In defiance of this logic, the bar continues to be there!

The bar is large. It has tables, and a fireplace with couches over there, and a back door to the left of the bar itself. There are no shelves of alcohol behind it; just a wooden counter, with stools.

In defiance of his opinions on the correct contents of bars, this one goes on having no bottles, cans, nor so much as a box of wine.

Well, there's not much he can do here. Evra makes his way over to the counter and settles down on one of the stools. The wood is smooth and polished under his fingertips.

Hello. Can I interest you in a beverage? appears a napkin.

A glass of water appears. Condensation forms on its surface. Water doesn't count as your free first beverage, so if you want anything else, just let me know.

I'm the bar. You may call me Bar.

Specifically, I am the counter you are sitting at. I have some information about but little direct connection to other areas of the establishment.

There appears such a glass!

The establishment is called Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Its origins are extremely mysterious even to me. And there are a wide variety of patrons from a wide variety of worlds; at the moment only you, but that may change at any time.

"The end of the universe? Temporally or spatially speaking?" Evra hopes it's the latter. The prospect of being wiped out by an exploding star isn't very appealing.

Evra turns to see a woman walk into the bar. Her clothes are unlike any he's seen in his world.

"Well isn't this cunning," she remarks, looking around. "Hullo there."

"Hello," he says. "And you are?"

"I'm Cayra. You?"

"Evra." He waves a hand in the air. "Do you know what all this is?"

"Well, it looks like somebody built a bar right up against the wall of an alucine," says Cayra. "The window's seriously weird, though, that I can't explain."

Evra raises an eyebrow. "Alucine?"

"A-lu-cine," she repeats slowly and clearly.

"I don't know what that is," Evra admits.

Evra hums and sets his glass of wine down. "I'm not from your world."

"Apparently not. Um, but how did you get here?"

He nods at the door. "The same way you did." Assuming, of course, that was the only way into the bar.

"That's... strange." She goes over to the door and peeks out. There is a little low-tech village outside. "That's exactly where I came in from. Which, incidentally, is in an alucine."

"What is an alucine, anyway?"

"A place where there is stuff. Do you maybe just have a different word for them, or come from a really, really big one...?"

How helpful. "Could you be more specific?"

"I would but I'm trying to imagine what you could possibly have instead of alucines and I'm really low on ideas. An alucine is an... area. With edges. Linked to other alucines by portals."

"Physical portals, like doorways? Or shortcuts through space?"

"Well, when I said this was cunning what I meant was that it was clever to have a door over a portal. But... the second thing. I think. That's a really weird way to put it, 'through space', portals are more of a between alucines thing than a within alucines thing. I'm not actually sure off the top of my head if you can make one that shortcuts through space."

Interesting. "How big are your alucines, on average?"

"Like, average average, or typical, or average inhabited, or typical inhabited?"

Evra shrugs. "All of the above, I suppose."

"I don't have exact figures. Your standard inhabited alucine will have, like, two towns and a swath of farm, or a big city. They come in very small - too small for some people to fit into all the way - and in very large - several continents and oceans - but there's more tiny ones than big ones, the big ones are just more interesting."

"What does the edge of an alucine look like? Do they come with portals, or do you make them?"

"They look like... they don't look like anything? If you're painting scenery that includes a wall you just paint sky color there, so it depends on whether it's night or day, I guess. And there's naturally occurring portals but some 'mancers learn to make them."

Evra tries to wrap his head around the idea of living in pockets of space rather than one continuous plot of earth and fails. "Let me reword that. If you were to walk all the way to the end of an alucine, do you hit a wall? Does the ground just stop existing?"

"Yeah, you hit a wall. There's no dirt past the edge - well, if you really want to you can pile up a bunch of dirt against a wall and leave it there and then dig it away and come away with slightly more than you started with? But, like, there isn't anything past the walls."

"So, this bar seems to work like an alucine... albeit with a funky window... but where are you from?"

Evra frowns. "A planet. It's a spherical rock, probably the size of one of your biggest alucines." He traces a finger in the air, and wonders if he could cast a projection in the bar. He doesn't want to risk it, though--the essence in the air feels too... strange.

"...And everybody balances on top of the sphere of rock? Or is it caves?"

"There's a force that pulls everything on the surface towards the planet's center."

"...That sounds uncomfortable."

"We're... used to it." Evra peers into his wine glass, now empty. "Bar, will I have to pay for another drink?"

"What're you doing?" Cayra asks him.

"...How did you do that? I've never heard of anyone who could do that."

"Mine in particular? I haven't learned much yet but I can do this." Her hair abruptly changes color; now it is pink.

Evra blinks. "Is that all you can do?"

"No." Her hair goes black again. "I have total control over all the colors on my person, and I've also fixed a clumsiness problem I had. But I'm a beginner automancer. Later I'll be immortal and able to fly and so on."

"Immortality," Evra mutters. He scribbles automancy in his notes, and asks, "Do you just think, and it happens?"

"The colors or the immortality? I mean, I have to know what I'm doing."

"Both."

"I have to know what I'm doing, but I've got colors down now so I can do it really fast." Her eyes turn solid black, then gold, then back to normal. "Automancy is the art of changing oneself. When you know an aspect of it's sort of like moving a limb - you could still be better or worse at playing the flute but that's not because some of your fingers are paralyzed or anything."

"That's... interesting. All of our magic deals with externalities," Evra says. "We can't change ourselves, only our surroundings."

"I mean, there are other kinds of 'mancy, automancy's just the one I'm working on."