The woman made herself busy removing things from me that I hadn’t had the presence of mind to notice earlier. First she took a needle out of my arm with a tube attached to it. Afterwards other tubes were removed. The less said on that the better. Then she did something which surprised me and called in a large man who evidently had the key to my bindings. My claws, despite not being particularly prominent, gave them pause. If only they could see all the weapons I still had in my storage they would perhaps sweat more. It would be uncouth to draw attention to that right now though, so I sat still while the big man carried out the manacles.

  Then the woman showed me around the room. The basin with the flowing water was something I was used to seeing nearly everywhere, but these people seemed to pipe in real water rather than create it with an enchant. Plusses and minuses to that, I supposed. The latrine was much nicer than I was used to in my home in the deep forests of Qwanipex, where my community was semi-nomadic. The waterfall was new. I was used to tubs and there wasn’t one here.

  Food was brought in, but it was the accessories that really caught my attention. They had words on them. I couldn’t read it, but it was the first example I had seen of their writing. The soup was nice I guess; and seasoned this time. My attempts to get the woman to give me more writing went misunderstood. It wasn’t until I again used the minor working for mana writing that she caught on. Even that was almost ruined though because the glowy script made her mind malfunction for a few minutes.

  She stuck her head out the door and got into an argument with someone outside, but she came back in with the look that meant she had won and was smug about it. After a while the big man came back in with a thin book, some loose paper and some wax sticks that weren’t candles. Now that I was looking, I noticed he had some words on his chest that I didn’t notice earlier. The green on green made them blend in.

  The woman took the book and flipped through it so I could see. Whoever had transcribed it must have been at it for a while with all the colored art, but the letters were the important part. She went through a page at a time and made much of a fuss over each symbol and the sounds that they made. I took careful notes with the wax sticks.

  Once that was done she pointed to herself and said a word and then wrote it down.

  SUSAN

  Then she pointed to the man in green and said a word and wrote it down.

  FOGEL

  This prompted a quick discussion between the two, and she added more words and sounded them out.

  SUSAN WEST CHRIS FOGEL

  Then she pointed at me and spoke some more.

  “Kos-api” I said. She wrote it down. I checked what she wrote against my notes. Yeah, that all made sense. I was a practitioner of the Aetheric Arts and one of some degree of skill at that. Mere language wasn’t going to get the better of me.

  I elaborated: “I am Journyperson Mage Kos-Api, Champion and Tertiary Elder of the Smoke Hare Tribe.”

  She repeated back “Tul Cosappy bam jenthery uh niveh lexik bammat map-wep” like it was a question. Yeah, I needed to get this down quickly or else I was never getting home.

  For the rest of the afternoon SUSAN WEST spoke to me and I took notes. The CHRIS FOGEL guy would collect my notes every once in a while and bring them back after a few minutes. This almost got me to fight him for them the first time, but SUSAN WEST got between us and spoke soothing words to me and harsh words to CHRIS FOGEL. Since I still had the paper and the wax I let him have them. I could write them again from memory. Perhaps as a peace offering CHRIS FOGEL brought me a stack of paper two knuckles thick.

  The wax was the biggest hurdle. Quill pens had fallen out of use among mages except as an implement to hold a writing enchantment. Perhaps nostalgia or tradition dictated that. I would have preferred a quill to the wax, since I couldn’t feel the ambient Aether that would let me use the Working that would enable me transcribe words directly onto the page.

  That was another thing for me to figure out. Were the humans doing this to me, and if so how? Had I damaged myself somehow and my mana wasn’t fixing it despite clearly fixing my other hurts? Was there no Aether here, and if so where was ‘here’ in the first place? Was this the other side of the Great Expanse, from which no one had ever returned?

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  The day moved on, and SUSAN WEST spoke and I wrote. I needed more of her books, and better ones, but I didn’t know how to ask. In the evening, SUSAN WEST was replaced by another human, this one identified herself as MEENA DESAI. While SUSAN WEST was very pale, MEENA DESAI was almost as brown as I was. She brought dinner in, and while she and SUSAN WEST were obviously speaking to each other in the same language, she spoke it very differently. I took more notes. Later she made sure I understood the various fixtures in the room, and helped me bathe with the odd chemicals they had in the tile area with the waterfall.

  Then she showed me a device attached to the wall next to the bed. She quite conspicuously pushed the end of it, and a voice spoke from no-where. Then another of the simply dressed humans came into the room, along with another person dressed in green; who had probably replaced CHRIS FOGEL while I wasn’t paying attention.

  They all spoke a bit and then left and MEENA DESAI worked the device again, and they came back in. That was understandable. Afterwards she helped me into bed, this time with less blankets and restraints and made the lights go out before leaving. As tempted as I was to explore the room, I didn’t know if I was being watched, so I stayed where I was. Sleep came slowly. There were dreams but I lost them come morning.

  The next morning MEENA DESAI brought in breakfast, which was more foods and fruits I wasn’t familiar with. Skipping the bread, I ate the rest. I was familiar with bread from the human villages near my home, but my community didn’t bake. It didn’t agree with us, and even if it did, acquiring the grain was too inconvenient. After breakfast she was again replaced, this time by TINA BOLTON, who was even darker brown than I was. The man in green was replaced by another man, also in green. I was detecting a trend.

  Were there gender role restrictions in this community? Did they guard me with exclusively men because they thought I couldn’t beat them? I didn’t want to convince them otherwise because I liked not being in chains, even if I could probably break the ones they had used thus far. The last thing I wanted to do was make them use methods which could actually cause me problems, so I stayed in a cage of my own making. At some point I was going to have to gently break them into some of my abilities though, because I would have to exercise at some point, and then it would be hard to hide that I could probably lift their guards over my head.

  The rest of the day was spent in some strange game of pantomime while I tried to get them to tell me specific words. It was very slow and frustrating and I did not enjoy it. I ended the day with stacks of notes on my guesswork, and sleep was restless.

  My concerns about language were anticipated though, since before the expected midday meal another man showed up, and they carted in a large number of books with him. He introduced himself as RICK WARNER. Letting me flip through some of the books, I saw that they were dense with words. Then he pulled out some of the thinner ones from the pile, and made marks in them with the wax.

  This made me cringe until I looked more closely and saw that the ones he was marking seemed designed for that purpose. Thus began my instruction in English. I started as a child would, but proceeded quickly as befitting a Scholar of the Aetheric Accord.

  I quickly learned over the course of the next few weeks that I couldn’t possibly be on my own world. While the people of my world hadn’t explored anything beyond the Great Expanse, the people here had mapped every part of their world and had never seen anything like what I was. There were no other races of thinking beings here than humans. And there was no magic.

  Or rather, there was no magic beyond what I was creating. I could still feel the power within me, building at the slowest trickle despite what my own Sustained Workings and Enhancements drained. I could and obviously had used it for Minor Workings, but without the untethered power out in the environment I could do nothing more substantial. It would also cost me substantially with how slowly it was rebuilding within. Unless I could do something about that, any Regular or Superior Working was not going to happen. Even researching how to get home wasn’t on a short term time scale. That type of Working would be Mythic, and I had never even met anyone who could conduct a Working on that level. I kept all that to myself for the time being, concentrating first on merely talking to the people who had pulled me out of their own Great Expanse.

  “Patience and perseverance”, my old teacher had said. I briefly considered what he would say if he could see me now. “The least suitable of any of my students for the challenges they face.” no doubt. Well, I may not be the right Murenyan for the job, but I was the one that got it. Doctor Warner waited patiently yet again while I wrangled my thoughts back into an orderly flock. Yes, I had discovered capital and lower case letters.

  At any rate I likely had plenty of time to find a solution. My personal Enhancements were all still working as they should, which meant that my body was repairing damage slowly. As long as I didn’t do anything that got me killed before I could heal, I would not likely die for a long long time. Even longer still if I could get this magic issue sorted out. My teacher was so disappointed that I didn’t dedicate myself wholly to the Art, instead branching out into Martial pursuits, but at this point I didn’t regret it at all. The Aether wasn’t there for any Combat Forms, and I dared not try to use Presence, but if I wasn’t using any Minor Workings anyway, the power was there for further Enhancements.

  At any rate, my days weren’t all filled with non-stop studying. The nurses here tried to keep me company by eating with me in their cafeteria. They had brought me a hat that sat over the top of my head to hide my ears and dark lenses that covered my eyes, and some skirts and robes I could keep my tail tucked up into. As long as no one looked too closely at my hands or feet they wouldn’t realize I wasn’t one of them. Mostly. I looked just off enough from a human that it might make people stop and think for a moment. This wasn’t a problem at home, everyone knew what I was. Here I got occasional looks though.

  At least, based on overheard comments, most people thought I was cute.