exists. Surely, you would have at least been taught the basic principles, even if you’d never met a mage in person.”
And with that, Sal was caught. He supposed that he could continue to hold back, to offer vague details about his origins, but more and more he realized that he’d need to be honest with his new friends, to trust them, if they were to ever help him get back home.
“You ain’t gonna believe this,” he warned, wincing internally. The redneck version of ‘ once upon a time ,’ Sal thought wryly. Apparently, Jaren had never heard that joke, for the mage just nodded him on, accepting the warning for what it was.
Taking a deep breath, Sal jumped in. “Here goes... I’m not from this world. At least, I don’t think so. I’m from a place where we’ve built cities hundreds of times larger than Veylin, out of metal and glass instead of wood and clay. We’ve created machines that run without horses, that dive to the bottom of the ocean, that fly...heck, we’ve even gone to the moon! But we don’t have magic, and I ain’t got the foggiest idea how I got here.”
“The moon, eh?” Reit whispered. “Sounds like magic to me.”
Sal sent a sharp look at Reit. How in the world could he hear what he and Jaren were talking about? But the swarthy leader only shrugged, and the reason became clear even before the other spoke. “What, you think I don’t like good conversation?” Retzu and the emeralds chuckled silently. Apparently everybody was eavesdropping. “Seriously, though. You’re still a stranger to us. We need to know as much about you as you apparently do about us.”
Sal couldn’t fault him on that, but it still didn’t sit well with him. “That’s cool and all, but next time warn me when I’m about to be on public display.”
“Fair enough,” Reit acceded, then said nothing more.
Which left Sal curious. “What, that’s it? I just said I’m from another world. That don’t sound a bit crazy to you?”
“Why should it?” Jaren asked. “In a reality where every possibility is or can be represented, there is always the possibility of a realm that is bereft of magic. And if that is the case, it certainly seems reasonable that you’d be from that very place.”
“So I’m not crazy,” Sal stated, more to assure himself once more than for their confirmation.
“No, I doubt you’re crazy,” Jaren chuckled near-silently. “Unfortunate, perhaps. Misplaced, certainly. But not crazy. And while I grant you that it is very odd that you should find yourself here, I would not go so far as to say it was impossible or even unlikely. After all, what you might consider impossible would seem to be commonplace in this world,” he added with a wink.
***
Over the next few days, Jaren answered Sal’s questions as best he could, mainly to acclimatize the stranger to his new surroundings. Sal felt more like a sociology student than someone having a real conversation.
At night, though, they would bat around stories of a personal nature; women—-except the female mage Nisa, who would discuss her family—battle, misadventures, what have you. The conversations took much the same slant as those evening powwows back in the prison, except Sal felt comfortable enough now to add his otherworldly perspective to his tales.
“I mean, we all warned him, but Boob was dang sure gonna buy her a drink if it killed him!” Sal was saying one night, amid uproarious laughter from all except Nisa, who colored a bit at this “Boob’s” impending mistake. Even Reit was doubled over with mirth, valiantly trying to shush his companions, but doing a poor job of it himself. None of them knew who Boob was, or what “tequila” might have been, but they didn’t have to. They knew what was coming, and cruel as it seemed, humiliation was universally funny.
“So there he goes walking up to her, shot glass in hand, and he says ‘Hey baby, what’s your name?’ And in the deepest voice you ever heard, she says