“Fire mana?” said the tribesman.

“Yes, fire mana,” I said. “It’s different from fire. This rock has a lot of earth mana and a little bit of fire mana, which is what you’re trying to use to cast your spell.”

The tribesman frowned. Instead of answering, he focused on the rock and began preparing his magic. A small orange flame winked into existence, right over the rock’s surface. The tribesman was so surprised by his success, he lost his concentration and the magic fizzled out.

“Congratulations!” I said. I went around to the other tribesmen and helped them visualize fire mana.

It might seem like a small change, turning fire element into fire mana, but our experiments with Kelser proved it would be useful. Of course, the actual word we were using wasn’t ‘mana’ but another word in the human language. I had to try a bunch of words in different languages to find something that would translate into something that would work, and mana was the best fit. I also memorized the word in the human language, so I could repeat it without translation magic for anyone who still didn’t understand, but so far, ‘mana’ was working wonders!

In fact, introducing the concept of mana to Kelser somehow helped him with motion magic too. My best guess was that the word it was being translated into in the human language was a cross between energy, essence, and some form of spiritual existence. It seemed at least a little similar to the Chinese concept of Qi, although it was very different on the spiritual side.

As the magic practice wrapped up, the Roja tribesmen were quite visibly happy. After days of hitting a wall, it must have felt amazing to have finally broken through. A few of them, like elder Kezler, had even managed to start working on motion magic.

“Don’t forget,” said the elder has he passed me. “We will be leaving before dawn.”

“Right,” I said, “I’ll remind Noel too.”

“Thank you, teacher,” said the elder.

He walked away with a grin on his wrinkly face. I sighed. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get any human except Kelser to call me by my name. We compromised and settled on teacher, instead. They called Noel the same thing, but after talking to Kelser, I realized ‘teacher’ was gendered in their language, so they were actually calling us different things. I also found out their version of ‘teacher’ was closer to ‘mentor,’ which made me wonder why the translation magic didn’t just translate it as that. Maybe it was because we didn’t fit the role of ‘mentor’ exactly so they weren’t using their own word to mean what it would usually mean.

Ah, picking apart the intricacies of language always made me feel better. I was not looking forward to trekking across the hills and plains to get to the site of the festival. I’d gotten comfortable here in this beautiful cove, eating fresh fish every day, and lazing around in the sun. Of course, I’d feel bad if everyone was out hunting and foraging while I did nothing, so I used motion detection magic to set up traps. Elder Kezler said I’d helped them prepare for the journey to the festival’s site much faster than they’d expected, which made Noel really happy.

The other thing that was stressing me out was the question of how the humans had learned magic. None of the humans knew anything useful about it, not even elder Kezler. I even had him repeat his long, embarrassing chants so I could listen to them without my translation magic, but there was nothing special about them. Kelser confirmed the entire chant was entirely in the human language. I asked him how the elder could chant something so embarrassing with a straight face if he could understand what it meant, to which Kelser replied that his grandfather was weird.

I even took a page out of Jewish mysticism, or Kabbalah, and tried to write down the words to the spells in different languages, to see if that would reveal some sort of hidden meaning. Since the human language was a root-based language, like the semitic languages back on my Earth, I figured I could try to analyze the words that way.

See, unlike English, languages that used the root-based system, like Hebrew and Arabic, could create meaning through the roots of the words, rather than their specific manifestations. In English, that would be like using the etymology of a word to imply a hidden meaning. This characteristic is very useful in poetry, since it allows one to not just rhyme the words directly, but to also work with and manipulate root words in poetry.

I never truly understood the way that worked even though I’d learned Arabic. It wasn’t until I joined a course on Jewish mysticism in college that a professor explained the way this form of writing and poetry could work in pieces like the Zohar or in the works of Solomon ibn Gabirol. It actually made me go back and read the famous Arabic poet Adonis, just so I could read him through this lens.

However, it seemed like that line of analysis wasn’t going to work on these magic spells. It was tough trying to connect roots together with the limited vocabulary I had learned so far, but it was enough to make it clear that the spells were not, in fact, very poetic at all.

I sighed, kicked some dirt over the lines I’d written on the ground, and threw away my stick. I went inside the cave as the sun went down and had some dinner. We were having grilled fish tonight!

---

I stood up carefully. It was dark. I tip-toed out of the room and put my hands on the wall. I followed the wall out of the cave, being careful to not make a sound. All of the Roja tribesmen were asleep. Nobody had been on guard duty ever since I told them about my motion detection magic. Not only did they trust in my magic, a lot of them had wanted to learn motion detection magic first!

There was a new moon out tonight, which meant the outside was darker than ever. Only the red star pulsed gently in the sky. With its dull shine, it almost looked like just another star in the clear, star-studded night sky.

I followed the shore to the middle of the cove, in a spot where the waves were the weakest and the water the shallowest. The water broke over the beach in a blue gradient, flowing back and forth and leaving behind what looked like layers of blue filling in an ice cream cake. The only thing that broke their smooth colors was the reflection of the red star, which sometimes gave the sea a gentle, pink hue.

I sat down on the beach, just far away from the water to have my feet tickled from time to time. Noel had gotten here before me, like usual. I didn’t say hi or make any small talk. Instead, I passed her some fruits I’d picked during the day.

Noel and I had been meeting here for weeks now. Our time with the Roja tribe, here in this isolated and beautiful cove, was the first opportunity we’d had to relax since we’d fought the one-star Farro bird. We’d been on the move for so long, had so much to do, and always been so tired by nighttime, that we hadn’t even realized how starved we were for casual conversation. And although we were still under a lot of stress, what with Noel having lost her family through a time-skip and a literal immortal telling me the only way home was through ‘annihilation,’ we still managed to talk about some stuff here in our special spot in the middle of the cove.

We’d talked about the elfin graves we’d found when we first came here. If one of them was a hunter, could it have been Sharun? If two of them could die, then would anyone else be alive? And if not, could we find their graves?

After those sorts of heavy topics, we also discussed our childhoods. Things we loved, things we hated, and even shared a few embarrassing baby stories. At some point, we talked about love, at which point Noel finally realized that I really was much older than her, at least mentally.

I even got around to telling her about my Earth. I told her about the things I liked to do, the friends that I’d made in college, ice cream, football, movies and airplanes. I even told her how there were tons of stories in my world where people would get transported to another world, just like I had been. She chuckled a little when I told her about J. R. R. Tolkien’s elves. She couldn’t believe someone could write a character like Galadriel!

After a few hours of talking, we both stood up and went back to the cave. We’d usually spend a little longer out here, just listening to the waves and looking at the stars, but we had to get up early. It was time to set off on a journey!