Terenei left with due promises to be here early tomorrow, and then it was just Serru and Aryennos and I. One of the Seashell’s tactful staff approached to see whether my friends also wanted a drink and a snack, which they did. I settled myself again on the grass next to the lower table.
“You had an adventurous day,” Serru said, smiling, as she sat down again.
“It was just supposed to be a bit of exploring and sightseeing,” I said. “A lot of the hazards that I’m used to don’t exist here.” No car accidents, no substance abuse, no violence, and an enormous percentage of my normal job was simply not there. “Where there are people, there are still going to be accidents and unexpected crises, but my reflexes kick in even if part of my brain is somewhere else.”
“Accidents certainly happen,” Serru said. “Is that what it was?”
“A loud noise led to a donkey pulling a wagon getting spooked. A little felid was in the wrong pce at the wrong time. And seriously, bystanders didn’t get in my way, did what I asked, and didn’t need to be told to find her father? No one tried to tell me what I should be doing, nobody tried to pull me off of her or demand that I prove that I’m qualified, no arguing about setting up a mini-tent we could move her to because she was showing signs of distress, her father didn’t yell at me...” And I wasn’t even wearing a uniform today.
“Why would any of that happen when you’re trying to help her? Why would you intervene at all if you did not intend to help her?”
“Honestly, bystanders make my normal job a lot harder, and it’s already hard enough sometimes. It was a really nice change, leave it at that. I was thanked and told that if we need any more supplies for our trip we should go to that part of town so they can show their appreciation.”
Serru nodded. “Did you check what’s in the bag he gave you?”
“No, I’ve been rather distracted.” I pulled the bag into reach—it wasn’t rge, and sort of crescent-shaped, with the ends extending upwards to merge into the wide strap; the fabric was a sort of pinky-orange... I guess you could call it a bright salmon or coral or something? Honestly, it wasn’t a bad colour for a medical supplies bag, if I ever wanted to divide everything between my medical gear and my personal things. I plunged a hand in, and blinked at the inventory.
There was a mini-tent. Three, in fact, even though I had used precisely one. A variant on the ragdoll cat Serru had bought me. My weighted bnket. But there were other things.
“I definitely did not leave all of this behind!”
Serru smiled. “Perhaps some neighbours weren’t willing to wait and see whether you’d have time and inclination to come to that part of the city. What kind of things?”
I moved my bowl of snack food and my cup off the low table, and began to arrange items on it. The wide-mouthed kettle I pulled out would presumably, like Serru’s could, serve as either a teapot or a way to make soup, not just to heat water. The inner surface was smooth and shiny and silvery; the outer surface looked like copper, and was embossed with a design of leaves outlined in smoothly-embedded green wire. Four wide ft-bottomed mugs matched it, the walls so thick that I couldn’t help but wonder whether they were effectively insuted, and four copper spoons were shaped with the same leaves.
“That’s very striking,” Serru said. “And may come from immediate family, rather than a neighbour. It is... not unreasonably extravagant, under the circumstances, but certainly has a significant value. Whoever it was, they put some thought into what might be of use while travelling and at rest.”
“I think one of the bystanders told me her... older sister and mother, I think, made high quality small metal goods.”
“That would make perfect sense, then. What else?”
The other items that emerged were smaller things. Some were food or drink: a jar of hard candies in bright colours, two tin-like boxes Serru said were tea of varieties I hadn’t heard of, half a dozen palm-sized pastries that were all different, a paper bag of what I could only call assorted cookies, a sealed tin box containing travel bars of three different varieties, a trio of compact bottles holding what was apparently cooking oil infused with savoury herbs. Some weren’t edible, but were practical: a tin box with a bar of all-purpose soap inside that could be used on hands or dishes or anything else, a bottle of skin lotion with a pleasant scent. A couple were just pretty: a rainbow strand of gss beads of graduated sizes on a white cord, a pair of carved wooden hair sticks, a cord with bright beads on the ends that was probably for tying hair back. There was a bnk book I would swear was hand-made, like something from a craft fair, and with it was a silver-and-pearly pen, which looked like it should need to be dipped in ink or something but from watching Aryennos I knew that wasn’t necessary.
“This is way too much for a few minutes of helping a little girl!”
Serru shook her head, and accepted a gss of juice and a shallow bowl of treats to nibble on with a quick smile to the attentive server. “Not a single item, aside from the teapot and perhaps the book, cost any individual any great amount. This is on the generous side, I would say, but it is nonetheless a polite and reasonable gesture.”
“It looks,” Aryennos said, “like someone basically went around the shops in the neighbourhood and told them what happened if they didn’t see it and everyone just tossed in something that they had avaible to sell. Nothing, individually, is all that expensive. It would be rude to not do anything at all to show appreciation. It would also be rude, and it would upset and confuse people, if you tried to tell them that they shouldn’t. Like you’re telling them that they’re wrong to pce the value they do on what you did. It mattered to them so it’s polite to let them express that in a reasonable way. You did a kind thing. Let them do one.” He frowned thoughtfully into his cup. “There are a lot of things I never really thought about before because I just took them for granted. Putting things into words to try to expin them to someone who doesn’t know it is kind of complicated.”
An arming thought struck me. “Wait, does that mean that I’m being rude, not showing you two enough appreciation?”
“Rex, Nathan,” Serru said. “There is a vast difference between offering a gift to a stranger in thanks for a single event, and ongoing friendship. One is all about an action. The other is personal. You are not rude in the slightest.”
“Tell me if I ever am, please? There are complicated nuances to your culture that I’m not at all sure I understand and I don’t want to accidentally upset you. Or anyone. Did you have a good lunch?”
“It was good to have a chance to catch up. Like I said, we’ve known each other a long time. I wasn’t expecting that there would be a request for help that would involve a detour. Thank you for understanding, but I wish it hadn’t come up.”
“It’s all right. It’s not a long one, especially with you picking the path and finding the shortest way. I don’t want to interfere with your life any more than necessary, and doing something helpful is generally good. How old is this youngest cousin, anyway, and what’s a specialist school?”
“I believe Nurea is around seventeen or so, although I may be off by a year. Local schools offer the essentials: how to read and write, the fundamentals of arithmetic and various arts and crafts, how science works, general history and geography, where food and goods come from and how common services are provided...”
“How to manage stressful and difficult situations,” Aryennos chimed in. “How to stay healthy, what your responsibilities and rights are as a part of our society, and of course, encouragement to try lots of different things to see what resonates for you and gives you that feeling of rightness and pleasure that makes you want to do it a lot.”
Serru nodded. “Most people, by their mid to te teens, have some idea of the right direction to look in. Some interests, if pursued, can lead to an active use of magic which, as you’ve discovered, depends on developing both skill and passion for a specific art or craft or... whatever. Terenei was around the same age when he first started studying at the same school. He was there for three years.” I must have looked startled, because she smiled. “Did you think he did nothing except work in his grandfather’s shop with no life beyond that?”
I wasn’t sure what I had thought, exactly, and wasn't sure I wanted to think about it. People were entitled to be more than their job, even if some of us forgot to apply that to our own lives and far too many forgot to apply it to others. "Three years is enough to learn magic?”
“In most cases, it’s more than enough. The difficult part is always to gain enough mastery over whatever one is passionate about. Terenei stayed that long because he found a mentor there who helped him broaden and deepen his artistic skills. The addition of magic comes as a natural development or not at all, but a teacher or mentor can be very helpful.” Her forehead furrowed. “I think this discussion might be misleading, however. From what I understand of your world, you would understand the way clothing adapts to bodies of different sizes, or my sister’s baking, which because of her skill sts perhaps as much as three times as long with no preservation and no loss of taste or texture compared to a novice baker, to be magic in the same sense as, oh, Terenei’s entirely-intentional art, or...” She looked at Aryennos.
“Or a musician who learns to make the lighting in the room change colour and pattern to match the music,” he offered. “Which my father can do. Or who learns enough about multiple instruments that they can make it sound like they’re being accompanied even when they’re pying alone, which two people in his band can do.”
“That’s a good example. In all cases it’s a matter of magic reinforcing ability that is grounded in passion and an immense amount of practice, but we would consider Terenei, or Aryennos’ musicians, to actively use magic, while my sister is an excellent baker who loves her job.”
“That sounds complicated,” I said. “But it makes sense. Magic is as much a part of everything here as heat or sound, so why not?” So with enough skill, someone could produce results that were effectively S-tier, pushing past any possible standard grading into something more, but that wasn’t considered actively using magic in local terms. Somehow, that didn’t really come as a surprise.
“Active magic use harmonizes with the skills it’s based on,” Aryennos said. “And to keep it, you need to keep the passion and skill high. If my father lost interest in music he’d lose the magic, even if he kept performing because, I don’t know, someone expected him to or something?”
Serru nodded. “If you want to know more, ask Terenei. I promise, you’ll get better answers than you would from us, and he won’t mind.”
It wasn’t the only thing I rather wanted to ask Terenei about. “Right. I will. If I can remember it on the long list of things to learn.”
“You’ve been here a matter of days,” Serru said. “Three weeks or so? Something like that. How quickly do you expect to learn an entire world?” She sounded faintly amused again. “Aryennos? Did you have much success at the library?”
