"That is not how my world works at all."

"How does your world work?"

"The planet is enclosed by a crystalline sphere that keeps out the horrors and the celestial bodies move either on or just within it, one of those, I'm not an astronomer and it might be the kind of thing that varies anyway."

"Your world is full of surprises. Do you know how big the sphere is, relative to the size of the planet?"

"That definitely varies. Except I guess I don't see how it would ever be smaller."

"I hesitate to even ask about the 'horrors' being kept at bay."

"I don't know much about them, I wasn't going to be an adventurer let alone the epic fighting-horrors-in-the-sky-when-the-crystal-cracks kind."

"The impression I'm getting is that your world is significantly more perilous than this one, but has equally powerful safeguards—warded paths for the ghouls, a planetary shield for the horrors in the sky, guardians to protect the world when that shield cracks."

"I mean, to know how good a counterbalance any of it is we'd need to compare death rates, maybe our world is lots worse. - it probably is, for like, poor people, the Imperium's a rich country and I'm from a middle class background, not everybody goes to a nice college with warded paths."

"I see.

"I'm also curious how your world managed to progress—technologically or magically, I mean—given the impossibility of experimentation. Or has it progressed at all?"

"Oh, people invent things, just not in a - cartoonishly systematic way - are all your new things experimented into place?"

"No, I suppose not. The oldest magic was gifted to humans early in our history by Sartorias-deles' indigenous life forms, and I don't think they understand time as we do, let alone cause and effect. People do also stumble into discoveries by accident; a chef substitutes the wrong ingredient and it produces something differently enjoyable. But it's hard to imagine that we would have, say, cleaning frames or glowglobes today, if mages weren't allowed to systematize their research."

"We have prestidigitation baskets, which are for clothes not people, people take showers or baths. We have magic lighting. Airships. Magic mirrors and crystal balls. Rings of protection. There's a mindset for the - absentminded wizard - that seems to do pretty well for getting a thing to work, and then people can take it up and get it faster and more convenient with practice, that's allowed, and they can learn from each other whenever one of them is doing it a little better than the others."

"Not quite as restrictive as my initial impression, then. But you still jumped at the opportunity to leave it behind."

"I mean - if you had asked me, do you want to move to a science fantasy universe, I probably would have said yes, but what I did wasn't 'jumping at the opportunity', it was - acknowledging that I may be contaminated by exposure, here, and would be in danger back in the material plane."

Oh, that's. Shit. Why is Detlev asking him to paint blindfolded and with two hands tied behind his back when he has never in his life—

"I'm sorry, I completely misread your reaction. 'Contaminated by exposure'? How does that work?"

"I don't know if it actually works this way! Maybe I'd be fine. But I'm certainly having a lot of contact with science-based stuff, and if I had somehow managed to do that back home it would not go well for me."

"Even though you haven't done any science yourself?"

"Maybe a bunch of people should try this under controlled variance of conditions and see what regularities emerge, oh wait."

Grimace. "Fair point."

"Yeah. So. I live here now and that'll just have to do."

Before bringing the ethics discussion to the dyranarya students, Sveneric would like to spend the next few days translating the rest of the textbooks, so that he and the others have a more grounded understanding of subtle-arts therapy.

It is a pretty inoffensive way to earn her keep. She tries new restaurants trying to find where she'd get any given thing that she might be randomly nostalgic for.

If she's nostalgic for beef or pork, she's out of luck. The main proteins are fish, chicken, eggs, and dairy; there are some rarer birds and protein-rich veggies but no mammal meat.

That first day of translation work, Sveneric also remembers to warn Bella not to step on anyone's shadow. It's the gravest form of insult in Colend—although rooms are always lit to make shadow-stepping difficult, and here in the tourist district it's more likely to be met with exasperation than genuine offense.

She's gonna really miss burgers and bacon and after a couple days of investigation not turning anything like them up she does ask Sveneric about it.

She will keep an eye out for shadows, it's hardly the most onerous task. Does she need to avoid causing her shadow to intersect anyone's stationary feet, or allowing anyone else's to come into contact with her own?