The sun shone in brightly, even through the curtains. I had a moment of ugh, I don't want to get up for school, but then I remembered where I was. I slid the curtains aside and looked out on Fleuve Clair in the morning light. The moons were faintly visible, and that ever-present aurora shifted slowly overhead.

Technically it wasn't my first day in the Gate land, but it was the first day I'd woken there and would be there all day, would be going back to sleep there in my own room, in a city. It was a strange feeling. Besides an overactive curiosity and that draw I felt at the Clearing, that desire to be changed, I honestly wasn't sure why I was doing it. But hey, a weekend of Earth time to sate that curiosity wasn't going to hurt me.

The irony didn't pass my notice: I had my own place to stay and a job in another world, but a place to stay in Vancouver was still too rich for my blood.

Walking around the floor of the dormitory, I found some showers near where I'd found the toilets last night. Happily, all of them were single stalls, so I didn't need to worry about any of the normal gender weirdness of my usual Earth haunts.

The shower provided a squared off piece of soap that looked like it may have been hand-made. It was an off-white colour with some sort of grain mixed in for scrubbing and had a faint scent that might've been cedar and mint. I wasn't entirely sure about the bottles, what was shampoo or conditioner or something else, so I decided to tie my hair up and skip washing it that day.

I'd brought my razor with me, not knowing exactly what I'd find on this side of the Gate, and not wanting to grow a beard. Never that. But when I felt my face, there wasn't even a hint of a shadow. Odd, but a relief - I took it.

After I dressed again, in a t-shirt and shorts, I headed out to attempt some work.

Several floors of the guild building were taken up by dorm rooms. Each floor had showers and toilets, and a staircase up and down. The bottom floor of the dorms had some open common space in the centre instead of rooms. Near the staircase that went down past the dorm floors, a dorm reception desk stood. A woman I hadn't seen before sat behind it; she held up a finger toward me and said "ah ah!", digging in a bin beside her and pulling out a package.

"Merci," I said. She looked slightly confused, so I bowed slightly. That she seemed to understand. She handed the package over to me.

I figured I'd take a look at whatever it was in my room, so I turned around and went back inside, closing the door behind me.

Sitting on the bed, I studied the package more carefully. Already receiving my first package in the new world! The wrapping was sturdy white paper with little filaments of plant visible throughout. The whole bundle had been tied across the four sides with some kind of twine, and a little tag hung from that twine, made from a still thicker type of paper. It took a moment, but I recognized my name written with the script of the Gate land.

I pretty much never intended to give back that little tag. I held it to my chest and closed my eyes, feeling it. It was a treasure beyond reckoning. Not just a place or a thing in the Gate world, but one specifically meant for me, with my name written on it in their script.

Carefully peeling back the package's paper with my left hand, my eyes settled on the revealed item, as my right hand peeled back the other side. A small stack of folded blue fabric sat on top of the wrapping paper. Unfolding the fabric itself, I saw that it was a shirt and pants, though it might be more accurate, given the cut, to say that it was a tunic. The tunic looked like it had been washed a few times, faded slightly from its initial medium indigo glory. The pants were still a somewhat darker blue. A brown cloth belt sat below that, and then a beautiful dark blue sash with a curving, geometric pattern stitched into it in sky blue thread.

I savoured each piece as I undressed and then redressed. The fit of the tunic was slightly strange, as if made for someone else, which was very likely true. Its sleeves were voluminous; I was worried that I'd end up staining it in ink, but it looked like it sure would be fun to swish around in. The pants were likewise roomy, but they at least had some sort of elastic at the waist, and at the bottom near my ankles. I pulled the brown belt around my waist; it was more like a canvas scarf than what we would've considered a belt on Earth. I did my best to knot it lightly on one side. Finally, I pulled the sash over my head, letting one side rest on a shoulder and the other side near my waist.

I smiled and did a little pirouette in the room, swishing toward the door. The sleeves were every bit as satisfying to swish as I'd hoped.

"Ah ha!" the woman who had handed me the package said with a smile, as I came into view again. I didn't understand most of her next sentence, but I did catch "proper", which got a laugh out of me.

I wondered idly how everyone I knew back on Earth was doing. It felt like I'd been in the Gate land for days. Of course, for them, it was still early Saturday morning, and I'd hardly left home. I shook my head vigorously to try to clear the queasy feeling from thinking about the time difference.

"Alyx!" Daire's voice called joyfully from the base of the stairs. He called for Maela, and she came out from another downstairs room after a moment.

Daire said a few sentences in their language, and Maela turned to me to translate.

"You are unused to our instruments and our language," she said. "So today you will make copies, understanding they may not be correct."

Daire spoke again, then Maela.

"If any are correct, then that is good! If not... is okay. If that is all, then?"

I stalled Maela with one more question. "Sorry to ask a silly question, but what is the name of this land?"

Maela smiled. "The most important question. You are in town Fleuve Clair, nation of Shanaclair." She lifted her arms, gesturing around. "This is Consoeurie Fí-Réalta, uhh, Starweave Guild. Magic!"

Maela wiggled her fingers in an exaggerated way, causing a puff of rainbow light to appear around them. Something that looked like the night aurora in the Shanaclair sky seemed to hover near her fingers for a moment before disappearing.

My eyes and mouth went wide and I drew in a short breath of surprise. In spite of having watched a lot of fiction about finding one's way to another world, and in spite of hanging around a lot of pagans who talked about magic all the time, I never really expected that there would be magic here. Visible. Right in front of me. I felt a nearly unbearable longing and an urge to reach out to where the mini-aurora had faded.

"Patience," she said with a laugh, before heading back to the door she'd come from.

Daire shook his head, chuckled, and then gestured me onward into a back office area.

Daire showed me how to roll up the tunic's sleeves to keep them out of the way. A little strip of fabric inside the sleeve could be wrapped around the rolled up sleeve and latched around a button on the outside.

I was given an old piece of paper to practise my writing. I feared the worst when I saw inkwells and feather quills on the desk, but they turned out to be somewhat decorative. A series of metallic pens with pointed nibs were laid out on the desk, and they proved to dispense ink like pens I'd known on Earth.

When Daire saw that I had no trouble with the pen, he handed me a page to try copying onto the scrap paper. I had to focus for the first bit, but my brain started picking up on patterns, and I could sort of see past the symbols to the words.

"Copy from," he said, pointing at one stack of papers. "Copy to," he said, pointing at a second set. He picked up my test page, put it into a shallow wooden box, then poured sand on it from a jar, wiggling the box around, and then taking the page out. "Dry."

I smiled and nodded, and he did likewise, walking off back to the front desk.

It was only then that I realized I hadn't asked him where the washrooms were, in that office. When I needed it, I guessed.