Dakla’s little language lesson lasted a couple kiloseconds. I still wasn’t quite sure on the exact grammar rules, but the language she started teaching me seemed to generally follow a known-to-me subject-verb-object word order and the syntax appeared quite flexible. By the end I had a basic grip on a few hundred nouns and enough verbs, adverbs, and adjectives to start constructing basic sentences.

In the beginning, the lesson had been quite slow, with Dakla repeatedly asking me to repeat some vocabulary back to her—she’d probably had experience teaching young local children before—but she soon realized that I was different and picked up and remembered everything on the first try. That had marked a shift in teaching style and speed. Instead of quizzing me, we just began to go through rapid-fire identifying and naming most objects that she had in her little hut.

After Dakla had exhausted her supply of teachable nouns, we began a game of pantomime where she or I would mime a motion, and then she’d assign it a verb. Eventually, we moved into more complex territory: Here, there, above, below, inside, around, etc. Then, Dakla began narrating her actions aloud as she prepared a meal.

She “chopped” the “vegetable” and “heated” the “water”. It would be a while before I got a proper grip on tenses, but for the moment, my limited language capability was enough to start a proper, pantomime-free conversation.

“What you work in village?” I asked, hoping that she’d understand the question.

She responded, “[I am] village [unidentifiable]”

“You village [unidentifiable]?”

She chuckled a bit and tried to explain “I [work/labor at] village people[‘s] injuries.”

I understood. She was this village’s… doctor? Does that mean these plants are…?

“You use [dry plants] in injury?”

“Yes, [dry plants] [are for] villager injury”

I couldn’t quite hide my shudder at the thought of these dead plants being used to “cure” diseases and wounds. At best, some plants might have weak anti-inflammatory properties, but other than that I wasn’t so sure. She gave me what appeared to be a brief judgmental look before asking me, the same question I’d asked her:

“What [do] you [do/work/profession/purpose]?”

I had to think because I, myself, didn’t quite know the answer. Milliseconds ticked by, the silence stretched, and I considered. I’m not really a student anymore, and I’m sure as hell am not equipment anymore. Maybe I’m just a “traveler” or simply “lost”. Well, I’m not really a “traveler”, I have a goal, but I don’t know how to get there so something like “wanderer” is probably more apt; or maybe, I’m a “seeker”. I’m looking for answers to questions. I realized that I didn’t have the vocabulary to express this internal dialogue, so I kept it simple, “I don’t know.”

This answer elicited a small laugh from the woman, and I smiled too. I didn’t quite get what she found funny, but I was happy that I understood that she found something about what I’d said amusing. It’s the little things. Dakla put a lid on the pot of food she’d been preparing and took the seat opposite of mine at the table. Judging by her new expression, it was time for a serious question.

“What are you?”

This confused me, “I’m a [human/person] [similar to] you?”

She looked at me like she’d caught me in a lie, and asked “You? Human?”

“Yes” I replied easily. I might be from a different society, but I’m sure that the parts of me that still have genetic codes are similar enough to Dakla’s to count.

Apparently, this made her uncomfortable, and she said, “Yes, yes, but no. Your eyes aren’t human.”

My eyes… ah shit. Pieces clicked into place. I knew the problem: why she’d suddenly become so frightened when she’d gotten closer to me back when we first met. I hadn’t considered how strange my eyes might look to a baseline human who’d never seen any ware: I’d been too busy using them to admire my handywork in crafting “clothing” and my disguise in general.

Mentally, I recalled up a close-up shot of my face from the drone’s perspective back during my hike. There, I was greeted by a sight that even student-Elise wouldn’t have looked twice at, but I could see how it might appear disconcerting to someone who’d hadn’t grown up somewhere where ocular replacement was incredibly common. Instead of a single pupil or imager, my eyes contained an array of imaging sensors which gave my irises a multifaceted—almost insectile—look. I can understand how it might look just a bit disturbing to someone who’s never seen anything like this. Of course, there was a purpose behind the look—it wasn’t just cosmetic.

Each little “pupil” that was contained in the space where an iris would be, was a different imaging sensor. To me, this was all unnoticeable. Subroutines within the eye itself fused all the data together into one whole sensor image and fed it into my visual processing unit. I didn’t need to consciously switch between—say—thermal and ultraviolet imaging, I just saw what I wanted to when I wanted to see it.

These people obviously didn’t have any ware so that left the question: What does she think I am? A genetic mutant or something? Or maybe, she thinks my eyes are damaged or diseased? I had to assuage her worries.

“I [understand/realize] eyes look [weird/wrong], but, not injury.”

“You are human, yes, but your eyes are not human?”

She was asking where I’d gotten them, and that was a reasonable question. It would be a bit hard to explain though.

“My eyes, not my [first/number one]. My new eyes [better/ultimate].”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Dakla’s expression shifted. She still appeared to be serious, but now there was also a curiosity burning underneath.

“What can you see with them?” she asked.

“I see…” this might get tricky to explain, “…colors, hot/cold, umm… more violet?”

She chuckled, and asked “more violet?”

I sighed. I wasn’t even going to try to explain light, not to mention, the theory behind electromagnetic radiation to her, “Yes, more violet, and more red too.”

While this apparently didn’t answer her question, she gained a more contemplative look and intertwined her fingers, seemingly mulling over what to ask next. After a brief spell of silence, she said, “Can your eyes see [unknown]?”

That’s a new word. “[unknown]?” I repeated back to her, making it a question.

She nodded, “Yes, [unknown],” and then proceeded to make some unrecognizable symbols with that hand-sign language I’d seen her use briefly when we first met. Obviously, I can see her hands. What else am I supposed to see? Maybe the hand-sign language is an advanced method of pantomime?

I asked, “[Do] you mean hand- [language/spoken word]?”

Apparently, it wasn’t, because she said “No, no, [unknown] [is] not hand-language. It is [unknown].”

I furrowed my brows. Something was getting lost in translation here.

“I apologize, I [do] not know what [unknown] is.”

Now, apparently convinced that I had no clue whatsoever what she was talking about, her expression became incredulous.

“You don’t know [unknown]?”

“No?”

“Here, [unknown], you watch” she said.

Clearly, she was demonstrating something. She began to move both her hands in an intricate pattern, just like what I’d assumed was a hand-sign language before, but now she did it slower and with more precision, as if taking care to choreograph the movements of her fingers, hands, and arms just right. A couple seconds passed like this, and then she stopped, her fingers frozen in formation, and she muttered a couple words that I couldn’t translate. Then, the inexplicable happened:

Above her now outstretched palm a small point of light imitating the wavelengths one would see from a candle flame sprung into existence.

I was blown away, flabbergasted, bewildered—for the first time in eidetic memory besides my strange arrival to this world, I had absolutely no explanation for what I was looking at, and that included my memories from my time as an indentured. The point of light didn’t have a source and my field sensors weren’t picking up any unusual magnetic or electric activity nearby. There wasn’t anything funky going on gravitationally; and thermally, the point of light seemed to mimic a candle flame but without the rising soot or even atmospheric signs that an oxidization reaction was occurring.

Leaning closer to the floating light, I brought the full might of my built-in analysis tools to bear—those graciously provided by countless science-oriented missions I’d been on. The infrared lasers that could be emitted from my multi-faceted eyes began rastering the area where the floating light was, and Raman-spectroscopy software started matching scattering patterns to its database. The result was a resounding nothing. All I could detect was standard atmospheric gasses and the molecules that the database attributed to human skin. My temples began to heat up, and I stopped the laser. There wasn’t anything there, and that included the readings from short-range ultrasound and radar too. This can’t be.

Reaching forwards to touch it, my eyes briefly locked on Dakla’s, and my finger paused. She seemed amused and gestured me to go ahead. I did, and as my finger approached the light-point, I began to feel the warmth cast from it. One moment later, my finger had engulfed the light source, but interestingly, it didn’t go out. The light was simply emitted from inside my finger and my skin glowed orangered as the light escaped. All I felt was a light tingling feeling—I quickly yanked my finger back, and then breathed a sigh of relief when local blood-nanites didn’t report anything scary, like, say, ionizing radiation.

I sat back, transfixed by the light. It seems that these primitives do have something to show for themselves after all. The rather squalid level of society still confused me, but, more importantly: How can this woman do something that the modern corpus of knowledge can't explain?!

“What is [that]?”

Dakla closed her palm, and the light winked out. “[unknown]” she said.

As I sat, digesting the impossibility of that which I’d clearly just observed, Dakla got up and continued preparing a meal. A short while later, she returned to the table with two full bowls of a stew. One she placed in front of me along with a carved wooden spoon, and then she took her spot opposite me with her own bowl of stew. I was curious, and briefly banishing thoughts about the “[unknown]” from my mind, and I started sampling the stew after Dakla said something that was clearly an invitation to eat and began to spoon down stew herself.

The flavor of the soup was unique, and overall, rather good. Strictly speaking, I didn’t need to eat—my power cell was still mostly full—but as soon as I started eating, I realized I’d been subconsciously starved for flavor for the past 200 years. Indentured, after all, didn’t need to eat. They just needed to be kept charged and supplied. High-density energy cubes for consumption, or, more commonly, direct electrical charging were the preferred methods of achieving this. My tongue hadn’t tasted anything with flavor in a lifetime and was now rejoicing at being returned to active duty.

Besides my obvious delight at flavor, there was another strange sensation that came with the meal: ignorance. Unlike all my other senses, none of my “employers” had ever meddled with my sense of taste. I could look at something and know its absolute temperature. I could hear something, and accurately position it in 3D space to sub-millimeter accuracies. Hell, I could smell gas composition. Flavor still held mystery though: my tongue couldn’t perform chemical analysis like my nose could and if I hadn’t seen Dakla prepare the soup, I’d have had to guess at its contents; I wouldn’t simply know them. Mystery seems to be a theme on this strange planet: first the [unknown], and now my rediscovery of flavor.

Rediscovery of flavor or not, the soup’s taste was still different than anything I’d ever had before. In my pre-indentured times I’d, of course, enjoyed a wide variety of cuisines. I’d had some meals that were even remarkably like the soup we were eating: but none tasted quite like this.

Culinary science on my home world was exactly that—a science—and every bite of nutrition was meticulously manufactured and prepared by auto-chefs to specific design tolerances. This soup wasn’t and that didn’t make it better or worse: just different. I swear I can taste ingredients which Dakla didn’t even put in the pot. Where did they come form or when were they added? Another mystery for the pile, I guess.

After dinner, it was time to sleep, at least for Dakla. I could technically forgo rest cycles almost indefinitely, but even if I’d wanted to take one, there was simply too much to think about. I took the offered spot of folded blankets against one of the walls and my gracious host retreated to her bed. I wasn’t going to complain at being relegated to the floor, she’d been nothing but accommodating so far.

As I lay there, I watched the fire slowly burn down. Before she’d gone to sleep, Dakla had thrown some thicker pieces of wood on it, presumably to make it last the night. She’d muttered something about the cold. I watched the room from my prone position, listened to Dakla’s deep breaths, and thought about my time since arriving on this strange planet.

There were still many mysteries, and everything just seemed to raise more questions. I still couldn’t rationalize or give any reasonable scientific explanation for how Dakla had caused that light to appear in the air. No phenomena in my extensive survey databanks came close, and it’d been my primary task on survey teams to identify, categorize, and explain the unique elements of every planet or moon that I was set down upon.

After a night of reflection and thinking, I reached a decision that I’d been studiously procrastinating:

Screw it. I might as well call it what it is: Magic.