If I were a god I wouldn't be a sun. Except I don't know what I'd be instead so maybe I actually would eventually settle on being a sun.

Some people think gods aren't real and we just made them up to get answers to things like "how did the world happen" back when we didn't have enough magic to give us answers that didn't involve people with superpowers making it on purpose. I dunno if that's true or not, the neat thing about my religion is that the sun definitely exists whether it's a god or not, if gods aren't real you can go "oh, okay" and continue appreciating the fact that we have sunshine and plants and stuff.

And if you go to a place with a different sun you also go "oh, okay" and appreciate that aliens have sunshine and plants and stuff too?

Empirically pretty much yeah. We haven't been doing like a ton of religious stuff here or anything, a lot of it involves getting together with other people and there are not other people of our religion here and also we have been busy, but, like, religious stuff we haven't been doing includes having some kind of existential crisis over the fact that this isn't our sun, so.

It's a pretty serviceable sun. Rises in the morning and sets at night.

If your days were four times as long as ours like your years are we might be having trouble! But they are not. 

It's a good thing you don't have trouble with wrong years, we would if we were where you're from.

Yeah, we live all over the planet pretty much, although I think I heard something about increased incidence of mental health issues in places so polar the sun goes away for months in winter.

Is that 'cause it's a god?

Nah if that were it they wouldn't also have problems when the sun didn't go down at all for months at a time I think.

God overdose!

Possible I dunno. I just know it 'cause of a comparative world cultures class I took once, if there's a lot of research into the why of it we can't access it until Otet's strong enough to go back and forth. 

That sounds frustrating, kind of like not having the Internet.

It's not great but we couldn't really go back anyway until the reds thing was fixed. I mean I guess if we could definitely go back and forth we could do that and keep it a secret but, like, I really don't think contact between our worlds is a good thing before the reds thing is fixed. 

Why not? Wouldn't all the other people from your world agree with you?

Yeah but I feel like if Amenta found out our entire planet is hyposensitive it would get about a bajillion times harder to convince them of just about anything that touched on pollution, and also like if Otet can do it short of being a Great Mage then the other Great Mages definitely can and they might ferry people across who would be less careful about not giving Amenta magic that would make reds redundant while that would still get you all killed. Like, not even necessarily because they realize that would happen, although there are probably people who suck enough to let it happen, but because it doesn't occur to them that it would happen or they assume they're being careful enough but they aren't or or or. It's not a guaranteed disaster but it's way too risky. 

Oh. Yeah. That would suck.

Hey is it safe to use magic to get Katin to sleep when she sucks at sleeping or is that mental magic very bad murder time stuff?

You can do that as a physical effect but I would practice on a consenting adult volunteer before doing it to Katin, it can mess with her circadian rhythm if you mess up. 

She includes notes on differences in biorhythms between a sleeping person and an awake person. 

I don't know anybody who can really afford to screw up their schedule especially since I'm being super secret.

Admittedly most of what I know about learning magic comes from a setting where it's assumed there's a huge support network for it.

Never mind, she fell asleep.

You can practice on me next time I visit, Otet can fix it if you mess up. 

It'll be so much more convenient when she's freaking out because she doesn't know how to sleep if I can just be like, here, be asleep, baby!

Is it a not knowing thing? I know babies need to learn approximately everything, but I guess I'm not sure how far that goes. 

Sometimes it really seems like it! Not just Katin either, I barely remember Apef being a baby but when Shahn was he was the same. He'd start freaking out and we'd try everything and finally somebody would remember to try swaddling him and putting on white noise and he'd pass out, and if he were not a baby anybody could have told him that the screaming was keeping him awake and not helpful at all.