Dagna listens in delighted fascination to this whole explanation, and then she says, "...What's a microscope?"

"It's a tool for looking at really small things, it involves lenses. Sort of like a telescope? Only for things that are nearby and tiny instead of far away and regular sized. You can see cells that way but not atoms, they had to figure out atoms differently."

"How do you figure out atoms? I want to figure out atoms!"

"I don't know - I'm really sorry, I never focused very much on science in school, and I didn't have time to memorize any textbooks before the accident. Every day I'm taking some time to write outlines of things I know that might not be known here so I can eventually write books and share them around but they're all going to be layperson's knowledge based on pure unprepared memory."

"Well - that's okay, I guess," she says. "It can't be that hard to figure it out again from scratch... I'll think about it after I learn everything there is to know about magic."

"It might be pretty hard, because what they teach in school is almost all about results and not about how any of the things were learned. I think my world is hundreds, maybe even a thousand, years ahead of this one in technology, and that's at their pace; here you have Blights to deal with that my world doesn't. And, even if I remember things right, they might be mistakes; scientists sometimes make those when they're finding things out. But I still think it's better than not trying to share the knowledge. So I'll write a book on what I remember about biology and what I remember about physics and so on."

"Good luck with that!" says Dagna earnestly. "I look forward to reading it!"

"If you like you can read through it before I publish, and catch me accidentally not explaining microscopes and things."

"I'd be happy to!"

"Great. I'm not sure when I'll have it done. I'm trying to get enough that I don't forget things all down but organizing it into a book is harder."

Dagna nods sympathetically. "Maybe I should start keeping copies of a bunch of my notes on me in case I end up in another world somehow and need to write a book about everything I know..."

"You don't have artifacts here and I am not planning to send you to another world."

"But now that I've thought of it if something else turned out to be able to send people between worlds too I'd feel really silly if it happened and I wasn't prepared."

"Well, I guess you could carry notes around and it wouldn't hurt. ...Although I think I was pretty lucky that the artifact sent me with my clothes along. It didn't necessarily have to do that."

"Well - still," she says. "In case it does. Hypothetically."

"But by that logic you could justify carrying almost anything. I landed in the Deep Roads," Annie points out. "Maybe you should carry three weeks' rations and things to start fires with. I suppose you already have the languages thing, I was very glad to have that..."

"If I land in some other world's equivalent of the Deep Roads and starve, I won't have all that much time to feel silly about it," she points out.

"I suppose that's true."

"So I only really need to worry about what I'd feel silly about if I end up somewhere that won't kill me right away but where I can't just come back to get all my books and stuff."

"That makes a certain sort of sense."

"And there's no way I could think of everything that might possibly kill me if I was suddenly transported to another world and then carry around enough supplies to deal with it all, but I can carry around enough notes to write a book about everything I've learned, probably. I can try my best, anyway."

Nod nod.

"Hi!" Hug. "Dagna's helping with the wedding jewelry."

"Thanks, Dagna! Who am I paying for your time?"