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Second Floor Common Room, Sunday Morning

He'd slept, if not a lot; come early morning, some tossing and turning had culminated in Ender sneaking out of his room to pad quietly towards the common room. He had learned from last week's mistake, and brought a book on engineering with him.

Picking a spot on the couch, Ender sat down, and opened up his book, burying himself in the lessons of a new trade.

[ open common room! ]

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Dor was up early and had just come back from picking some cocoa-nuts and current pie when he wandered into the common room.

"Oh, Hi!" He said with a wave. "I didn't expext anyone to be up this early. Hungry?"

"Only a little," he answered, looking up over his book to see if it was anyone he recognized. It wasn't, but Ender supposed he should be used to greetings from strangers by now. "Morning."

"Morning," Dor repeated back as he started work on splitting open a cocoa-nut. "I have a current pie and some chocolate milk if you are interested."

The word 'current pie' registered in his ears with little to no familiarity. "How current would the pie be?" Ender asked, a little bemused, and eyed the cocoa-nut.

"Oh, I just picked it," Dor replied. "But I didn't mean recent. It's a sweet pie but it has a little shock to it when you bite it."

Dor finally managed to crack open a cocoa-nut and started pouring some chocolate milk into a glass. "Want a glass?"

"Sure," Ender said. Milk that came from a nut. He wasn't going to question it. "What would the shock be?"

It was always good to be prepared.

Dor frowned and handed over the glass of milk before slicing the pie. "I think here everyone calls it electricity but it's a very mild form of it. Though I don't understand how it works."

He took the glass-- "Thanks," and inspected its contents carefully before drinking. It tasted normal. "You've got electrified pie?" he asked, lowering the glass a few inches. "Where did you get it?" That might lead Ender to understand a bit of it.

"From the pie tree out in the garden," Dor explained. "It's from my world where pies grows on trees instead of getting baked. That probably sounds strange to you but it's a common tree where I'm from. That's where the cocoa-nuts came from."

He supposed it wasn't much different from the machines that were used to create certain kinds of food back home, but still, Ender eyed the pie with a careful wariness. His curiosity was piqued, though, and so he added, "And what else do you find growing on trees?" with only the slightest edge of irony to his voice.

"Oh, a lot of things," Dor said taking a bite of the pie. "Shoes, clothes, blankets, breadfruits... a good deal of what we eat and wear grow on trees. It certainly makes it easier than trying to make them like you do here."

Ender's eyebrows went up. Only one further question sprang to mind. "So how are you adjusting?"

"Pretty well," Dor admitted. "The magic from my world works here so it's a bit of a comfort. Plus if I run into something I don't know I can always use my magic to figure out how to use it."

Magic. He supposed that, with everything that went on here, the existence of 'real magic' might be possible. Or at least what people thought was magic, and those kind of words held power. This was becoming a conversation of questions, but Ender had always been more than fine with those.

"You can magic up a manual?"

"Not exactly," Dor said with a grin. "I can talk to the inanimate and they can tell me what to do."

Dor looked around the room and spotted a square metal object on the counter.

"For example... Object on the counter. What is your nature?"

"I'm a toaster, dumbass." it replied. "What do you think I am?"

Dor smirked, ignored the insult and turned back to Ender. "See?"

"Hm," is what Ender said.

It was not quite what Ender thought.

"Do they usually insult you like that?" he asked next. That, also, wasn't exactly what was on his mind.

"I find that most mindless things tend to be rude," Dor said with a shrug. "However it's hard to be insulted by something that has no intelligence."

"Hey!" the toaster called out in a hurt tone.

"That makes sense," he said, neutrally, his eyes flicking to the toaster. There were a lot of things you could do with a talent like that; but then Ender imagined that went for most of everything on the island. "Must be loud, though."

"They'll be quiet if I tell them too."

At which point the toaster blew a raspberry at Dor.

"Most of the time."

Jan had been out walking, stretching his muscles and scratching at the two sets of stitches. They itched. They itched incestantly.

He poked his head in the first common room he came to, looking for distraction.

And breakfast. "Hello," he said as he came inside, ears pricked forward.

"Hello," Ender replied-- it was one of those mornings where people seemed to pop out of the woodwork, and...

His train of thought trailed off entirely as he finally noticed just who, or rather what, had spoken. He halted any further verbal response he might have given, and simply looked, puzzlement becoming evident on his face. Until he managed to trace the creature's appearance down to some references from the radio, at least.

Unicorn?

Jan's ears flicked uncertainly at Ender's obvious puzzlement. "My name is Jan," he said, bobbing his head. "I'm a student."

In case Ender thought he wasn't supposed to be here.

"I'm Ender," he said, finally. Staring wouldn't help, so he stopped. "Also a student." Technically. He put his book aside.

He snorted. "I wonder, could you help me?" he asked. "If you don't mind me interrupting your reading."

[ooc: for the record, I CAN SPELL incessantly. Stupid typing.]

"Depends on what kind of help we're talking about," Ender said. He was thinking; then again, if there could be creatures like the buggers out there, somewhere, maybe unicorns weren't that farfetched.

Jan bobbed his head again, rubbing his nose on his front leg, as if he was embarrassed to be asking for help. "Help with your hands, if you would. There are oats in the cupboard, but the last time I tried to get them myself, there was a...mess." And a drunken skunk. He wasn't prepared to rule out that one had caused the other. "Would you put them in a bowl for me?"

He considered the unicorn for a moment, but there really was no harm in it. Ender rose up from the couch, and his footsteps quickly took him towards the cupboard in question. "This one?"

Jan frisked after him. "That one, yes," he said happily. "Thank you. It's difficult sometimes, not having hands in a place that was made for them."

"I can imagine," he answered, pulling open the cupboard to find the oats Jan had been talking about. A little more fumbling brought Ender a bowl, too, and he set to the task. "How did you get here?"

Breathing in the scent of the oats, Jan watched him. "I washed up on the beach one morning, with no memory of who I am." His skin twitched and shivered. "A voice told me my name was Jan."

That both didn't tell him anything and told him everything he needed to know. Once finished, Ender put the bowl down on the table, where Jan could easily reach. "Completely nothing?"

Jan stayed where he was for the moment. "I know what I am, unicorn and warrior, and what that means. I remember what my people are and what that means, but my place among them, my past, my life," he shook his head, making his mane fly, "is blank."

He retreated from the general area of the bowl, to reclaim his seat on the couch. "So what does that mean?"

"It means I have a great deal to learn," Jan replied, snorting again, and he walked over to bury his nose in the oats.

"My thanks," he said, finshing a mouthful. "I can tell you about the land I come from, but I don't remember being there. I can tell you I am a trained warrior, but I do not remember that training."

Ender tried to imagine what it would be like not to have his memories; and he found, partly to his own surprise (and yet, mostly not) that he'd rather have his painful memories than find himself without. "I'm sorry," he said, because with that feeling found and categorized, it was all he could. It wasn't pity, not really. "At least you have your oats."

Jan whickered in amusement. "Yes, and I have found good friends and a job and a place that I will fight to protect. There will be food from the store in winter, so no one will die, and there are warm dorms, to keep us all safe from the cold."

He took another thoughtful mouth of oats. "There is nothing that can be done, and constantly fretting over serves no purpose. I have a place here, and a name. It is enough for now."

"It usually is," he agreed, with ease, "Although I'm not as big a fan of oats."

"Humans," he snorted with affectionate amusement. "Cooked, with honey is how humans eat them. You might like them then."

"I'll keep that in mind," Ender said, soberly, picking up his book and placing it back in his lap.

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Second Floor Common Room, Sunday Morning

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