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Khairelikoblepharehglukumeilichephreidosd'enagouni spent some time examining the structure of his personal gate, making sure that it could handle the stresses he'd shortly be subjecting it to. Once finished, he glanced around the local neighborhood: the great dark nebulas that blocked visible light coming coreward, the nearby stars of all ages and types, and the pretty blue reflection nebula he never tired of looking at. He would miss them, for however short a time he'd be away.
He said farewell to his friends: the red giant shortly to turn into a white dwarf, the young star the nebula reflected, the red dwarfs, and the other nearby main sequence stars. He spent the most time conversing with the star cluster that had discovered why one of their sister stars had been snuffed and who had passed on the news to one who could travel to give the word to those who needed it.
He gave a sigh of visible light and reached out, hoping to find somewhere with a paradimensional net that could handle his dimensions. There had to be one somewhere; he couldn't fail in his task of finding an Advisory, not in memory of his friend and not when the universe was in danger. And--
-- he fell tangled in a swirling stellar wind and then landed, caught in a net, but with no idea of where in the universe he was or what had happened. The wind died away, leaving him no obvious answers. But there were two people… And then the three of them suddenly weren't where they had been.
Khairelikoblepharehglukumeilichephreidosd'enagouni hovered, looking down at the being bent in half. Was this normal for it? It looked up and he dimmed his emissions slightly, circling to look around at the rest of the place he'd landed in. At least, he hoped this was the final place.
It was simultaneously quieter-- much of the high-energy radiation was gone and the microwave and infrared were muted-- and much louder in radio. (Though not the radio he was familiar with. The patterns were much, much different.) And the colored reflections of single wavelengths of light off objects… there were so many of them, and all in patterns and orderly, and so much light being absorbed. And the life! He had never seen so much of it before. Could the whirlwind have been something else entirely? Could he be--?
Dear Artificer! I've blown my quanta and gone to the Good Place!
The conversation that followed cleared up that misconception, but he also wasn't sure that he'd gotten across how urgent his news was, given the lack of reaction to the missing Naming of Lights. It worried him a bit: maybe they wouldn't be able to help despite what they said. But maybe they just needed time to search for an Advisory.
And Kit and Nita had asked him for help in return. He'd agreed, as it was only fair he help them too, even though he wasn't quite sure what it would entail. There had to be some trust involved or the Naming of Lights really would be lost.
But he was still so confused about things, like why they'd changed his name. He didn't mind, per se, given that humans seemed to like them short (and they couldn't properly pronounce it, anyway) but was it a habit of theirs to rename people? Did it have some special meaning in their culture? And why did they talk with different accents? He'd expect it from stars from various places in the galaxy but on a tiny planet around a small sun? He'd thought all inhabitants of a planet would have the same one.
Furthermore, what was a spell and how could it bring him here? That, he wanted to know first. He had no desire to suddenly appear in another strange location when he meant to return home.
Conversation would hopefully clear up further misunderstandings, such as what a pen was and why Nita wanted it back. Fred hadn't expected a planet to be so… confusing.
* * * * *
After the three of them had spent the afternoon and some of the evening talking, Nita offered to bring Fred home with her, something he was both grateful for and curious about, as he had yet to see how humans lived. Kit had offered to let Fred stay with him as well, which he'd also agreed to-- they were both interesting people. Getting to her house in backpack was rather undignified, but he supposed that visiting white holes simply weren't common, due to how they reacted to his appearance. And anyplace where Nita and Kit lived had to be interesting.
He hadn't expected a tiny box shoved into the top of a small room off another room, nor that he wouldn't yet be able to see the rest of Nita's dwelling. Surely the family that produced her would be welcoming?
With nothing else to do but wait for answers from Nita when she returned, Fred settled into a corner of the shoebox after Nita dropped the lid back on it, his emissions dimmed to nothing but a trace of radio. The dark was welcome after the unrelentingly close emissions of the Sun, something that he had not experienced in the tens of thousands of years since he had been gravitationally flung out of his birth cluster as a young star. Though he had rather expected-- after the space that the green life had (the trees, he remembered, that's what they were)-- that Nita had so little of it, and what her family and she had was so cut off from the atmosphere. Though if humans needed protection from solar weather, maybe they needed protection from atmospheric weather as well?
It was something else he would ask Nita about.
He heard someone come into the larger area of Nita's space and then open the door to the smaller space and move things. But when he brightened out of invisibility and spoke, no one responded. Very, very strange. After all, Nita and Kit had heard him. But from how they'd acted, as if Fred was something to hide, maybe only other wizards could hear him. He didn't know; he'd never experienced anything like it before. Everyone in his neighborhood near the Great Rift was able to converse.
Maybe that was why Nita hadn't introduced him to her family. None of them would be able to hear him, which meant neither would Kit's family. It would be rather lonely, having only them to talk to and only if they were nearby.
It was one more confusing thing in a day full of them. But right now, he could think in peace. And, if he felt like it a little later, maybe talk with the star this planet orbited; Fred normally didn't have much chance to converse with stars edgeward of the dark nebulas. It would be interesting to find out exactly how they lived out here, nearer to the edge of the galaxy than his own location, and more about life on this planet. Maybe it would even be able to explain why so few humans could hear him. And maybe it would begin a message chain to tell his friends to let them know he'd found people who would take him to an Advisory and that he would be home as soon as possible.
* * * * *
The next morning-- the night was very restful and the brief conversation he'd had with Sol went pleasantly (Sol had agreed to pass on Fred's message)-- he hovered near the humans' heads, contemplating the latest odd event (humans' outsides could be changed against their will if someone hit them?) when the problem Nita had asked him to help solve showed up.
Feeling a bit nervous but sure the plan would work, Fred followed closely behind Nita, dimmed down to near invisibility in the bright sunlight of the morning. When Joanne stopped in front of Nita, Fred went to hover above Joanne's shoulder and accepted Nita's mental picture of the pen so he would know exactly what to look for, despite knowing the pen would look a little off to him given the differences in their perception, thanks to humans not being able to see infrared and other things, but he hoped he'd be able to ignore them. He didn't want to accidentally grab the wrong thing! And more importantly, he didn't want Nita to be hurt worse. When Joanne pulled the pen out, Fred brightened just slightly so Nita could see him acting, landed on it-- and swallowed wrong. He flickered back into invisibility, not liking the sensation of it sliding down wrong rather than fitting neatly into the little pocket he'd so carefully made. (And he couldn't help but wonder if Nita would ever get her pen back in a useful state.) It should have worked. It had to be Earth's gravity; there was so much of it that it was a constant background nuisance that he couldn't quite ignore.
And then, after the bell rang and he'd explained about the mishap-- a hiccup. He hadn't hiccuped for… centuries, not since his early days as a white hole. And he had never, ever emitted anything larger than subatomic particles. The thing on the ground looked like something he'd seen in Nita's house when she'd quietly shown him around that morning. And then he hiccuped again: larger books than Nita's and Kit's manuals. Nita and Kit were just as shocked… though they didn't seem embarrassed for him. It was a bit of a relief-- and yet another strangeness. He was rather tempted to dim down to invisibility so no one could tell it was him and therefore not shine again until the hiccups stopped-- but the strange, orderly things he emitted prevented that. Hiding in shame was not possible, though if no one was around, maybe they wouldn't realize it was him, so it was with relief that he took Kit's suggestion about staying outside.
He enjoyed the feeling of the limited spectrum of sunlight that made it through Earth's atmosphere while trying vainly to control his hiccups. They had normally stopped after a few times. But now? Now everything was large and orderly and completely outside the realm of his experience. With Nita and Kit in the building, he had no one to explain what his emissions were or why they were so orderly. Maybe it had something to do with Nita's pen? Or maybe it was just one more oddity that came from being on a planet rather than in the depths of space?
And his emissions were outside the realm of the experience of everyone on the planet, given the crowd that had gathered in the open area near the school, looking at everything he'd emitted.
The sooner Nita and Kit were free to take him to an Advisory, the better. Until now, he had greatly enjoyed his (very confusing) time on a planet. But he had never expected anything like this to occur. And he very much wished for it to stop.
* * * * *
Fred heard Nita and Kit wondering if it was safe to come out of the building and decided to do something to actively protect them: he emitted something rather larger than he had ever done. And it worked-- he saw Joanne and her friends coming toward him, so he made sure he was invisible and hurried to his new friends’ sides. He returned to emitting light once he reached them and radiated tired cheerfulness. It was good to help.
Fred tried not to hiccup as they ran down the street. Anything that could attract more attention from Joanne was a bad thing and a trail of objects would lead her right to Nita. But it was hard not emitting something when he really needed to. When they stopped in front of the supposed Advisories’ house, he couldn’t hold it in any longer-- and emitted something with a much louder sound than normal. It hurt his strained gnaester, too.
But he didn’t have time to think about any possible damage to himself because Nita unexpectedly disappeared through the plants and Kit followed her. With an infrared sigh, wondering what had gone wrong now, Fred followed them both, keeping out sight behind Kit’s back when another human (who named himself Tom) greeted them and the noisy four-legged being. But when Nita called his name, Fred hovered in the air between Nita and Kit and looked at the new human-- older than his new friends and seemingly more used to odd things happening. Maybe he really was an Advisory.
After leading them into the house, Tom introduced them to Carl, who gave the humans drinks. Nita and Kit then began talking about everything that had happened. Fred was content to listen to them rather than talk himself, as he was trying to ignore the surging queasiness that meant another hiccup was coming. But ignoring it in hopes they would stop hadn’t worked so far, no matter how desperately he wished.
Tom’s concerned reaction to the missing Naming of Lights relieved Fred. After coming all this way, despite the confusion and the hiccups, he’d delivered his message to people who understood the seriousness of its vanishment. He’d be able to tell the star cluster that people would be searching for the book and that hopefully they would find it before the Book Which Is Not Named could be read from.
Another hiccup briefly altered the trajectory of the conversation, so Carl left the room, but Tom explained to Nita and Kit what Fred hadn't managed to: what the Naming of Lights was and why it being missing was a catastrophe waiting to happen.
When he returned, Carl managed to fix Fred's hiccups, though Carl also informed them that the pen remained stuck in Fred’s mass. Fred didn’t mind that so much now that his emissions were back to normal and because Nita would be able to retrieve her pen. Carl had even implied it would still be working, which was another thing Fred didn’t have to be concerned about now. He’d hated that he’d tried to help her and accidentally made the problem worse. And it meant he’d stay on Earth for a few more days! He’d be able to learn about what he’d emitted in the open area near the building and see even more life when they went to Grand Central and the city (whatever and wherever they were). And Nita and Kit would be able to send him home when he was ready to leave.
But he didn’t want to do that immediately after they retrieved Nita’s pen, despite his desire for things to make sense. He no longer had to worry about the Naming of Lights or emitting things he shouldn’t. He’d be able to learn enough about the diversity of life on a planet that he could tell his friends all about it when he returned home. And best of all, he’d be able spend more time with Nita and Kit. He was sure they wouldn’t mind.