"I can't see Amenta so I can't see when you were born. So I don't know how old you are in local years."

"Well, I'm five in Amentan years."

"I'm twenty in local years. I don't know if that makes me older than you. It probably does because my kind of people grow very slowly and because it would be weirder for a planet with people that can live on this planet to have longer years than shorter years. But if they're a lot longer or shorter you can go outside and tell me if the sun looks different and I can maybe guess."

"Looking at the sun too much will hurt my eyes."

"You don't have to."

"I'll get a sense of how long days here are and then do some math."

"Makes sense. ...Anyway, you don't seem to be running off, so now's as good a time as any to show you the rest of the amenities, huh?"

"Sure, thank you!"

Dareni points things out. Over along that wall are cabinets with packages of food in them (apples, oats, trail mix, already-washed fresh greens, seared steaks, perfectly unmoving live bivalves in perfectly unmoving seawater, carrot-apple-lemon juice, individual servings of honey, a very stiff fish, seaweed resting against the top of its box instead of the bottom, a container of salt, and one egg) and of course there's the table with cushions all around it and an open space for coworking or whatever and Peka can pick between these two bedrooms (small loft bed that looks like tree branches coming out of the walls and a blanket that looks like stitched-together autumn leaves, no windows, touch-activated light right above the bed that changes color as you slide a little switch; or absolutely photorealistic movies of the ocean on all the walls and the floor and the ceiling, soft curves instead of sharp corners, and a soft patch of floor that still looks like it has fish swimming beneath it for a bed).

She wants the treehouse attic, she thinks the ocean would make it hard to sleep, but they're both so cool.

"I used to have the ocean room but I always liked a guest bedroom better so I moved to it."

"What's yours look like?"

"Mine is southern-style! Kind of a meadow but not really because it's kind of abstract. Maybe I'll clean it up and show you later."

"It's amazing that magic is so cheap that you get it done for this kind of thing."

"...Does it seem less weird to you to imagine magic existing but being very expensive?"

"- well, can you have one person magic a thing and then make a thousand copies of it without them having to do more work about it?"

"Sort of. Not exactly? You can set things up to do things a bunch at a time if it's... it depends on the thing. You have to really know what you mean. But some things work sort of like that."

"Oh, then maybe it isn't weird. I just think that things where you have to pay a person to come to your house and do a thing to it are usually kind of expensive."

Shrug. "Maybe we should have this conversation with numbers instead of just saying 'expensive'."

"Okay. The currency at home is called tap. A week's worth of groceries for one person in my neighborhood would be like, thirty tap."

"A week's worth of groceries is very different for different people. But I think I need more numbers than you've already said - maybe I could eat for twelve thirties of circle coins? - and I could buy the magic of hiding for one room for forty eight circle coins or less if I wanted a simple kind. The ocean movie was more than that but not as much as eating for a week. If I wanted magic for one room and I lived far away from everyone, maybe I would have to pay more."

"Well it's not like there's any magic at home to compare! And I wasn't allowed to shop at normal stores!"

"Maybe you'll like the market here."

"It'll be really novel at least, and I can see what looks tasty, I'm not picky but this not at all what I'm used to."

"I wonder if I could eat your food."