Quinn blinked as she stood next to the check-in desk, looking at Malakai.

"Well, what do you think? I did a pretty good job, didn't I?" Milaro preened proudly next to his grandson.

Quinn blinked again. Nope, Malakai was still standing in front of her, still about six and a half feet tall. Milaro had made his hair look younger so that he didn't have black and white peppered hair. He'd blackened it so the salt and pepper elements didn't stand out. His black eyes didn't extend through the sclera, even though they were so black you couldn't see the pupil, which was fine.

Hopefully no one would get close enough to notice the oddities.

He wore jeans and a t-shirt that looked out of place on him. He was so tall and lanky that it didn't exactly sit right on him, although the combat boots looked pretty good. His ears appeared human too. She looked him up and down and frowned. Even his hair pulled back into a ponytail was too long. It would stand out too much.

"Can you tweak the illusion a little bit?" she asked.

"Why?" Milaro asked, blinking in surprise. "He looks great!"

"Can you make his hair a little shorter? Hair that goes that long down to his butt is going to stand out a lot. We’re trying to avoid standing out." Quinn was worried that along with the hair and his looks, people would gawk at them everywhere they went. Elves really were ethereal. It was odd how she'd become so used to it.

Malakai scowled. "You already asked me to do a ponytail instead of a braid. Why can't I just braid it?"

"Because guys don't usually braid their hair. Or maybe they do, I never paid much attention." Quinn frowned and waved the question away. "Do whatever. Just adjust the illusion so it's not quite as long. It'll stand out and I don't really want us to draw attention when we're there."

"Fine," Milaro said grumbling as he adjusted it.

"And it's probably pretty cold back home so you might want a jacket to go over that t-shirt."

"Oh, thank you," Malakai said, relief in his tone.

"I'll probably call you Mal while we're there." Quinn added, trying to ignore the rising nerves.

"You've started calling me that here anyway," he said. "Just keep it up."

"Malakai is a little ... ostentatious for Earth," Quinn said.

"Are you really planning on seeing some of your old friends?" Lynx asked, his interest piqued.

"I'll probably run into them. Plus I'm gonna text them once I've charged my phone when I find a charger, I hope."

"Well, is he acceptable then?" Milaro asked, still sounding a little put out.

"He'll do. It's fine now. I think I'm just maybe overly sensitive." She squinted up at him. "He’s very tall."

"No I'm not, you're just very short. There's not much I can do about that," Malakai said.

"I can't really adjust stature with this illusion." Milaro grumbled.

Quinn walked around Malakai satisfied that he'd pass for human. "How will you maintain the illusion?" she asked.

"Well," Milaro explained, "what happens is the brooch he's wearing..."

"Oh, that button's a brooch?" Quinn asked curiously.

"Yes, the brooch that he's wearing has its own mana source and it will allow the illusion to stay without any excess ambient mana for several days." Milaro sounded smug as he explained how it worked.

"Oh," Quinn said, "we're gonna be there like maybe a day. I'm not planning on going for a long time. Just enough to get there and text people that I'm not dead. I'm pretty sure my dorm room and all my stuff will be either in storage or have been sent back to my foster parents now. I don't plan to go get anything, I guess. I might see if I can access my email, pull some pictures, print them out, that sort of thing."

"Print out pictures? Can't you just make them happen?" Malakai asked incredulously.

"No, Malakai. I can't just make them happen in a world without magic." Quinn paused thoughtfully for a moment. "I guess printing them would be making them happen."

"Sorry," he said. "I'm just curious."

"It's fine." She turned her attention to the manifestation. "Lynx, how do we go about this?"

"Oh," He said, his eyes opening wide in surprise, "That's right, you've never opened a door for yourself."

"Got it in one. I've only been here two months. You keep sending me to places. I don't choose to go there myself," she muttered.

"Hmm," Lynx frowned like he was trying to figure out how to explain things.

"It's a lot easier than he's making out," Malakai said. "You just need to precisely picture the door you want to open."

"I need to picture the exact door I want to open?"Quinn repeated.

"Well, yes, otherwise you'll get sent somewhere vague. Who knows? You could even get stuck somewhere."

"Oh, so this is all like a visualization thing?"

"Well, of course. How did you think it operated?" Malakai asked.

"To be honest, I thought you kind of just gave it like a location and it found a door and it opened it." Quinn shrugged.

"Well, that's how the Library works. When we seek to find books," Lynx butted in. "You see, it locates the book or the holder or where it was last pinged. Then the Library sends out its frequency to that area and finds an appropriate location within a decent amount of distance from said book. That is how I’ve been sending you to the places you've needed to go to retrieve the books."

"So when we have to walk a ways, does that mean there is nowhere else you could make a trapdoor or anything?" Quinn asked, curious about the theory behind it.

"Well, trapdoors are pretty easy to make, but sometimes you have to be careful." Lynx paused for a moment as if searching for how to express himself. "Like, for example, when you went to the Esposians, I might have been able to get you closer, but I could have also accidentally hit an underground spring and drowned you by sending you. So generally, we try to find upright areas to put doors in."

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"So when you pulled me from my Library to here, opening the door in the floor had been your best option?" Quinn asked.

"Pretty much. I couldn't put it in the table. You can't put a door in a table." Lynx scoffed, "That doesn't work. It doesn't have the right framework for it."

"Okay, Fine. Let me think," Quinn said. "I think the best place would be the door at the back of the Library that opens into the trash alleyway."

"Trash alleyway," Malakai said. "You're going to take me to a trash alleyway?"

"Well, I don't want us to be seen stepping out of a door from a magical Library. That might be a little hard to explain." Quinn raised an eyebrow at him as she spoke.

"Is the Library going to need to pull power from me to open our door there?" Quinn asked suddenly.

"No," Lynx said. "We have enough power in the Library that this isn't a problem at all. It's just going to take several hundred, maybe a thousand or so malachite crystals."

"Really?" Quinn said. "That's a lot."

"Well, it was when we didn't have many. Now it's just barely a drop in a bucket." Lynx shrugged, "It's fine. We're good."

Quinn looked around and tested the weight of the bag at her side again. "Well, I guess. I guess we should get going then."

"We really have everything?" Malakai asked. "I can't take weapons through with me... will we be safe?"

"Safe enough. We should be good." She patted the small bag on her side that she'd gotten from Dottie. "I have my phone, my wallet, and the door opener thing and hopefully I'll be able to go and get some memories."

"Picture the door you've chosen in your mind with as much detail as possible and reference the location and activate it by placing your hand on the door." Quinn walked up to her favorite door to exit through, even if it was a little ostentatious, placed her palm on the door, and visualized the alleyway and the door that opened out onto it.

The sun was high in the sky when they stepped through the door onto the asphalt, a sensation she hadn't experienced for quite a while. Quinn wondered about the fascination most of the cultures she'd encountered had for cobbled streets. Wasn't asphalt a much better option? Was it a magic thing? Regardless, she hadn't even considered time. There had to be different time zones all over the universe too, right? There were different time zones on Earth, let alone in the galaxy, the universe, or whatever.

Still, the alley was just as she remembered. It wasn't your standard trash alley. It was nestled between two academic buildings, one filled with lecture halls, the other a Library. Most of the trash consisted of paper, books, and things that didn't necessarily smell bad.

Malakai cleared his throat, and she turned around to see the Library disappearing behind them as the door closed. She clutched her bag for a split second, relieved to feel the weight of the door opener inside. It needed a better name, something like 'Disc of Library Access'. 'Door opener' just sounded mundane and non-magical, not exciting in the least.

She could feel the nerves in her stomach. This was Earth. She reached out with her senses and felt absolutely nothing, which was quite disconcerting. She'd grown so used to having access to her interface, no matter where she was, and being able to feel things about an area or sense incoming people or items or tremors. This sudden silence inside her brain was disquieting.

"Well, I guess my idea of a trash alley, as you call this, wasn't exactly the same. So Quinn, why are you just standing around?" Malakai asked softly, standing next to her.

"I'm trying to get my bearings," she said, because it was truer than she'd intended it to be. There were all sorts of things that she'd grown used to in a magical world that she no longer had access to, and it was a very odd sensation.

She pulled up her HUD, trying to get a grip on just how much was missing. It flickered, obviously soaking up her own energy, and she quickly shut it down. But not before a few scattered images flickered across her sight. She couldn't afford to run out of the energy they needed to get home though. Although her body produced its own energy, it was literally the only magical thing here. She knew it was going to take forever for it to fill back up.

Those brief images had sparked an odd memory in her mind, her parents and the car accident. How had she survived? She'd been in the same car after all... That was odd, and something to look into a little later when she didn't have to go and find a phone charger. "Let's go check my bank account and make sure it's still open, although I do have some cash on me..."

"Bank account? Like, you give money to a bank, and you can access it anywhere?" Malakai asked.

"Well, yes, can't you?"

"Well, of course we can, but you don't have magic here. I want to see how you do everything without energy and mana." Malakai's eyes were shining with genuine curiosity.

"I just... we have electricity and the internet, they're pretty much the same thing, Malakai," Quinn said.

They walked out of the alley, and suddenly the bustle of the university was there. So many people walking between buildings and between classes, but hardly anybody needed to go to the industrial trash bins. It had been the perfect place to pick, even if it meant they had to travel a ways to get to the places she needed to go.

"Okay, we need to go to one of the shops on campus and get a charging cord, then we'll sit down and have a coffee." Quinn muttered half to herself. "Oh, I have missed coffee. And while we charge my phone, yeah, that's a good idea."

They headed off, and entered a store that sold textbooks and other paraphernalia. It had everything you could need, from books, to paper, to pens, to laptops, to just everything. She walked to the back, where all the charging cables were kept, and sighed with relief.

Malakai looked around. "This just looks like any bookshop I've ever encountered with a few other things."

Quinn glanced at him, and realized, somewhat belatedly, that he was getting glances from a lot of people. She put that down mainly to his height, but also partially to the braid that fell halfway down his back. Plus, she looked at him in this human light. He was definitely attractive.

"Well, it's a bookshop. It has computers too." She said, making sure he didn't wander too far.

"Computers?" He said.

"Over there." She pointed at the laptop display.

He looked at them and said, "Oh, wow. You've talked about these." He inspected them and navigated with the mouse after several seconds of studying. "This is like a rudimentary system!"

Quinn paused and thought that over. "I guess it is. It's how we access the internet. Look, we'll talk about this over coffee. I've cables to get."

She grabbed a charger for her phone, and on a whim she also got a power brick, paid for them at the counter, and left with Malakai sulkingly following behind her.

"So, computers. Could you just buy one of those?" He asked after they'd walked a minute or two.

"Yes. But I don't really have that much liquid cash."

"Oh," he said, "Are they expensive?"

"Well, some might not think so, but not everyone is made of money." On their way to the coffee shop, Quinn stopped at an ATM, looked at the balance in her account, and was extremely relieved to see that her savings were still intact, minus a couple of cell phone bills that had been auto-debited. Since she hadn't used her meal card and it was the only other thing that came out of the account, it was still pretty healthy.

"Oh," she said, "That's good. Let's go get a coffee,"

And they walked into the coffee shop. Quinn took a long, deep breath of all the caffeinated smells and walked up to the counter to order. "I'd like a chocolate chip cookie," she said, "And a small soy latte, please."

She looked at Malakai, and asked, "What do you want, Mal?"

"Whatever you're having," he said.

"Make that two." She said to the girl as she handed over her card to pay.

Quinn smiled as they waited for her order, but she was nervous. There was something wrong with this lack of being able to perceive things around her, this lack of being able to tap into magic. How had she become so dependent on this in such a short window of time? By anybody's standards, two months was not long. She frowned.

"Quinn, coffee's ready."

She picked them up and walked with Malakai over to one of the tables next to a charge point.

"Eat up," she said, "We're going to be here for a little bit."

She plugged her phone in, and after several seconds, it actually registered the charging. She sighed in relief, "This is going to make stuff much easier."

"So," Malakai said biting into the cookie and cooing appreciatively. "Talk to me about this computer thing."

"They're generally several hundred dollars for a decent one, or a few thousand for an amazing one, and they hook up to this internet." She shrugged.

"Will you show me the internet?" he asked eagerly.

"Of course, I can show you the internet on my phone as soon as it's charged enough." Quinn thought this was sort of endearing. He was so interested in how a magicless world worked.

Then she heard someone call out her name and she looked around, trying to locate the source.

"Quinn? Is that you?" this time it was closer and easier to locate.

She sighed, took a deep breath, and turned with a smile on her face. "Hey Hallie, how you doing?"

Her one persistent friend stood in front of them, her wide blue eyes open in shock. "I thought you were dead."