"Your planet, apparently." Maze brought me into a channel with him, Ruuel and someone called Tarmian, ushering me toward the nearest elevator. "He hasn’t been waiting long. It took some time to convince him that he’d have to come here if he wanted to talk to you, and the flight landed just before your return."
"If you can succeed in getting him to speak at all it will be progress," said Tarmian, who was a woman with a deep, husky voice. "The most I’ve managed is to be told I don’t need to know his name."
Selkie and someone called Ganaran joined the channel, and I had a sinking realisation that I was supposedly going to have a conversation with a planetary emissary while a bunch of people made helpful suggestions to me in my head. It made me wonder if Alyssa was right about the whole too obliging thing, because it hadn’t seemed to occur to any of them that my interests in such a conversation might not coincide with theirs. Or maybe it had, but they were hoping no independent thought would cross my mind. I listened without comment to Tarmian and Ganaran, who are from KOTIS' liaison branch, telling me to let the Nuran lead the conversation, but to try and encourage him to expand on topics he was willing to discuss. Maze and Ruuel kept quiet, though they did both enhance themselves just before we went in, something I should be used to, but which was really disconcerting with my arms and shoulders bare.
Preconceptions are fun. I was expecting someone like a Buddhist monk, complete with bald head and orange robes. The closest I got were the robes, and they were more maroon and white, and not really robes. He had the same sort of colouring as Ruuel and Taarel and Selkie, but wore his hair long, with the sides caught back in a high tail except for strips before his ears. He looked like a manga samurai, complete with two swords tucked into a belt sash.
The other person in the room was a curvy and sweet-faced woman with a lot of curly black hair which kept trying to escape her hairclips. She was wearing a reddish-plum uniform, a new type to me. Liaison branch.
"This is Caszandra Devlin," the woman – Tarmian – said and the Nuran turned and looked at me. His expression was appraising, not particularly warm or pleased or anything, and he bowed, barely more than a nod of the head.
"Hello," I said, in English and then in Taren. I wasn’t going to attempt bowing.
"I am indebted for your time," said the Nuran. He spoke with an accent, and just enough hesitation to suggest that Taren was at least a different dialect to his own language.
"Sit down, please," said Tarmian, gesturing to a coffee table and couches arrangement. The room also had a more formal table and chairs, and a couple of corner clusters of seats and smaller tables, and even an actual long window giving an excellent view of a massive storm outside. That was disorienting; weather is so separate from daily life here.
The couches were the firm, solid sort. Maze and Ruuel stood behind my couch, Tarmian had a smaller chair to my right and the Nuran sat in the centre of the couch opposite.
"How did a child of Gaia reach this world?" he asked. And then there was a tickly feeling in my head and I could hear his voice add: Are you able to reply this way?
Yes? I tried thinking, all too conscious of Maze and Ruuel standing behind me, neither of whom were likely to have missed me suddenly sitting up much straighter. I’ve no idea what Ruuel’s Sights would have shown him, and I stumbled on into answering the verbal question to buy myself time. "Walked through a gate from my planet to Muina. Was there until people from Tare found me, brought me back here."
My name is Inisar. His eyes, long and dark, were watching me very steadily. "Can you tell me what knowledge Gaia retains of Muina?" I have been sent to offer you Nuri’s aid.
Aid? "None. I had never heard name Muina before Tarens told me it. There are no stories, no recognisable stories, about people my planet going to other planets. Were Muinans first from my planet?"
"I do not know." Aid in the form of haven. "That Gaia and Muina shared a bond is remembered. It is an ancient one, stretching far beyond any record." I see that the distortions the people of this world inflict on themselves have been passed to you.
The interface?
"The path to Gaia had long been lost, however, even before we departed Muina. Had there been any unusual events in Gaia’s Ena preceding your arrival on Muina?" I am sorry that I am unable to undo their distortion, but I can offer an escape from this place. First to Nuri. And then to your own world.
Both Tarmian and Ganaran said something over the interface at this point, but I didn’t pay any attention to their suggestions, just giving Tarmian a blankly distracted look.
"The…my planet, psychic talents are considered fiction. We have forgotten everything, if ever knew. Don’t know Ena, don’t access it." I felt unreasonably angry. Holding two conversations at once while someone else talked at me was beyond stressful, especially when my home was dangled under my nose as some sort of bait. I could feel Maze shift behind me, and didn’t know whether to feel comforted or threatened by his presence. Nuri able locate natural gate my world?
"How greatly are the children of Gaia troubled by Ionoth?" With a link of both birth and heart to Gaia, a path can be found. Natural gates are not constantly open, but if you were able to travel to Muina, it will be possible to find that gate and return you.
"Ionoth not able reach real-space on my world. Their existence, existence of spaces, none of that is known. Are spaces memories of worlds, or nightmares of worlds?" Nuri wants something in exchange?
"Both." You have opened Muina to Tare. That cannot be undone, although we would ask you to balance the act. "Memories, nightmares, dreams. They are the expression of the living, imprinted on the Ena." Beyond that, we prefer not to see a touchstone in such misguided hands. Returning you to Gaia will remove the risks you pose.
Touchstone is me? I paused, because it was getting really hard to keep track of the conversation, and the person called Ganaran was saying something excitedly about some theory being validated. "Do you know if all people my planet have this enhancement talent?" Why does Nuri think Tare people so bad?
They repeat the arrogance of the past, seeking to reach beyond what is born to them. Without balance, without wisdom, they are twisting themselves outside nature. "You are something which appears perhaps once in ten generations. Not unique to Gaia." Will you allow me to remove you from this place? You need only take my hand.
Are you Nuri equivalent of Setari? Protect Nuri from Ionoth? I was struggling to decide how I wanted to react, the idea of perhaps being able to go home shrieking at me, along with a great deal of resentment that they couldn’t just offer to do it openly. But I at least realised that he probably wasn’t going to be able to do what he planned. "Do you know why it is some talents I enhance strength, and other talents I make different?"
He hadn’t expected it. He was Ruuel-level in terms of difficulty to read, but when he heard that he drew back his hands from where they had rested unmoving on his knees.
"I first found out was enhancement talent when someone tried teleport me," I went on helpfully, glad to be sticking to just out-loud talking for a minute. For one thing the in-my-head talking itched. "We ended up in totally wrong place. Fell down. Most talents, stronger, but some go very strange."
"The distortion inflicted on you by these," he said, lifting his eyes past my shoulder. "Calling themselves Setari with no understanding of what that title means."