"Nice to meet you, I guess. It definitely beats lying at the bottom of a hill for another couple of hours."

He stands up and looks around. "Wow, this place is depressing."

"I know, right, the only way it could be better would be if it didn't even have a dead tree."

Snicker. "Don't get rid of the dead tree, it's scenic!"

"It's very scenic, just doesn't signify that there's no way there's ever been a native here."

"And you don't wanna wreck the place until you know. Yeah."

He squints up at the sky. "Huh, no sun-circle. I guess not every world has those."

"Sun-circle?"

"Yeah, you know—okay, I guess you don't—the circle the sun moves on—"

He gestures illustratively, and in the path of his hand a glowing golden hoop appears, with a glowing golden bead sliding along it; and inside of that, a silver hoop and silver bead; and inside of that, a... planet. At least, something resembling a planet. It's shaped like a partly-flattened sphere, or a very puffy pancake, and it's hollow - if you look in through the transparent oceans or the jagged gap that rings the outer edge, there's mountains and lakes and forests and rivers on the inner surface of the shell, and something green and tangly floating in the middle.

Tias blinks at it.

"...yeah, so, that's Suranse. And the sun-circle and moon-circle."

"Wow. I was assuming planets in general would be like mine, which, before its magical puncturing, was a solid sphere of rock that melted in the middle, going around a sun which was circle-free. I might have to figure out how to check that here in case there's less planet to eat than I expect."

"Huh. What other totally normal things do you not have? Healing wells? Winged people? Goats?"

"We have goats."

"Well at least you have goats. Wow, if I didn't have my wings to look forward to I'd go crazy—although I guess I wouldn't even know what I was missing, I dunno if that'd help—"

"What's the deal with the wings?"

"Oh - some people have wings, and they don't get old and they're much harder to kill than usual, and they have Spheres, which I have no idea how to explain. You get your wings when you, like, do something. Like winning a war, or saving the planet from aliens, or, I don't know... something impressive."

He pauses. A thought occurs to him.

"...you know, the trip here was bad enough I'm almost surprised just surviving it didn't—"

A blazing beam of white light surrounds him, lancing upward to pierce the sky. When it clears a few seconds later, he has wings, iridescent black feathers gleaming in the sunlight with undertones of red and gold.

"—count," he says, curving the wings around in front of him so he can touch his feathers disbelievingly. "Uh. Never mind, then, I guess."

"Congratulations."

"Thanks!" He folds his wings to his back, puts them away, brings them out again.

"...and the Sphere part you can't explain."

"Oh - well, I could show you," he offers, and then there is a portal shimmering in the air next to them.

"That doesn't look spherical."

"It's not, it's a portal. To my Sphere. C'mon."

He walks through it.

"You're sure this is safe?" calls Cor.

"Why would it not be safe???"

"I don't know! I'm just asking!" He follows.

They are on a balcony overlooking a stunningly gorgeous mountainside, with a forest and a wide shining lake at the bottom. Overhead, the sky is dark and full of starry lights, but between the 'stars' are streaks of swirling silver like someone went to paint the moon and got it very wrong.

"Prettiest Sphere I've ever seen," Tias says proudly. "I wonder why it's so big - they usually start out barely big enough to fit a house, and keep growing as long as you're alive."

"...which is indefinitely since you're ageless now? Wow, that's a neat sky."

"Yeah. My dad's is boring but it's huge, he's five thousand years old. And nothing in there but a flat grassy field as far as the eye can see, 'cause that's the kind of person he is, I guess."

At the rear of the balcony, a pair of ornate double doors lead into what must be a house built into the mountain. "I wonder if there's clothes in there," says Tias, opening them and going through.