After Maela's demonstration of magic, it had been hard to keep my thoughts away from it. Somehow, I managed to use my work itself to keep focus. When I was studying and carefully copying words and glyphs, I wasn't thinking about anything but that.

"Can I learn?" I asked Maela when I caught her in the hallway once. She smiled warmly and patted the side of my shoulder. "Of course, Alyx. But not from us. A luath. Soon. For now, learn our ways."

I wasn't quite sure what to make of that interaction, but at least she'd said yes.

At dinner that night, I happened to be sitting off to the side by myself, since the people I'd met so far hadn't made it to the dining room. The food looked enough like Earth food that I started to wonder if I should give them some recipes from Earth. But I felt some sort of Prime Directive thoughts creeping into my mind, and honestly I'd rather have kept trying their food, anyway. Maybe later. Tonight's food was a rice-like grain, and vegetables cooked in something like sweet and sour sauce. Little cubes of something like tofu rounded out the protein part.

I'd been absorbed in the food, so I didn't see a person walking over to me until a shadow fell across the table. I looked up to see a girl around my age with a tray of food.

"Bannock," it sounded like she said. I had to think back to what I'd learned so far. Bannache. Hi.

I gestured to the seat opposite me.

"I'm Sheila," it sounded like she said, but I guessed she meant Síle, the spelling in Clair.

"A pleasure," I said in French with a small bow. I knew that it gave me an outrageous accent with the French-like words in Clair, but no one seemed to mind. "I'm Alyx."

She nodded and smiled shyly, setting her tray down and then sitting.

Síle was incredibly cute, I had to admit. Her blonde hair fell to approximately shoulder length, and her green eyes seemed to hover somewhere between mischief and shyness. She wore a deep blue peasant dress with a plain white linen top.

"Where are you from?" I thought I heard her say. "I'm from An Gleann."

"Ah okay," I said, nodding. "I came from La Lune."

Síle looked confused and shook her head. "I've only seen the road."

"Earth?" I tried.

Again she shook her head.

"Far away," I finished lamely. I wasn't sure how to describe it with so little language ability.

"What is An Gleann like?" I tried to ask. I suppose she understood.

"It's a pretty green valley," Síle responded. "Lots of farms. Cows are our friends."

I laughed with her.

"And Earth?" she asked.

I felt suddenly like a cow in headlights; I had no idea how even to start talking about my home under the circumstances, but I had to try.

"Tall mountains. Green forests. The ocean. Talllll buildings," I stretched out the word, gesturing upwards. "I bring a drawing next time."

Síle's eyes were wide. "Far away," she whispered, repeating my earlier words.

"Why did you come to Fleuve Clair?" I tried to ask. She looked confused for a moment, then nodded. I guess I hadn't gotten all of the words quite right.

When she finished swallowing her food, Síle responded with a lot of vocabulary I didn't know, but I heard, "I had hope," and also "Fí-Réalta." She shrugged. "Now I study."

She was, perhaps unconsciously like a stim, holding up her fingers in a little claw shape, and I could see zaps of energy twisting slowly from one to the next. Almost unconsciously, myself, I reached out to touch the magic dancing through the air around her hand.

Suddenly, I felt dizzy, hurtling through darkness, all perception of the dining room and my food having disappeared. Slightly blurry visions whipped past: farms, houses, a little town square, small mountains or hills around the area. A bonfire, a festival, kissing someone in a barn. A cow dying, a cow being born. The sun rising and setting in circles back and forth. And in the sky, always, the aurora. Somehow, it ran through all of the memories, the land, life, death. The world itself.

I felt like I was thrown back into the dining room with a bucket of ice over my head. But I'm pretty sure that all of it had only lasted a fraction of a second.

Síle's magic had disappeared, but in its place, she was gripping my hands and staring at me with wide eyes.

"What was the place that I saw?" she asked in a shaky voice. "Glass buildings, metal birds full of people, thinking--"

I couldn't follow the rest, but I could guess. Oh boy. She got the full blast of Earth after all.

"Caramie?" she asked me intently, gripping my hands. Friends?

I smiled and nodded. "Gladly, Síle. Caramie."

I stumbled my way back to my room after dinner and closed the door. I turned on the little globe of light, which I knew at that point to be based on magic, not gas nor electricity, and opened the wardrobe. I opened the lock on my backpack and took out my sketchbook from inside, and my drafting pencil and eraser.

Before the images could fade completely from my mind, I turned the book to a blank page and started sketching.

Skritch, skritch.

I thought that, realistically, the sights I'd seen could only have come from An Gleann. It was exactly as Síle had described, and it felt familiar, as if the eyes I'd been seeing it through had been hers. Hopefully, with the help of the sketches, I'd find out tomorrow.

I was slowly starting to piece together a few things. The aurora in the sky, and the little auroras I'd seen when people were practising magic... they must be the same, or somehow related. The idea of doing magic myself was super awesome, but at least in the stories, it didn't always work out like that.

And then there was what Maela had said to me. But not from us. What did she mean by that? If I wanted to start learning, I'd have to go elsewhere in Shanaclair? Or the school wasn't in session? A luath. Soon. That was all she had said.

I'd only made little thumbnail sketches on the page, since I didn't remember all of the details. Hopefully, it would be enough to ask Síle about.

I paged back through the sketchbook. The previous one was a sketch of the Clearing. That felt like years ago; how much simpler things had been. Beyond that, sketches of Vancouver from North Vancouver, looking across the water at the stadium and all of the buildings. Another from inside Stanley Park. A UBC building. My parents when they were sitting on the couch watching TV, unwitting subjects for my art.

I found myself feeling suddenly very homesick and wondering what I was doing. I was only a few days into my stay, which meant only a few hours into Saturday, still, on Earth. I could still just pack up right that moment and head out to the Gate. Tell Mom and Dad I decided to cancel the camping trip. Go back to class on Monday. Get my once a month poutine.

Suddenly, I knew what recipe I wanted to share.

And that brought me back to the other side of the coin. Shanaclair was such an interesting place. I was in a friggin' isekai story! I had been transported to another world, had touched and felt real magic with my own hands. And something... something in that place felt like it had licked its finger and touched me, saying "mine". Perhaps had done so from the moment I saw the side trail leading to the Gate.

I didn't know what was going on, but I craved it. That, too, scared me.

The idea of leaving that early was out of the question. But it brought another question to me as I tried to sleep:

At what point won't it be out of the question?