The next day she took up the job of delivery bird again. She couldn't do the long flights that some Aves could -- the Two Hoots employed a few older birds for that -- but practiced constantly. She flapped and trotted along with the Centaur boy, Newroot, for a trip across the Starry River and south to the city's downstream gate.

To her surprise, there was some kind of magical water purification station there. This district was called the Purity for that reason. Mostly little shops in that area that smelled of clean air and sizzling food.

Her shiny grey, hooved companion clip-clopped pleasantly along the cobblestone streets. "I wish I could fly."

"I'm sure you get to do some cool things too. You must be an amazing runner."

"You should see me outside the walls. When I have my birthday I'm going to go right for some Stamina bonuses."

"Race you to the dropoff point, Newroot."

"Ha, I'll give you a head start!"

He dashed onward, leaning his upper body forward. Selen hopped up into the air and drove herself ahead, but just didn't have the speed or enough magic-assisted flaps to keep up. She landed wheezing and Newroot laughed, his horse half working like a bellows. He said, "And I'll be better at the long runs soon."

"And you want to fight for a living?" she asked.

"Well, maybe. I haven't got the money or the family to get me an apprenticeship anywhere. At least your folks made sure we could all read."

Selen had gotten a scholarship, in a place where sixteen or so years of schooling were considered normal. This world likely had very different ideas. Maybe not completely wrong ones, but still it stung her to think that her fellow workers considered basic literacy an end-point. She said, "If you and the others want to talk about arithmetic and magic sometime, that could be fun."

"Sure!"

#

The next day, Selen was at dinner, tearing into sweet, dark bread. Aunt Tradewind said, "You want to join the Knowledge Society?"

"They have books! I need to learn as much as I can, especially to be a good Mage."

She adjusted her turban and answered, "I suppose it's best to let you try different things and see if you really take to scholarship. You don't seem to have done any cooking lately; are you sure you don't want to pester the chefs again?"

Selen's actual academic background was in chemistry. As a graduate student in a university that nobody around here had heard of. Although she'd gotten interested in the field partly because of cooking, she hadn't made anything more advanced than cake and peppermint sticks in years.

"It's time for me to try something different," she said. Although it might be helpful to watch local cooking, a little, just to be on the same page about how things boiled and baked and chilled in this world. "Might ask occasionally though. What about magic lessons?"

"Come to the shop after we eat."

Tradewind's shop was near the tower, and more modern in layout than she expected. Not an outdoor-facing shop counter where someone asked what you wanted -- common around here -- but a big room you could walk into and browse. Or gawk at, in her case. Crystals with a white or soft aquamarine glow lit the place and were also on sale. Jars held items like "goblin ears" and "pixie dust" along with bottles of multicolored liquid and amulets of carved wood and a few books.

"What are you so cheery about?" asked Tradewind, ruffling Selen's neck feathers.

"My aunt runs a magic shop!"

"Ha, you call this knickknack stand a magic store? Mind your wings; don't knock that over!"

Selen had bumped into a rack of bottles, though really they were strapped in place.

"So, you would learn magic? What for? Is it just your latest fancy, or do you dream about smiting your enemies?"

"Good question." Selen scuffed one foot on the wooden floor. "All of it's a novelty. But I want to master the flight spell, and go on to see what I can discover. What the limits of magic are."

"That's going to mean a Mage Guild apprenticeship, if you go that far. They work you hard for years. As non-members we can teach you the basics, but if you're serious, you'll need to be more serious and specific. And don't tell them you want to be one of those adventurers, like your Uncle Meteor did."

"I haven't seen Meteor around lately."

"Still on garrison duty in the west, I assume. Don't worry. So. Pay attention." She held her talons together and focused. "What element is this?"

Selen stared at the empty space. "I don't see anything."

"You do have a level in this. I can't make it any more obvious without blowing up the shop."

Tradewind's technique was the same as her brother Bluemoon's. Faint sparks stood out, but not real ones. These must be the bits of Mana she'd learned to gather, seen with the eyes but not along the normal spectrum. She gingerly reached out with one hand and the spell reacted, sticking to her and making her scaly skin prickle. "Feels like static electricity."

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"Static what?"

"Ah... lightning?" She'd used the English word first.

"Right. Last time, you tuned what you were casting to the element of air. This one's a little different. Show me your wind-attuned Mana. But let's try that outdoors."

Selen was gathering energy between her hands from somewhere as though letting water trickle from a faucet. The process was slow but began to be visible with the help of her new Mage level, as ghostly off-white wind. "Like this, and then I can use this on my wings."

"Instead, hold that with one hand, then feel the lightning aspect here." Tradewind demonstrated a tiny finger-cage of sparks.

Selen touched it and felt a weird sense of connection, aware of the nacent spell that her "aunt" held for her. Different element, and better contained, but the idea was the same. The older bird's expressive head-feathers were covered but she still had an encouraging look to her eyes. Selen tried not to let her down. She focused on the bit of lightning, then on molding the Mana between her own fingers to make it almost the same. It rapidly leaked out, draining eight Mana points beyond the three-point trickle she'd wasted so far, and her vision blurred blue for a second in warning. Selen let go of Tradewind's spell and held both her hands together, containing a little of the energy.

"That's a start. Now try to flow that back into yourself instead of wasting it." She watched Selen try, and chirped in amusement as Selen's feathers stood up with static. "No, more like this. Oh well; you should still have some left. Next, copy this." She tried some slightly different flavor.

Selen studied this one: sort of heavy, more tangible than the others. "Could this be stone or ground?"

"You tell me."

It was chilly. "Cold, ice, water? It's a little slippery."

"Ice, yes. Now, see if you can copy it."

Tradewind got her to tune magic to this element too, feeling a spell that threatened to take full effect and freeze her fingers.

"Don't activate it yet. You're still shaky. I want to do another lesson before having you turn the potential into real things."

"Matter and energy," Selen said. "Is there some known conversion rate between Mana and other things?"

They stood outside the magic shop as the sun's last rays faded and the cold snuck through their feathers. Aunt Tradewind studied her and said, "Little owl, I heard that you were saying strange things to the Duke's men."

Selen looked aside, her vision clouded from Mana drain and the deepening night. The bluejay woman stood out brightly. "I know I've been forgetful since the trouble the other day. I'll get better."

"But you said something about memories of other worlds. Is there any truth to that? Did the gods give you a vision?"

How much to tell her? Selen sighed and said, "Something like that. There's at least one other world; I'm sure of it. More machines, much less magic, different rules. That's why I want to learn more, and compare."

Tradewind ruffled Selen. "I believe you probably saw something real."

Selen's eyes widened. "Really?"

"The gods guide our fates and whisper secrets to us. I owe my life to a hint they shared with me, once." She bowed her head briefly and touched three talons to her chest. "Who is to say ours is the only world they watch? I don't know what your vision means, but don't let this favor you received go to your head."

"I'll try. I need to work hard and improve. I want to earn my keep." To be a good replacement for the old Selen.

"That's my girl. If your father doesn't pay your admission fee for the Society, I will."

#

Selen trained. She regularly leaped off of whatever low roofs she could find, sometimes adding magic-assisted flaps, hardly ever crashing into anyone. She alternated between spending her Mana on the flight spell and on pure spellcasting, using it as quickly as it refilled. She tried gathering the motes of an air spell again and again and struggled to find ways of tuning the power to other elements by herself. In between her many practice sessions, she carried letters and boxes across the city, often building up muscle by not using her enchanted pack. She wasn't prepared to draw attention to it and answer questions about it anyway.

The work paid off. Just as the last freezing winds of spring faded out, there came a day when she got a flurry of the System's strange messages crowding her vision. [Skill gain: Elemental Magic (Learning).] Then [Skill gain: Hiking (Toughness)], and again for Flight (Agility). Which was great, but now she had a problem.

"I need three of the same stat," Selen said over lunch. "I was thinking of Sanity, since that's the one that boosts Stamina and Mana. But what do I need to do to earn that one? Look at monsters from another dimension?"

Tradewind gave her a strange look, but answered, "There are some ways to gain it from war. But for you, there are a few common options."

They seemed to involve suffering. First, by staying up too late even for her. Her family gave the basement crew the evening off and let Selen spend all night sorting, filing and cleaning. Then she got hardly an hour's sleep before having to get up and work on the second floor, up above the inn level. The big round room was an office of desks and shelves with a flight takeoff balcony she'd recently been using. Selen worked and paced while much better-rested workers were irritatingly cheerful around her.

And then that night, after just another hour's sleep, she got told to stay up again!

In the office floor's center stood a brass mechanical clock, the fanciest piece of technology she'd seen. It predated the use of the Two Hoots tower as a post office. In fact it was said to be one of the first things ever built by someone who mastered the Engineer class. Selen hadn't even known there was such a class until she asked about the clock. There were Craftsmen and various specialized sub-groups of those, but the gods had made Engineer its own distinct class. The gods had apparently decreed that advanced machinery was something new.

Selen found herself dozing off while contemplating the clock. But she had to stay up! The Sanity stat was a measure of mental toughness, a bit different from the more social Will. She talked to herself while cleaning and filing, learning the office's setup in the process. "I met a traveler from an antique land, who said, two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert..."

A red-feathered Aves startled and hopped away from her. "Selen! What are you doing up so late?"

Selen squawked. "Cleaning! I mean trying to earn the Vigil skill!"

"Oh, ha, that explains it. I heard the noise and came down. What were you muttering just now?"

She'd been using English, not instinctively knowing how to translate the words of Shelley. "An obscure poem that I heard, once." Nobody in all the world knew of it.

"If you're trying to stay awake you might as well let me pester you. They don't have you sorting all these bins tonight, do they?"

"Unfortunately yes. Maybe I can get something to read tomorrow night." She returned to her work. Who was this, anyway? She looked him over and saw: [Sunflare, Agent 2.] Same effect as when she looked at other people she was supposed to know already.

"So, what's the poem?" he asked.

She struggled to convert it. "Strange," said Sunflare. "Is that something from one of the other kingdoms?"

"Yeah. I... think I know a few other stories from places like that." She yawned. "Some other time, maybe."

He left her alone but checked on her again an hour later, when she was on the verge of falling asleep again. She waved weakly and returned to looking through random papers to better understand the filing system. "Pigeonholing," she muttered.

The next night Tradewind loaned her a book about river trade from her shop, so that was enough to keep her up more easily. The Starry River was apparently a nightmare of shifting banks that had even helped to spark the recent war against the western Kobold-run country. She wondered if it could be tamed.

After three awful days and nights of hardly any sleep, the notice she'd been waiting for popped up. [Skill gain: Vigil (Sanity).] She celebrated by falling asleep for the next sixteen hours.