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“A vruph, huh,” Tzi mused, lowering her wand and studying the new page the Grimoire showed her closely.  Even the magical book had been uncertain this would work, but using Divination on one of the skulls had rendered an image and full dossier on the living animal itself.  The vruph, according to its fresh entry in her Grimoire, was a predator which lived in these forests, preferring to hunt by stealth and ambush than chase or combat.  Its tawny color and subtle stripes would make it very stealthy indeed in the local vanilla grass.  Actually, the thing looked very feline; its body was proportionately longer than any cat's, trailing off into a wide, powerful tail that more resembled that of a lizard, but its limbs and head were distinctly cat-like.  Its face was a bit more triangular than a feline's, and its ears much longer, but aside from that...  “We'd better keep a sharp eye out.  Last thing I want to meet is a big cat-lizard that thinks I look tasty.”

“Actually, master, you are unlikely to meet it.  They are reluctant to approach or be seen by other large creatures, and would attempt to pounce on you from behind.”

“Thanks for that,” she said sourly.

“I only convey the most accurate information I can,” the Grimoire replied, folding itself shut and sliding back into its pouch.

“I guess,” she said, heading off again down slope toward the emerging trail, “I should be gratified the thing isn't called a fluffy spice kitty, or something similarly inane.”

“A cardamon cat, perhaps?”

Tzi grinned.  “Yeah, along those lines.”

“The source of information gained via Divination is subject to multiple variables, master.  Obviously, things have different names in different languages; being your Grimoire, I am naturally predisposed to relay information in a form most accessible to you.  By default, the spell will seek a consensus of the knowledge possessed by the widest number of people, but on points of disparity, its results also tend to be weighted by the input of other magic-users.”

“So,” she said thoughtfully, “if, for example, other wizards from our world happened to come here and investigate this place...  Me casting Divination at stuff might be more likely to come up with their terms than whatever the locals use?”

“It is possible, master.”

“Sounds like not all wizards have a lot of common sense,” she observed, then scowled.  “But I guess we learned that good and proper back home, didn't we.”

The Grimoire did not answer, likely perceiving that it had not really been a question.

For the most part, there wasn't much to do except walk.  Once she got on the trail proper, that was a little easier; Tzi was not exactly accustomed to wading through high grass.  She didn't appear to have picked up any insect passengers, but the gently waving vanilla grass made her nervous and glad to be out of it.  Who knew what might live in there?

After the first few minutes, she began making a conscious effort not to look at the sky.  When she had first awakened back in the crater, the small world above, the one that looked like it might be habitable, had been almost directly overhead.  Now, it was sinking toward the horizon straight ahead of her.  Interesting as that was, it was also disconcerting.  Even worse, the titanic blue gas giant was rising higher in the sky as the world upon which she stood rotated.  Tzi had an eerie sense of perspective; this moon was clearly orbiting above the plane of the giant's rings.  In fact, if it continued rotating in this direction, they would predominate the sky in...hours?  She hadn't been here nearly long enough to have a sense of the rhythms involved.  With the sun so tiny and distant, she couldn't even be sure whether this was day or night.  If indeed those terms even applied here.

As a little girl Tzi had often stood outdoors at night, staring up at the stars and marveling at what was out there.  Sometimes, she had to lie flat on her back, gripping the grass (the familiar, green grass) as if to stop herself from tumbling off into the sky.  That was different, though; it took a conscious effort of contemplation and a focused gaze at the starry sky for that sense of insignificance to well up and overtake her.

Here, the whole sky was filled with perspective,with constant and intrusive reminders that she stood on a tiny, unimportant rock tumbling aimlessly through infinite darkness.  She found herself frequently having to stare at her feet, concentrating on placing each in front of the other, to ward of waves of vertigo.

Tzi trailed to a stop, turning to regard the large tree rising a few meters from the path.  Cinnamon stick trees had been peppered across the rolling landscape alone and in small clumps, but this was the first of the bigger sort she had encountered.  It towered above them, standing by itself amid a sea of vanilla grass, with a few floofberry bushes rising from between its hefty roots.  They seemed to like shade.

She stepped off the path, moving warily through the grass, and approached the tree.  Unlike its smaller counterparts, its roots were partially exposed, rising high enough and growing thick enough that several of them would have made serviceable seats for her.  The tree was thicker around than she was tall, rising to a system of branches not unlike an oak in shape, and supporting a dense canopy of dark blue leaves.

Tzi bent to pick up one of these which had fallen near her.  It didn't feel or look like any leaf she'd ever encountered; almost wedge-shaped with its stem attached to the narrow point, it curved slightly and was very light, and very soft to the touch.  Silky, in fact.  Altogether, it looked and felt more like a flower petal than a leaf.  She dropped this and placed her hand against the trunk of the tree.  Its bark, which was a pale golden color that barely stood out from the vanilla grass, had a pleasant velvety texture.  More like some kind of skin than bark, actually.

“Hm,” she grunted aloud, then drew her wand and aimed it at the trunk, forming the sigil for Divination in her mind and experiencing the slightly cool sensation and minty scent it associated in her brain.  The wand's tip ignited, its glow growing steadily brighter over the course of seven seconds, until it flashed and then fell dark, signifying the completion of the spell.

Her Grimoire rose from its pouch to hover in front of her, opening and displaying the new page.  “Congratulations, master!  Another entry!”

“Blondewood trees?” she said incredulously.  “Oh, come on, you're not even trying.”

The Grimoire half-closed, its front cover moving enough to look at her sidelong with a worried expression.  “Master?”

“Oh, not you,” she clarified, affectionately running her fingertips along its spine.  “Just...  Whatever wizard came through here naming stuff had no imagination.”

“It is very unlikely that a single wizard's opinions would be picked up by Divination, master.  Remember, looking into a lone mind is generally fruitless.  At least some people must agree upon these labels for them to appear in my pages this way.”

“Sort of interesting, when you think of it in those terms,” Tzi mused, turning and heading back to the path while the Grimoire slid back into its pouch.  “Cinnamon stick trees, blondewood trees, darkbell flowers, even floofberries...  Those are the work of whatever yahoo came here from our world and began classifying things.  But the rocks...what were they?”

“Thus far we have tabulated basalt, granite, diorite, and obsidian, master.”

“Right, those.  Those are the names used in our world, right?”

“Correct, master.”

“But a vruph,” she added, frowning and moving back along the path.  “That doesn't even sound like any language I've ever heard.  I think there's more than one kind of intelligence at work here.”

“A reasonable conclusion, master, but be cautious: we lack data.  All we have with regard to other intelligences present is conjecture.”

“Duly noted,” she agreed.

Staring at her feet kept her from tripping, but was not an aid in navigation, and after a gentle reminder from the Grimoire about the stealthiness of vruphs as they moved into more densely wooded country, she began watching carefully around herself.  She found it not so bad; the more she continued, the more the patchy scrubland transitioned into a true forest, mostly of delicate-looking cinnamon stick trees, with here and there the towering shapes of blondewoods rising amid them, the ground largely concealed by bushes.  Tzi paused whenever she encountered a new plant near the path, and added entries to her Grimoire for azure ferns, raffaffala bushes (which also produced edible berries that weren't in season) and a kind of dwarf tree called a wafampo whose seeds were apparently quite tasty and a good source of protein.  Or so its article in the Grimoire claimed; it was also the wrong time of year for those.  That particular footnote was growing frustrating, and Tzi was beginning to get hungry.  If nothing else, her efforts further emphasized the different kinds of taxonomy at play here.  She knew nothing of this world's etymology and could not have guessed how many languages were used to derive some of these names, but those bestowed by unimaginative travelers from her own world still stood out.

She saw more birds, and new kinds, as well as small rodent-like creatures both in the trees and among the underbrush.  They produced a musical chattering that was, if peculiar, at least rather pleasant.  In fact, all of this scenery was quite pretty as long as she carefully didn't focus on how bizarre it was.  The forest mostly blocked out the sky, blessedly; it was dimmer beneath the canopy, but not so much that she couldn't see to walk, so she wasn't about to complain.  Already Tzi suspected that if she ever got home she'd be seeing those looming planets in her nightmares for years to come.

Tzi quickened her pace when the sound of water began to differentiate itself from the forest noises up ahead.  She'd been too distracted to really take note, but the familiar gurgle suddenly made her realize that she was even thirstier than she was hungry.  The trail crested a low hill, quirked around the trunk of a particularly massive blondewood, and suddenly she came upon a stream flowing through a long, low depression in the ground.

Her first instinct was to throw herself down and stick her face in it, but she wasn't that dehydrated, or that reckless.  After one abortive twitch in the direction of the stream, Tzi caught herself, and carefully stepped off the path to settle herself down between two roots of the big tree.  The root system actually arched across the shallow creek bed, its lowest branches providing a convenient perch.

“I don't know a spell for checking for poisons or anything like that...” Tzi muttered, taking out her wand but letting it hang in her fingers.

“Admirable caution, master,” the Grimoire said, rising out of its pouch to hover near her head.  “Try Divination.”

“I'm starting to think that's your answer to everything,” she said wryly.

“It is a versatile and simple means of acquiring information, master.  In this case, it is relevant that water in its pure state is a unique magical classification.  If you Divine a given source of water it will distinguish by its general nature.  Distilled water, spring water, seawater, marsh water...”

“Huh,” she mused.  “Well, okay, then.”

A few seconds of concentration later, the Grimoire flipped around and opened to show her a new page.  “Creek water, master!  Quite clean, with negligible traces of sediment and biomatter.  It should be safe to drink!”

“Don't mind if I do,” Tzi said eagerly, tucking her wand back through her belt and leaning forward.  Mindful of vruphs and who knew what else, she refrained from sticking her face in the stream; hands were not great tools for ladling water, and it took a while to satisfy her immediate thirst, but she finally let out a sigh and leaned back against the tree trunk.  Actually, the creek even tasted clean.  That was a blessing; once hydrated, it occurred to her to worry about about terms like “sediment” and “biomatter,” but what was done was done.

“Man, I really wish I had a canteen or something,” she said, frowning in sudden realization.  “Who knows when we'll find water again?”

“This landscape hardly appears arid, master.  A forest implies readily accessible groundwater and significant rainfall.  Also, there are signs of habitation, which further argues in favor of hospitable conditions.”

“You mean the trail, and...those?”  She nodded in the direction of the path; where it crossed the creek, large flat stones had been set in the stream to provide footing.

“Indeed, master.”

Tzi nodded, taking her wand out again.  The water provided some new discoveries; she took a few moments to cast Divination at each of them, adding Grimoire entries for lyfreeds and gliderleaf plants.  Like most of the plant life she'd encountered so far, their stems and foliage was blue rather than green.  She also managed to Divine her first live animal, a tiny arthropod with four legs and angular, translucent wings.

“Ungthry,” she muttered, reading the Grimoire's notes on the creature.  “Okay, that's gotta be a local name.  Not good for anything, unfortunately.”

“They are pretty, master!” the book offered.  “And one never knows what reagents might prove magically useful.  Best to catalog everything we encounter; if we learn spells native to this world, it stands to reason their ritual components will be derived from this environment.”

“Good point,” she agreed, tucking wand and Grimoire away and rising to proceed back along the path.  Crossing the creek was a little dicey; the flat stones were rather small, and placed oddly close together.  Poor planning, coincidence, or designed for creatures with smaller legs and feet?

She walked in relative quiet for a while, gradually forgetting to scan the passing shadows for threats and sinking into her thoughts.

“Hey, Grimoire?”

“Master?”

“My psy is in a pretty bad condition right now...”

“Totally understandable, master, given the circumstances.”

“Thanks,” she said with a little smile, patting the book in its pouch, “but I wasn't fishing for validation.  No, I mean...  Well, when I tried to use my healing spell earlier I could barely get it to work.  What about...this Divination?  I never used that before, so I don't know what to compare it with.  If I'm not doing it right, will we get wrong information?  Or just...not all the info available?”

“With magic it is difficult to call anything impossible, master, but it generally does not work that way.  The results of Divination can be nuanced depending on multiple factors, but its basic functionality is binary.  So long as it works, it works.  I believe if you attempt it with your psy in a better condition, the spell cast will be faster and you may acquire more detail.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding.  “That's a relief.  We definitely don't wanna be filling you with nonsense.”

“No, master, we certainly don't!”

“I just can't get over some of these names,”Tzi muttered, shaking her head.

She was just ruminating, a while later, on the difficulty of keeping track of time here when it occurred to her that the exceptionally large blondewood canopy rising out of the forest ahead was directly ahead; if the path didn't bend, it would lead right to it.  Tzi focused her attention on this, and in just a few more minutes could see the trunks through the forest of cinnamon stick trees.  Trunks, plural; there was actually a cluster of them.

Drawing closer, she gradually slowed until she came to a stop right in the middle of the group.  The path diverged, going on ahead in one direction and taking a sharp right; the four blondewood trees had been planted at corners of the path, framing the three roads and one open space which disappeared into the forest to her left.  Most interestingly, their branches actually arched together high overhead, growing directly into one another's trunks.  They seemed to have separate root systems; Tzi couldn't tell if these were different trees that had grown together somehow or a single, large organism.

She didn't know whether trees combined that way back home.  For that matter, knowing might not have helped, considering that life here possibly followed entirely different rules.

“I suspect this is an artificial arrangement, master,” her Grimoire remarked.

“What makes you think so?”

“This is the first group of blondewoods we have seen; they seem to prefer solitude, natively.  If they do not normally grow so close together, this implies that they were encouraged to.  And their position astride this crossroads is particularly telling.”

“Makes sense,” she agreed, turning in a slow circle.  Fortunately the asymmetrical selection of paths made it easy to remember which way she had come.  “So now...we have a decision to make.”

“We are likely to find people in both directions, master.  The path has been almost straight, overall, from the mountain.  If we proceed straight ahead, it leads in the general direction of one of the larger smoke plumes we saw earlier; the right turn leads toward the smallest one.”

“Hmm.”  Tzi turned slowly back and forth between them.  “This way,” she decided aloud, turning right and setting off between the great blondewood trunks.  “Hopefully less smoke means smaller groups.  If they're friendly, it's easier to make friends with fewer people.  And if they're not...  Well, that's still easier, and even more important.”

“Soundly reasoned, master.”

The path quickly took her into more undulating terrain, crawling over small hills and into little valleys, or winding slightly around them to avoid it.  Also, it grew more narrow.  It had never been wide or paved, clearly nothing but a foot trail, but now this branch seemed to be gradually tapering off, until staying on it commonly involved brushing past overhanging fronds of blue ferns.  For all that, it overall seemed to still be going in generally the same direction.

Tzi was just beginning to decide she regretted this choice when she became aware of voices up ahead.

Instinctively, she slowed, and began moving more carefully, even stepping wide of the bushes to avoid rustling as she passed.  Not that she intended to sneak up on anyone, exactly, but she generally felt it better not to go crashing around when there were people of uncertain intentions nearby.

As she quietly drew closer, the voices became louder, until she could distinguish enough distinct sounds to determine they were speaking in a language she did not know.  Well, that was hardly surprising.  Their tone seemed overall relaxed, though; several times she clearly heard laughter.  More than that was hard to determine.  The voices were all fairly high-pitched, probably women or children, as best she could judge.

And the direction from which Tzi heard them shifted as she proceeded along.  The path actually started widening out again, but the voices (and other muffled sounds, now) began to seem like they were coming off from its left.  She absentmindedly drew her wand while proceeding, and stopped only when she came to another blondewood tree positioned just off the path.  In fact, the path made a small detour around its wide root system.  Right on the other side of this was a vertical pile of stones—mostly flattish ones, looking somewhat rounded as if they'd spent years in a river, but clearly not cut.  Natural in origin or not, piled stones meant a marker placed there by intelligent hands.  Had she not stopped to study this, Tzi might have missed the much smaller, fainter trail branching off from the main path, half-hidden as it was by feathery ferns.

The voices were definitely coming from that direction.

Tzi moved even more carefully along the tiny game trail.  It was as short as it was narrow, proceeding only a few meters through the underbrush to a small clearing with a hard-packed dirt floor, in the shadow of an exceptionally large blondewood whose root system partially walled it off.  The trunks of cinnamon stick trees and dense bushes made a thick perimeter with only the trail as an easy access, creating a snug little campsite currently in use for exactly that purpose.  The occupants had built a fire in a ring of stones near the middle, and pitched a tent of stitched-together hides in the shadow of the roots.  They did not immediately notice Tzi lurking in the brush just outside, and she stared at them in amazement.

There were four of them, likely a family, and they were humanoid enough that she could tell males from females at a glance by the shape of their bodies.  The biggest of the creatures was the adult female, who stood no taller than Tzi's shoulders, and Tzi had never had cause to think of herself as tall.  Covered in fur, they had very dainty builds, with long slim arms and almost incongruously sturdy legs that descended from powerful haunches to digitigrade feet, swelling to paws big enough that they'd have no trouble balancing even though paws were not usually a method of travel for creatures which stood upright.  Their tails were each roughly as long as they were tall, and even fluffier than the rest of their bodies.  It was their faces which were the most alien, though.  Almost feline, not elongated like the vruph but, in fact, shorter and flatter—something halfway between lion and human, with recognizable features despite their overlarge eyes and slight muzzles.  The ears, though positioned on top of their heads like a cat's, were the wrong shape and too large, being backswept and adding another head of height to them.  What she could see of their fur seemed to be in blended shades of deep gray and tawny brown, with paler patches that were almost white starting under their chins and trailing down the neck, presumably over the fronts of their bodies.

That was impossible to tell exactly, because these were clearly sapient creatures by dint of wearing clothes.  Mostly leather and heavy cloth—simple, but well-made, even dyed in patterns of decorative knotwork in the case of the bigger female.  Pots were sitting in the fire and something was cooking whose smell keenly reminded Tzi of how long it had been since she had eaten.  There was also the tent, the neat stack of firewood, and the spears propped against the blondewood's roots.  Despite their animalistic appearance, these were clearly people.

Right now, they were playing.  The two younger ones wrestled and chased each other around the fire, a very small one of indeterminate sex and an obvious female who seemed almost grown, though still smaller and slighter than the adult woman.  She and her...mother?...both had crests of fur atop their heads which stood up slightly between their ears.  The two adults were calmer by the fire, the male carefully turning one of the pots using a thick leather gripping pad, the woman grinning and saying something that sounded playful to the two roughhousing kids.

“They're adorable,” Tzi breathed.

She didn't realize she had spoken aloud until all four bounded to their feet (paws, actually), whirling to face her; the big female was fastest, snatching up a spear and holding it at the ready.  The girl deliberately placed herself in front of her little sibling, all of them staring at Tzi with clear alarm.

“Oh,” she said, wincing.  “Oops. Um, hi there!  Sorry to interrupt, I didn't mean to...bother you.”

The furry woman said something in a low tone; Tzi couldn't tell who she was addressing, but the male carefully sidled over toward the tent in response.  All of them remained alert and watchful, but they didn't move either to retreat or attack.

“Is it okay if I...come in?  Is that all right?” Tzi asked carefully.  With a long, exaggerated step, she sidled out of the brush and into the clearing, moving as slowly as she could to avoid startling anybody.  There was no answer to this, but when she was fully out of the bushes and raised her foot to take another step, the woman said something sharp—this time, obviously directed at her—and raised her spear slightly.  She immediately halted.  “Okay, my apologies.  I'm Tzi.  It's nice to meet you.”

Stares.  The male had crouched by the open end of the tent, one hand extended out of her sight inside it; the rest did not move.

Tzi placed her hand against her chest—her left hand, her right still being occupied with her wand—and bowed slightly, enunciating as clearly as she could.  “Tzi.”

The adult female's eyes flicked with her slight movement, but she made no response.  The younger girl, though, grinned broadly (they had flattish teeth like a human's, though with bigger, elongated canines), and repeated the gesture exactly, saying “Scio!”

The mother snapped a few curt syllables at her without taking her eyes off Tzi, and the girl sighed, her ears drooping slightly.  Her elder followed this up by rattling off a terse little speech at Tzi, adjusting her grip on the spear but not yet making any aggressive move with it.

“I'm...sorry, I don't know your language,” Tzi replied, trying to keep her voice soothing and soft.  “So you probably aren't getting anything out of this, either...  Aw, dang.  Okay, I just...  I'm new here, and lost as heck.  I could really use some help...  How can I ask for help, though?” she wondered aloud.

None of them moved, just staring at her, though the girl's expression seemed friendlier.  Their faces were humanlike enough that she could read that much—that, and the open suspicion on the two adults.  The youngest child peeked out from behind the girl's legs.

“Guess there's always the old standby,” Tzi muttered, lifting her wand and forming the sigil for Divination in her mind.

Instantly the furry woman lunged forward, barking a string of angry syllables and jabbing at Tzi with the spear.

Tzi frantically backpedaled, stumbling and bouncing off a cinnamon trunk as she retreated; this terrain was not friendly toward backward movement.  The woman followed, continuing to prod and stab.  Actually, she wasn't closing or apparently attempting to attack, but imposing herself between Tzi and her family, making the most menacing gestures she could without truly starting a fight.

“Sorry!” Tzi squeaked, staggering and bumbling away as quickly as she could with the agitated creature still in pursuit.  She had already lost sight of the rest of the group.  “Sorry, I'm sorry!  I didn't mean any harm, it's just at—”  She broke off with a grunt, the small of her back impacting painfully against the stack of stones marking the little trail.  That thing was more solid than it looked.

Tzi quickly shuffled off down the trail in the direction she had come, still half-turned to keep the spear-wielding native in sight; it seemed like a bad idea to turn her back to that weapon.  How far did the little woman intend to chase her?  Scurrying all the way back along this track with her back turned would be a nightmare.

The woman emerged onto the main path, but there she stopped, still brandishing the spear menacingly and shouting what Tzi did not need translated to know were imprecations.

“I'm sorry!” she said again, stopping a few meters away and offering another bow.  In response to this, her furry little antagonist actually hefted the spear as if she intended to hurl it.  “Sorry!” Tzi called desperately, shuffling backward into the trees.  She didn't dare turn around until the spear-wielder was lost to sight over the next rise, but then she whirled so she could at least see where she was going and bolted, not slowing until the shrill, angry shouts had faded into the distance behind her.

Then, finally, she reduced her pace to a despondent plod, panting with exertion.  Tzi didn't think she was out of shape, really, but there wasn't a whole lot of fleeing for one's life in Knauer's Tower.  Well, not until right at the end, there.

“Stupid,” she muttered.  “Pointed a wand at them.  How could I be so stupid? If a giant bald alien interrupted your family dinner and aimed a wand at you, what would you think?”

She'd been mostly talking to herself, but the Grimoire answered.  “I suppose that would likely be interpreted as a hostile gesture, master.”

“Ugh, what an idiot.”  Jamming her wand angrily back through her belt, she ground the heels of her palms against her eyes until she saw spots.  “Idiot!  First people I meet, and I blow it!  How am I gonna get anybody to help me if I keep doing this?”

“Master, please don't castigate yourself.”

“Well, I pretty much deserve it, don't you think?!”

“That isn't what concerns me, master.  You need to be careful of your psy, which is already impaired by our overall situation.  Self-recrimination may be actively harmful to you.”

She heaved a heavy sigh.  “Yeah, I guess.”

Tzi trudged the rest of the way back the crossroads, where she paused in the shade of the four trees and sighed again.  “Welp.  Only one option left.”

“Provided we wish to stick to the path, master, yes.  I would still advise doing so.  Those natives did not appear hostile until they mistook your intentions as aggressive; it may be that others will be hospitable.”

“Yeah, we can at least hope for that,” she said without much enthusiasm, setting off down the last branch of path she hadn't yet explored.  “You know...  It occurs to me, they knew what a wand is.  It doesn't look like a weapon if you're not familiar with 'em.  So they're aware of magic.”  She paused, chewing her lip in thought.  “And immediately got really upset at the prospect of having it done at 'em.  I wonder if that signifies something?”

“I would say, master, it signifies that they are aware of magic.”

She had to laugh at that.  Somewhat bitterly, but still.

This trail was clearly more traveled than the other; it remained wide, and mostly straight.  Tzi took the time while walking to try to re-center her mind.  Very soon, one way or another, she was going to need to use magic, which meant her mind had to be focused, concentrated, and calm.  Easier said than done...  In the last day she had been ruthlessly betrayed by her teacher, marooned on an eerie netherworld with a sky full of madness, and now made a fool of herself and enemies of the first sapient beings she'd encountered.  And at this point, her growing hunger was absolutely not helping.

A walk through a forest was, under ordinary circumstances, exactly the sort of psy-replenishing activity her apprentice textbooks had recommended for a wizard who felt mentally depleted.  It was, indeed, peaceful.  The positive effect was significantly lessened when every single thing in the forest was a reminder that she was all the way across the universe from where she belonged.

If this was even the same universe.

Tzi was so lost in her brooding that she didn't realize they had arrived until her Grimoire rose out of its pouch at her hip, turning its embossed face to the clearing the opened up on the right side of the path.

This clearing was large, and contained a building so shockingly mundane that it looked as out of place here as a blondewood tree would have in the greenhouse at Knauer's Tower of Power.  It was two stories of fieldstone, logs, and whitewash, with a slate tile roof and a large brick chimney emitting a steady stream of wood smoke.  There were plentiful windows of clear glass, but Tzi couldn't see into any of them; a wrought iron lamp hanging over the door illuminated the building's sign, but it was apparently brighter out here than inside.

The sign was simple, a wooden plaque which matched the iron-bound plank door, painted with a single word:

INN

Tzi stared in silence for a moment.

“Am I hallucinating?”

“I don't believe so, master.  Unless you see something other than a typical country inn.”

“A typical country inn in the middle of a red-and-blue forest on an alien planet.”

“Well, master, we have already established that there is some traffic between this world and ours.”

She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “Maybe I'm just getting paranoid.  After the day I've had, it's hard to trust anything that appears to be going right.”

“A fair reaction, master, but remember that pessimism is extremely toxic to psy.  If this is as it appears, it might be exactly what we need.”

“What I need is for none of this to have happened,” she muttered, but started up the path toward the inn's door.  “But at this point I'll settle for things not getting any worse.”