Bluemoon bobbed his head enthusiastically. "Ha, yes. Quick learner. That's got to be your main lesson for the day, though, since it'll take you an hour or so to refill your Mana. You can still practice your gliding in between. Or get breakfast."

As appealing as another brief soar from the roof seemed, she was hungry too. "Food first, please!"

#

The building she'd been jumping from was indeed a tavern, called the Shrike. It wasn't busy this time of morning but a few birdfolk and a Centaur were sitting around. The spacious room smelled of spilled beer and sawdust littering the floor.

So was another bluejay, this one plumper and wearing a sort of turban with an upturned feather that reminded Selen of a quail. "You will surrender the girl to me!"

Bluemoon laughed and nudged Selen forward, saying, "She did great! How did you sneak past us?"

"The canny Tradewind sees all. And you had eyes for nothing but her."

Selen nodded, not sure how to react, and still giddy. She thought to give the lady a good look and saw her labeled as "Aunt" Tradewind. Okay, I have an aunt and an uncle.

Tradewind beckoned her to sit, and shared a bowl of unfamiliar nuts with an orange sauce. "How does it feel?"

"It was great! I can't wait to try the magic again. Can I learn more spells? Can I glide farther?"

"Whyever not? But that brings up a more serious question."

The three birds sat together, and Bluemoon spoke up. "What do you want to choose for your first level?"

Selen had two aliens staring at her, expecting her to be normal and to have all sorts of knowledge about common-sense things she'd never heard of. She tapped one foot nervously and felt it sticking to the messy floor. "I've really been rattled by the trouble yesterday."

Tradewind said, "I heard. It may be best not to speak much of it in public. The Duke is merciful."

She gulped at the implication that there were limits to that mercy. "Yeah. Well. Could we go over my options again?" Fishing for information, she said, "I could be an Agent or a Merchant, right?" Tradewind, appropriately, showed up as a Merchant like Bluemoon.

Bluemoon dipped a nut, cracked it with his beak, and gobbled it down, confusing Selen for a moment. No teeth. He said, "You've seen a bit of the Merchant lifestyle, and the peacetime of being an Agent by running around with the delivery folk." His eyes narrowed. "And a bit of what being an Agent in wartime is like, unfortunately."

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Tradewind said, "Ask our mother sometime about Melody Bay, if you and she have had a stiff drink first."

Spy work, apparently. Or more of a rogue and scout. She'd already spent enough time in a dungeon with people asking hard questions. "I think I've seen enough of that side of things. Magic seems like a lot of fun now that I've tried it."

"She learned it right away," Bluemoon told Tradewind, puffing up. He added, "Mage is an option, though I suspect the thrill will wear off in time. Nothing wrong with experimenting a bit."

"Not like I'm locked into it," Selen said, still trying to pry the rules from them.

"No, and at worst you're delayed one season in getting something better suited, and you might keep the first one as a secondary class. You could even go Craftsman if you wanted to try something different."

"Or Bard!" said Tradewind. Bluemoon snorted and rolled his eyes, muttering about "useless carousers".

Selen felt some linguistic vertigo, because bird and bard weren't similar words in this language. She had a chance at a whole new category of puns!

She clicked her finger-talons together, hesitant to look even more ignorant. She stalled for time by taking one of the nuts and experimentally cracking it on the edge of her beak. The nutcracker function worked just fine, and she gobbled down the fragments with a bit of something like watered-down barbecue sauce. "I'd like to do more with magic. Mage, then?"

"I can help a little," said Tradewind. "Though of course you'll need to deal with the guild once you go beyond the basics. A problem for another day."

Bluemoon asked, "Will the first spell be enough?"

"It should be. Selen, take the rest of the morning off and go do the meditation on what you want. If you have trouble, try this as a second spell." She held her hands together and let a trickle of magic flow up from them. With no explanation.

Bluemoon dropped a nut into the air above his sister's hands, and watched it bob in an updraft. The feathers on the back of his head flicked higher.

Selen said, "Um, focusing the Mana upward?"

Tradewind nodded. "Same basic spell, focused to flow from the hands, that's all. Good luck! Now off to the temple with you; shoo."

The two of them looked expectantly at Selen. She stood up and thanked them, then grabbed a handful of the nuts. They trickled through her fingers; her actual palm was small. She tried again and walked out to the street.

Now, she fretted again. A temple? She didn't know the name of the city, let alone how to find anything in it. She took a good look at her home tower and the tavern, then wandered off in a random direction. Slightly downhill. That brought her to a river that seemed to run north-south, assuming that the sun on her left meant an Earthlike planet in the northern hemisphere. Too many unknowns. She tried asking random strangers about "the temple".

Many of the people walking the cobblestone streets were Humans, dressed in what she took for farm clothes or just low tech. One man told her, "Couple of streets north, west side of the river."

The river smelled like these people had little idea of water treatment, though she'd seen some form of plumbing existed. Now, she found some kind of drawbridge! A little island in the middle helped support an elaborate mechanical winch that could swing part of the east section out of the way for tall boats. More elaborate than she'd expected around here.