"I will do so."

She thinks about what unmodified plants are like, sedentary and mobile, and the sorts of changes that are made to them. The engineering she does with them, the relative difficulties of different edits, other people's designs.

"I'm ready."

Topher sends first. A general summary of plants: what are they; what they can do; what they can used for. Plants in this world are sedentary. There is magic that can do quite a lot to plants, even making them magical, but even just making one single leaf react to sound or move on it's own would be high grade magic. Plants are used as food, fuel and material there is a strong implication that this world has an abundance of different materials, because wood is implied to be used as a secondary material for tools (like in the handles of hammers and axes) or as one option among many for construction materials (where the wood is cut, because making it grow the right way is hassle)... it goes like this.

She absorbs the information, and incorporates the differences into her own summary.

Most plants are sedentary. There are trees and vines and bushes and grasses, which are large enough to see, and small-seeds, which are not. Small-seeds generally grow on surfaces, or get beneath the surface of another plant and consume it from the inside out, or consume already-dead material. Some larger plants have a second stage that is mobile, which emerges from a part of the plant's sedentary stage and moves independently. It is not possible to engineer a plant to be magical. Mobile plants all have some touch-based editing ability, although the specifics depend upon the species. Plants are used as food, fuel, and material, but the only materials available that are not plant matter are water and soil.

Examples of engineering: trees that branch out and merge with themselves to form hollow rooms with doors and windows for people to live in, fuzzy vines that wrap around each other to weave fabrics, paper trees of both varieties with large scales of bark that break off at the right size, grass that glows in the dark, a bush with berries that catch fire when crushed. Changing details of something while letting it mostly do what it was already doing are easy, changing the chemicals beyond simple pigments is hard, and so on...

"I am not aware if we have small-seeds. Sorcery and synth can do some of the things pattern-editing does, but I got a sense that your way is a lot more straightforward and doesn't spend lifeforce."

"Lifeforce? Such as Sovie's translation costing her wakefulness? But yes, editing is a mental activity that only costs effort and attention, like any other."

"Yes. Wakefulness is one of the five lifeforce components: breath; stamina; wakefulness; health and youth. My memory power also spends wakefulness and I have a cold-aura power that spends stamina, every sorcery power spends an aspect like that. Synth is a different thing from sorcery but spends both stamina and wakefulness to even just checking people's patterns."

"It is sad that it costs you. Is there anything obvious that would be particularly useful to have edited, but too expensive to be worth using synth for?"

"I get a sense that some of your things are better for the enviroment than ours." He pauses and adds. "Sometimes our method of making things leaves byproducts that can be toxic or otherwise undesireable. I don't think they might be worthwile to replace our way to build houses, but I could see some people interested in that for the novelty. And if the plants can grow on their own they could be useful for places that have less contact with civilization or don't want to bother with the complicated infrastructure to turn plant matter into paper and things like that."

"Sometimes, if someone is not careful, plants create large amounts of irritating or toxic pollen or other substances. I am careful, though. I think I should be able to reconstruct a plant like the soft paper tree from a local plant, and allow it produce viable seeds."

"We could test that. Might be useful testing if you lifeforce works normally or if you can do sorcery."

"If it is possible and not too difficult to check without risking permanent damage, it seems like a good idea, yes."

"Checking to see if your lifeforce works like ours wouldn't risk permanent damage. If it does, it is likely safe for you to cast a sorcery ritual."

"Then at a convenient time, assuming it's not a costly test, I would like to check."

"It would be no trouble. We are going to need a few minutes to set that up." Pause. "We should figure out where are you going to stay? It can be here if you are comfortable with that."

"I am comfortable with wherever is most convenient. I suppose that if your buildings do not grow, there must be fewer empty homes."

"Do yours grow that fast? We have a spare bedroom. It is likely we could return you to your world today, but it sounds more complicated than staying here overnight."

"No, but many grow at once, and usually more than are needed. I should return some time before my housemate becomes too worried. I agree staying seems a better plan for tonight. When is your night?"

"It's is going to get dark in about two hours. I actually control the day-night cycle in the area."

"In my world, the day-night cycle is the same for the entire planet. Is this another thing you change with sorcery?"

"Not quite. It only applies to Elsewhere, our light is provided by crystals floating above the surface and their light output can be manipulated to a proper day-night cycle."

"Our light is provided by the edge of the god, which forms a uniformly glowing bubble around the planet, whose light changes color and brightness throughout the day. If you can change the length of your days, how long do you make them?"

Sovie thinks for a moment how to address the bit about "god", but first she writes.

"Day-night work differently in the other worlds and we just match one that for convenience. Other worlds are spheres that spin around their own axis and are lit by large burning balls of fire called stars or sun (if it's the star lighting your world)."

... She stares in bewilderment and vague disbelief at the page for a few seconds before composing herself to write back.

"A sphere does not seem like a good shape for a planet. But if they exist and have people and day cycles, then it makes sense to choose yours to match."

Sovie gives her a shy smile. "We make do with our spheres. They are really big spheres. Elsewhere is different in that it is a flat floating plane of rock with magic tying everything together."

Nod. "Rock is the substance like very hard soil, yes?"