The structure of the language was more Russian than Greek, he decided, and the guttural slant to the sounds made it sound even less like Greek, but the more he listened, the more he was convinced it was somehow related to Greek although with a lot of Slavic additions or perhaps an underlying ancient Slavic base. Maybe there was a small Slavic population overrun by ancestral Greeks or the reverse, and the end result was a Mediterranean equivalent of English in the way English was like French or Frisian but not really all that similar. Regardless of the history, it was long before he understood the whole thing from start to finish, thanks to the spell Urasmian had thrown on him.

The spell was in a sort of rhyming meter. The closest thing he could think of was a limerick, only it was several limericks long, and the limerick analogy only went so far. Basically, what the spell did was to collect the power of the four winds, combine that power with the power of the earth, and use that combined power to move the object defined fifty Earths to the east. Presumably, the original version that sent Urasmian here sent him fifty Earths to the west. Finally, he gave up as he was becoming mentally exhausted from struggling with the strange language, and after checking Urasmian, he staggered upstairs and went to bed.

He hardly seemed to have closed his eyes before Urasmian was shaking him. “Wake up, young man. We need to go.” Came his deep voice in Jason’s still asleep ear.

“Huh? What? Ugg. What? It’s still dark!”

“Yes, yes, my boy. But this is the right time. We need to return to the exact spot I arrived at, and if we leave it till later, the whole area will be far too busy! All those metal vehicles you people love. So, come on now. Get yourself dressed.” The man’s urgent tones were reflected in his earnest expression.

“Mmm.” Jason struggled to sit up. “Yes. Yes. All right.” Causing Urasmian to back off and give Jason some room. After throwing the covers off, he swung his legs out of the bed and stood up.

“Give me a minute, and I’ll be right with you.”

Urasmian took the hint that Jason wanted privacy, and with Jason now sitting up and clearly awake, the old man left the room. After a visit to the bathroom, he replaced the boxers he had slept in with fresh clothes and then  Jason wandered down to the lounge room where Urasmian was impatiently waiting. Jason would have preferred to make himself a coffee, but the agitated look on the old man’s face convinced him that he could survive till this matter was dealt with, so he grabbed his keys, and Urasmian followed him into the garage with the broom handle. Jason’s family all used the garage to enter or leave the house as the formal front door was set back and away from the road. Out in the street, he unlocked the car, and after clambering in and starting it up, he checked the garage door was back down before heading off downtown.