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Daja fired up the forge, feeling a sense of pride and accomplishment as she watched the burning flames. It had taken her some time to fully clean our the dust and other strange debris, organise and clean the tools, and get everything into working order - but she now had a place where she could work her craft.

But now it was time to get to work. Metals were scarce, but she had found some pieces of scrap-metal that were workable, and so she began the task of melting them down into something she could use.

She wondered if anyone would respond to her message – she hoped she had managed to use the omnicomm correctly – or perhaps even see the smoke from her forge, and visit her today.

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Thankfully, Daja had already put her tools away - because she did jump. "You...you can talk!" she said, gaping.

Somehow managing to compose herself - she knew that many strange things existed here, but a talking cat! - Daja manged to stammer out: "Y...yes I'm Daja..."

"I have that ability, yes," Rhiow said dryly. "I'm sorry if I startled you - most ehhif on my world aren't used to understanding me either." She did sound a little contrite - if one wasn't familiar with feline body language, that is, because her whiskers were twitching madly as she held back laughter.

"My name is Rhiow. We spoke on the network, about the tracks in Grand Central?"

Daja gaped for a moment, before remembering her manners and composing herself. "I...I'm sorry Rhiow, I must seem awfully rude to you," she said, still trying to adjust to...well, to talking to a cat.

"Yes, I do remember. Ah..." she paused. She didn't want to offend the little cat, but she was curious... "If you don't mind me asking...how do you type on the omnicomms? It must be rather difficult."

"I don't mind at all," Rhiow said, even more pleased by the girl's manners now. "My wizardry makes me capable of communicating with many things, even inanimate objects. Convincing the comm ring to transcribe what I say is relatively simple compared to some of the other things I've done in my day."

"Really? That's amazing!" Daja said, intrigued. "Can you communicate with anything, or just particular kinds of things?"

"Just about anything," Rhiow said, amused. "Some things have a limited vocabulary, some things have a very broad one. But it's the Speech that allows me to do so - things understand it, on a basic level. It's the language of magic."

"The Speech? I've never heard of magic that could communicate with anything before. I mean, I can communicate with metal, in a limited way, but that's just because my magic is rooted in metal. Do you think that every world has different magic? It seems like everyone I speak to has a whole different kind of magic," Daja said, unusually excitable and talkative, considering that she had only just met Rhiow. But then, Daja was just so very curious.

Rhiow's tail flicked slowly. She had her head tilted to one side. "Magic usually functions the same no matter what planet I'm on - in my reality. But once I exit my reality and step somewhere more centrally, the rules change. So yes, I think it does function differently depending on how central the reality is."

Daja nodded slowly. "That would explain all the differences."

How strange this was. Here she was, having a conversation about the nature of magic with a cat! She wished her siblings were here, so she could tell them about it.

"Thank you very much for offering to show me the way to the 'station', Rhiow," she said.

"Right, that reminds me, we should probably get going."

Rhiow hopped down from her ledge and paused for a brief moment of grooming. It was only polite - after all, you never knew who you were going to run into out in the City, and one should always have one's best face on. "Just follow me, I promise I won't go too fast."

She set off at a brisk trot, but one that Daja should easily be able to keep up with.

Picking up her staff - Daja always traveled with it - Daja set out after Rhiow, making sure to keep her pace steady with the cats. It was brisk, yes, but Daja was very fit. Rhiow was right in her assumption that Daja could manage it.

"What kind of place is this 'train station'?" Daja asked as they walked.

"It's a bit like a port on dry land," Rhiow said, trying to think of how to explain a train station to someone who didn't know what trains were. "In my world, ehhif - that's humans - have invented ways to travel very long distances, distances that would take days on foot or by car, in just a few hours using trains. A hundred or so years ago they used to be powered by steam and coal, but the smoke from those was a bit much to use in big cities, especially underground, which is where most of the trains run in cities. Now they're all powered by electricity."

"Grand Central Station is a hub of train travel that used to be in my home city of Manhattan. Ehhif would take the trains on their daily commute to work or school. The subways run throughout the city and the passenger trains go to the surrounding counties, or other cities." Rhiow flirted her tail to the side. "Grand Central itself is a beautiful building."

Daja blinked at the word "car" - another word she had never heard before - but she was much more interested in the idea of ways to travel a trip of several days in just a few hours. "Steam and coal? Electricity? You mean you can travel with devices powered by fire and lightning?" She paused, a little gobsmacked at the idea. "You must have very powerful mages indeed."

"Much less of it is magic than you would think," Rhiow said. Of course she had been prepared for that assumption. "In fact, none of it is. The steam trains - well, they worked by burning coal, which heated a boiler. If you contain steam and channel it, say through metal pipes from the boiler, it produces a great deal of force, and that force was used to turn the wheels, which moved the train. Electric trains work through a generator - the generator turns a turbine, which generates the electric power, which travels down the third rail and into the train and turns the wheels." Rhiow's whiskers twitched. "I can see how it might seem like magic, but the reality is that the ehhif have been working on these kinds of inventions for thousands of years."

Up ahead, she could start to make out the statuary surrounding the giant clock. The words 'Grand Central Terminal' weren't quite visible to ehhif eyes yet, but Rhiow could make them out - a little. They were getting close to their destination.

Daja blinked. Who'd have thought such a thing were possible? "I'm so used to the wondrous things that magic can produce - but ever since I arrived here I'm learning about so many amazing things that have been made without magic at all." Daja smiled, a little amused. "But then I should know that already, shouldn't I? After all: a smith doesn't need magic to make beautiful and strong work."

"That's true - although sometimes magic helps. In my world, wizards are usually more like the janitors of the universe. We fix problems and clear up disasters." Mostly without ever getting thanked for it, but that's par for the course. And we don't work for thanks.

They came up to the looming facade of the terminal, and Rhiow trotted up to one of the glass doors, tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. "It would be very kind of you to open," she said in the Speech, putting her magic behind it, and the door swung open obligingly, allowing Rhiow and Daja to enter the main concourse - still dishearteningly devoid of people.

"You only use magic when something goes wrong?" Daja asked, a little saddened by the idea. Yes, magic could solve many problems - but it had a beauty and wonder in it's own right.

When they arrived at the terminal, Daja wasn't at all bothered by the lack of people - instead, she was too busy admiring the architecture and construction of the place, and curiously watching Rhiow's use of magic. "This place is beautiful!" she remarked.

"We don't like to waste energy," Rhiow said. "If there's a way to do something without magic, that's the first priority. If the magic isn't vital, it isn't used. There's a limitation to how much energy is in the universe... and entropy is always running."

She put her whiskers forward in a smile and held her tail high, proud of her home. "Welcome to Grand Central," she said. "In my time the ehhif built it around sixty sunsround ago, as they count it, and it's still one of the busiest buildings in New York." She paused. "Well, it was," she amended, and there was no missing that note of regret and sorrow.

"That does make sense," Daja agreed. "But...but sometimes it's nice to appreciate magic itself, not just how it could fix things." She smiled, softly. "Magic has helped me make beautiful things."

"So people come here to...travel to other places?" Daja asked, looking around curiously. "In 'trains', yes?"

Rhiow put her whiskers forward, her gold eyes twinkling. "There are times when the solution is an elegant and beautiful piece of spellwork in and of itself," she said, thinking of the catenary re-weave Saash had done a few moons ago. Then she felt a pang for Saash and had to let the memory go.

"That's right. It wasn't much more than a waystation, although there were a couple of eating places underground. And underground we go - this way." Rhiow turned away from the four-face clock in the middle of the main concourse and headed toward the Lexington track complex, the one that had survived because it was on the same level as Vanderbilt Hall.

Daja smiled. "I can understand that," she said, knowing the feelish of accomplishment that came with finding a solution to a difficult problem.

"Underground?" Daja repeated, as she followed Rhiow. "These trains travel under the earth?"

"Some of them do," Rhiow confirmed, trotting down the wide marble staircase that led to the platforms. "Some of them start underground and then go aboveground - those are mostly the Amh'trahh, the long-distance trains. The subway that goes throughout the city is almost entirely underground, but those levels weren't brought with the Station when Stacy... rescued it."

The licked her nose as she walked. Another reminder of the total destruction of her world, that.

They came to the underground level, with the small concrete islands of the platforms interspaced between the tracks, stretching only as far as the walls of the main concourse, truncated by the limits of how much of the building had been brought aboard. "And here we are. After you, this is your salvage after all."

Metal! Upon reaching the underground level, Daja instantly sent out her magical senses. She noted that it was steel - a good metal, one that would be very handy, With the complete lack of hesitation that comes only from either having lived a life without learning to be wary of straying onto train tracks or being extremely drunk and stupid, Daja immediately climbed down to the tracks to get a closer look.

"Yes, this will be useful," she said to herself, running her hands over the steel. She looked curiously at it's construction - "How exactly does it help these trains travel?" she wondered out aloud - and peered closer to see how easily it would be to remove the steel.

Rhiow hopped down onto the track level - not before tilting an ear down the tunnel, toward the access tracks where the trains usually waited, because even if she knew they weren't here, old habits died hard.

"The wheels of the trains travel on the tracks. It evens out the ride, and also helps the train to stay stable - when they're traveling at high speeds, even little bumps could cause it to flip over. Not that it doesn't do that if the track itself is damaged." She flicked her tail slowly. "Derailments are one of the greatest dangers of this type of travel."

"How fast do they go?" Daja said, trying to picture what kind of cart or wagon could speed along these tracks. As she asks she starts walking along the tracks - she could just start pulling up the metal here, but it would be better to start pulling it up at the ends - And Daja can sense that further up, the metal tracks just stop.