can nap on the bench as long as chattering students walking the halls when they change classes doesn't wake her.

That does, actually!  She sits up to watch them.

They peer at her and talk about her ("Who is that?" "I dunno! Maybe she's related to Omindo? He has hair like that." "He dyes it." "REALLY? Wow, that'll get my sister to shut up about having a crush on him pronto!") but nobody tries to talk to her directly unless she seeks their attention more directly.

Well, she smiles at the people who talk about her.

A couple of them wave at her, but they all have places to be.

Hopefully that gesture means about the same thing here as it does among merfolk.  She waves back.

And eventually they're all in their classrooms and she has more waiting to do.

She's a little less tired now but she can still sit and pet the softer blanket and practice her pedestrianism.

She will have plenty of practice with walking by the time school lets out, the students flow out the doors, and the Preceptor returns to collect her.

Wave wave!!

"Hi. I assume you haven't remembered how to talk, or write, or call your family, or anything like that, in the last couple hours?"

She considers that for a moment before shaking her head.

"Do you have a family?"

She shakes her head and mouths maybe, but then shakes her head again.

"Where did you come from?"

Maybe?

"Is there... anywhere you want to go?"

Headshake-maybe.

"Why are you here?"

She walks to the closest poster and points at Magecraft.

"You want to... study here?"

A silent giggle.  She taps on School while shaking her head, and on Education.  Then she nods and tap-tap-taps on Magecraft.

"You don't want to study here, but you're here because it's a magecraft school?"

Headshake headshake.

"...this is a very tedious way to communicate. Why can't you write?" he asks rhetorically. "You look at least, oh, twelve at the youngest, you ought to be able to write given that your motor control was good enough to draw those squiggles. Can you type?"

Blink?

"Tapping letters on a device to spell words -? I have no idea what to do with you."

She walks (walks!!) back over to the bench and picks up the pencil from before.

He watches her curiously.

She shows him the scrap of paper, which is already entirely gray with scribbles.

...he will grab her another piece of paper from the pocket on the outside of his thigh.

She takes it, clutches the pencil in her fist, and draws.

She starts with the first figure, then has to walk back over to the poster to laboriously copy out 'Magecraft' letter by letter.  The second figure's next, and as an afterthought the squiggly lines for the mermaid and the straight floor for the humanoid.  Then the dividing vertical line and another back-and-forth as she writes (or draws, really) 'School'.

"Sorry, I have absolutely no idea what you're getting at there. Any chance you could write complete sentences?"

Headshake.

"Why?" he says incredulously.

Magecraft Magecraft Magecraft!

"Are you claiming that you are magically unable to produce complete sentences?" he says, sounding deeply unimpressed with this explanation.

Nod nod nod nod nod!!

"That doesn't make any sense!"

Blink?

He sighs and sits down on the other bench opposite hers. "So you appeared effectively out of nowhere, stark naked, with a name but no family or home or money or plan, and while you can't talk you can mouth words and you can sort of read and kind of write and almost draw but sentences are out of the question. Have I got that about right?"

Nod nod.

"How old are you, Cyllene?"

Maybe?

"Do you not know?"

Headshake.  - Nod??  Not know.

"Uh, let's see. Do you still have any of your baby teeth?"

Giggle; headshake.  She adds a sharp zigzag at the first figure's mouth.

"Okay, so you're probably at least twelve. Do you have periods yet?"

Blink?

"...I'm going to take that as a no, so you're probably less than sixteen. Does that sound right?"

Maybe.

"Okay. I might be able to find you some kind of repository situation but child repositories suck, if you have any other ideas for where you could go and not immediately freeze before you have a chance to starve you need to figure out some way to indicate that literally at all."

School, Education?

"Yeah, the repositories usually have something that passes for a school or send the kids somewhere cheap."

West Springs School of Magecraft?

"- this place isn't cheap, unfortunately, it's actually one of the most expensive schools in town."

Blinkblink??

"And if you have any money you either don't remember that you have it or do not have it on you, which means you can't pay for tuition."

Money?

"Did whatever weird place you grew up not have money? Stuff you exchange for things so that the people you got the things from can go on to themselves exchange it for different things?"

. . . Nod.  She starts to reach a hand towards her throat but reconsiders.

"Well, here there's money. Some people work for the school to get their kids in, the groundskeeper does that and the librarian, are you hiding marketable skills?"

Maybe.

"What skills do you maybe have that are maybe marketable?"

This time her hand goes all the way to her throat, but then she shakes her head.

"I can't tell if you're trying to tell me that you lost an expensive necklace in the snow, that you're worried for some reason that you will be beheaded, that you think your sore throat or whatever will wear off in a few days and you'll be able to use complete sentences at long last..."

. . . She taps on her throat and Magecraft a few times simultaneously, and then separately.  Twice on her throat and twice on the word.

"I haven't the faintest clue where you're going with that," he says, starting to sound kind of frustrated.

She sighs heavily.  But inaudibly.

"Okay. I'm going to let you stay in the nap room overnight, just this once, so you won't freeze, and I'll email around to see if you're a missing person or if there's a charity that covers your case or anything. And you can have leftover rice from the cafeteria, and cider."

- Nod nod nod nod nod-a nod!

He leads the way to the nap room. He brings to this room a paper bowl full of rice and a nearly-empty squeeze bottle of a condiment labeled Junna's Mild Herbsauce - "I don't know if you like this but it's the only one that was low enough that we'd have to chuck it before it made a kid mad tomorrow anyway -" and another cup of cider.

Cyllene accepts these gratefully but can't unaidedly open the herbsauce.

...he will flip the cap open for her exasperatedly. "Do you need anything else? The bathroom is across the hall."

Blink?

"Do you need anything else?" he repeats more slowly.

Blink blinkblink Bathroom?  Blinkblink.

"Across the -

- do you not know how to use the bathroom."

Headshake.

"I'm going to go find the cleaners, they should still be in the building and some of them are women." Off he sweeps.

Cyllene looks around the nap room.

It has alcoves with mattresses in them and accordion doors that can close over each and lots of blankets and pillows. It has a door to the outside, but not a window.

Oh the accordion doors are so cool!!  Slide slide slide slide.

The Preceptor comes back with a woman who is not in uniform, just in cargo pants and a tunic, and the woman says, "He said you maybe escaped from a cult and don't know how toilets work?"

Nodnod.

"Okay, well, let's go transfer knowledge on that in the least embarrassing possible way," sighs the cleaner, motioning for Cyllene to follow her into the bathroom across the hall.

Cyllene can follow.  (Cyllene can walk!)

"This is a toilet," says the cleaner, gesturing dramatically at the toilet in the bathroom. "You sit on it when you need to pee, or poop, with your clothes out of the way, and all of that goes in there. You clean yourself off with this paper here, you tear off yea much at a time and follow up if you're not clean after. Drop that into the toilet too. Then you pull this lever here, and it all gets rinsed away. Sense?"

She nods seriously.

"Good. Then you wash your hands." She demonstrates this at the sink.

Humans use water for a lot more things than Cyllene expected, which was zero.  But she can do that, yes.

This task accomplished the cleaner returns to her work elsewhere in the school.

"Anything else you need?" the Preceptor asks.

. . . Not anything that she knows how to convey, apparently.

"Okay. I'm sure this will be boring but at least it will not be boring and freezing. I will see you in the morning."

And he departs.

Cyllene waves after him.

She drinks the herbsauce, which is hard to get out of its container and very flavorful, and eats the rice which is kind of bland, and drinks the cider which is still delicious even when it isn't warm.

The alcove she picks is unbelievably cozy, enough that she happily spends maybe an hour or two there, but she kind of used up all her tiredness earlier.  And it sounded like she's going to be alone for the entire time the whole surface is dark, and the naproom is much less interesting to look at than the hallway, and she wasn't told not to wander this time.

So she wanders.

It's quite dark in the school but there are some small lights that are on at night, or that activate when she walks by. She can find the bathroom, of course, and various classrooms with ensuite offices attached to them (locked, but some have windows in the doors), and the school library, and cubbies and filing rooms and the front office and the gym and the place where the blue dog sleeps.

- The library??

There are books in it!

- She had one of these!  Years ago, when she was smaller - it didn't hold up in the water very well - now she understands what it was for -

She runs back to the naproom (tripping twice) and collects the pencil and paper and runs to the library - what is this book here about, what words does it have?

It's really hard to read in the dark.

She takes the book with her to one of the motion-activated lights.

It's a novel about people who live on clouds and build a new cloud city in a windy area that makes this complicated.

Oh wow, she had no idea there were people like that!!

She writes down words and phrases she expects to be helpful as she comes across them, trying to balance making them legible but as small as possible.  'Thank you', 'I don't know', 'silence', 'heal', 'music', 'what', 'help', 'food', 'water', 'voice', 'person', 'sort of', 'when', and 'how'.

There is more paper lying around in the library if she looks for it!

That doesn't occur to her.  She reads the whole entire book (even though the area near the motion light isn't very comfortable) and puts it back just where she found it.  The most exciting thing in it - or, one of them, and the most potentially useful - was that it implied there are ways of making music without using one's voice?  Maybe that's only for cloud people, but since she needs to stretch out anyways she directs her wandering to look for anything that could even possibly be that.

If she opens enough cupboards in a gym she will find a clear plastic recorder.

- The book mentioned something that was maybe a little like this object!!  If so, she should be able to hold it like so and put her mouth here and - blow?

FWEET

It's not really as satisfying to laugh maniacally when you can't make any noise directly but Cyllene tries anyways.

It takes her maybe half an hour to become satisfied with the quality of her scales; the recorder has notes at different intervals than she's used to and its tone quality is much more difficult to wrangle than her voice.  And after that it takes another hour or so to work out a simple little song that calls a ball of light into existence, shifting with rays.  She directs it to hover this far above her and this far away from her and in this cardinal direction.  (If she had her voice it would be child's play, a project of twenty seconds, to make it stay in front of her as she turned any which way, but at this point she's perfectly grateful to take what she can get.)

She doesn't have a spot in mind to take the recorder to the way she did with the library book, and it's not hers, so she puts it back, memorizes the location of the relevant cupboard, and goes a-wandering again.  Now with added visibility.

Lunchroom. Auditorium with a projector screen. Cute little towers with reading nooks.

Oooooh.  Everything is so pretty, and - the purposes of all the things are pretty, she can tell, even when she can't tell what the purposes are.

At what would have been a reasonable hour on her previous sleep schedule, she makes her way to the bathroom, uses it without trouble, washes her hands, and moves all her objects over to an alcove that's positioned so that her little ball of light will hover outside it when she closes the door.  And sleeps.

The naproom doesn't get any brighter come morning. But students and faculty pile in.

One of the nooks has a glowy thing floating outside of it, about four feet up.  It has no obvious mechanism for staying at that height and is intangible, though slightly warm to the not-touch.  Sometimes it shifts or bobs a little.

The piling is mostly into other parts of the school, but there's often a couple students who didn't sleep well and need to crash after being dropped off at school. One doesn't even notice the light. The other finds it rather invigorating, though, and prods it.

It doesn't react.  It's just warm.

Batbatbatbat. The school has a no screen policy so he can't take a photo. He goes to get a teacher.

The light is still there when he returns.

"See I told you," whispers the student.

The teacher goes and gets the preceptor who decided to let a runaway cultist sleep at the school overnight. He goes and taps on her accordion-door.

She blearily opens it, after a bit.

"Did you... have something to do with... this light?" he asks her, waving at it.

Nod nod?  She fumbles around for her index card.

He waits, looking at the light as though worried it will leap into disagreeable action.

Behold, the index card!  . . . It doesn't have any of the things she wanted to say on it; she really should have prioritized fitting 'good' and 'bad' on.

She settles for tapping on 'what' with the eraser end of the pencil.

"... what do you mean, what, I'm here about the light like I just said."

'I don't know'.

"You didn't have something to do with the light?"

. . . She sits up, and the light moves to follow the path of her head.  She stands, and it still moves with her, always in the same relative position.

"It's following you and you don't know why?"

Headshake.  She taps the eraser on her sternum.  'Magecraft.'  And then 'music', in case they do it differently here.

"Sweet fuck," he says.

She doesn't have a 'sorry'.

. . . 'Thank you'??

"Is the light permanent?"

'sort of'.

"And it has something to do with music? I don't hear anything."

She gestures for him to follow and starts to head for the gym, lightball tracing the rise and fall of her steps.

...yeah. Sure. He will follow her. Fortunately most of the kids have made it into classes now and he doesn't have an uproar on his hands.

Gym, cupboard, recorder.  Check on the Preceptor's general demeanor??  Does he seem mad at her?

Not really? He looks tired and confused and frustrated and a little scared but not mad at her.

Okay, then she can play.  Nothing notable happens for a bit except shockingly beautiful music produced by an instrument not typically associated with that, but then she picks up the tempo into a merry jig and the light starts to move, first in a flat circle above her head and then up and down combined with that, dancing around her on the surface of an imaginary cylinder.

And as she holds the final notes, it slows and comes to a stop in front of her before bursting out (still pretty softly, she made it for nighttime levels of brightness) and disappearing.

"How did you do that??"

She picks up her notecard off the floor.  Magecraft.

"That's - that - this is a roleplaying school, the magic is pretend."

Blink?

"Magic isn't real! Except apparently your light music!"

'how'

"What do you mean how?"

"Everything proceeds in a fashion unaffected by magic of any kind, and some people wish there was magic so they go to school here and we all pretend, but - you -"

She goes back out to the hallway and points at one of the sconces.

"- yes, they get a fancy kind that looks like that, but they're still using electricity..."

. . . Cyllene starts at the recorder again and tries to get the light to tell her about itself.  This tune is mostly looking for other magic but she should still get at least a vague understanding even if it isn't.

There is no other magic. Nada. That thing that eels do is going through bits of metal in the wall into the sconce.

She cuts off her performance.  Point point at the sconce headshake headshake Magecraft‽

"The sconce isn't magic! - if we're going to talk about this we should go somewhere the kids won't hear us, some of them get very touchy about breaking immersion." He leads her up to one of the tower reading nooks.

Stairs, let alone spiral ones, aren't something she's practiced yet, but with a little effort she can follow him.

The reading nook has window seats and beanbags and a table that can fold down from the wall to reveal a whiteboard; he puts the table up and out of the way and sits in one of the window seats, face dropped into his hands.

(It's so beautiful.)

She can't talk to him if he can't see her and she doesn't want to tap him on the arm or anything, so she just stands there until he's done with that.

He does eventually look up. Is the light still there?

No, she hasn't made a new one since she disappeared the first.

"So. You're magic?"

Nodnod.

"And you got here by magic. Which would be why you showed up naked and alone with nobody in the world."

Nodnodnod!  She pulls out her card and taps on the mermaid figure, then 'voice', 'water', 'person'.

"- that I don't have a guess for. Maybe you should take a drawing class. Uh. Voice. Did something magical happen to your voice?"

Nodnod.

"Will it come back?"

'Magecraft music heal silence.  I don't know when,' she taps out.

"...okay. And then you'll be able to speak? - in Kusan?"

Maybe 'sort of I don't know'.

"You can understand Kusan but might not be able to pronounce it?"

'Sort of'.

"...okay." Deep breath. "What can you do, besides lights? Anything?"

Nodnod.  Anything, 'sort of'.

- not what he meant but a valid answer!!!

"And you need to make music? What kind?"

Blink?

"Like, does drumming do it."

'Sort of', nod.

"Do you need a real drum, or can you just pat any nearby object and make magic happen?"

. . . 'Sort of'.

"The recorder was better?" he guesses.

Nodnod!

"Are there better instruments than that?"

'Voice'!  . . . 'Sort of'.

"...are different instruments better for different magic?"

Headshake.  Different 'person'.

"Can humans learn your magic?"

'I don't know'.

"So, for you voice is the best, but for now you can do stuff with the recorder and maybe other instruments?"

Nod!!

"Okay. Uh. This is... important, and I think probably you don't have to worry about money for the foreseeable future."

'Thank you'.

"I don't think anyone will need that recorder till the Jewel War kicks off and it can be replaced sooner than that, you can just have it unless you start doing anything bad with your magic."

She nods seriously.  . . . 'Why'?

"- so you can do magic? And people won't think I'm refusing to break character, if I talk about it."

Headshakeheadshake.  . . . She takes a moment to think, then points at the Preceptor.  Headshake-'Magecraft'.

'Why music' war.

"- the recorder's in the gym so that whoever's playing a role with music magic, like yours, has a prop, but it's not real in that case."

'Why'.

"Because we don't have real magic."

. . . War 'what what what'.

"OH that must have been confusing. It's a game. It's a pretend war. The kids get jewels throughout the school year - glass ones - for various accomplishments and then they can use them in the game and there are teams and so on."

. . . She giggles, and then it's her turn to bury her face in her hands for a minute, shoulders shaking.

"A lot of things are pretend. It's just worse as pretend if you go around saying it's pretend all the time, so we don't."

She nodnods, still holding her head.

. . . She peeks through her fingers to tap 'Thank you'.

"You're welcome.

"Anyway. Welcome to Green, Cyllene, I'm Shavan."

Wave wavewave!

He laughs softly. "Do you want to keep sleeping in the nap room for now or would you rather live in an actual house?"

'I don't know'.

"Okay. Nap room is simplest, I guess, but it does leave you completely alone overnight, and complicates feeding you. Students bring most of their own lunch, only the rice and some condiments are provided by the school."

Nod.  She yawns, passes over the pencil and card, mouths pretend? and points at one of the few remaining blank spots.

"P-R-E-T-E-N-D."

She nods expectantly at him.  Taptaps the blank spot.

"I'm really confused about your literacy situation. ...Also I only handed off my first class for the day and should probably spend the rest of this slot getting you real clothes. - would you like me to bring you to my class, and have the students try to figure out the nature of the translation magic you are using. They'll think it's pretend, but they'll have fun with it."

Nodnodnod!  - She pinches the shoulder of her gown and tugs on it a little.  Real?

"- I mean, it's not imaginary, but it's not really for wearing around in normal circumstances. There're probably some uniforms in the spares closet that'll fit you."

He will go scare up a uniform for her, like Sinzy's.

She will need some instruction about how to put it on.

This he is willing to do for her instead of locating a female staffperson! There's linen shorts and then long pants and then a tunic and then a coat and a hood for going outside. Shoes are a little harder to fit but it's not an immediate problem for just walking around the school.

He brings her to his classroom, which has two different languages up on the walls.

Shoes seem important to humans and now Cyllene's a human so it would be great if she liked them too but she's Not So Sure About These.  She can cope for now though, and she likes the rest of the outfit.  It's - heavy, in a nice way.

Unless the two languages are in two very different scripts she can't really tell them apart.

They use the same alphabet, in fact!

Preceptor Shavan's class of eight kids piles into the room a few minutes after they do. "Who's that?" says one loudly, pointing at Cyllene.

"This is Cyllene," says the Preceptor. "She's sort of like an exchange student, except she's using a translation spell, and it's not a very good one. Your job is to figure out how that translation spell works and how best to communicate with her."

The students are very excited about this and rearrange all their desks around Cyllene in a circle. "Hello Cyllene," one says.

Wave wave wave.

"I'm Vior! Can you pronounce that?"

Vvvvior.

"You didn't make any sound..."

"Can you talk?"

Headshake headshake.

"Oh, maybe that's what he meant about it not being a very good spell."

"Can you write?"

It's a little hard to tap her notecard where all the other kids can see it, but she tries her best, moving it around as needed.

'Sort of'.

"Sort of," Vior says helpfully. "Huh, well, let's poke that -"

Someone hands her a sheet of paper and a pen. "Can you write your name?"

Headshake.

"Can you write 'sort of'?"

. . . Sure, she'll rewrite it on this paper, referencing her card for all the letterforms.

"Oh, she's looking at the card..."

"Hmmm..."

"Can you write the letter K?"

She stares at the card for kind of a long time and then copies the 'k' out of 'thank you'.

"Huh."

"Oh, the card doesn't have a Q, can you write a Q?"

. . . Is there a Q anywhere in the wall writing she can see from here?

"She's looking for one..."

"So she can recognize a Q if she sees one, but doesn't know how they are by herself?"

"Maybe!"

She gives up at that.

"Can you draw an ampersand?"

Headshake.  - Is there obviously one around in the room?  No, headshakeheadshake.

"There's one on the class schedule, by Preceptor Shavan's desk."

Stare stare stare.

&

"Huh."

"Can you write an S ten times in a row please?"

Once she finds one to reference, ssssssssssure!

The student who asked this is watching to see if she gets faster and neater as she goes.