"It is. I—might also need a change of clothes? I also don't have any local currency.—I also speak your language, how's that work?"

"I've heard it's always possible to understand and be understood by an outworlder, but I never expected to meet one so I'm short on details," she says. "Of course no one will expect you to pay for things if you're not collecting a citizen's stipend."

"Citizen's stipend?"

"Yes - do they not have one of those in your world?"

"Er, I'm not sure what a citizen's stipend is and whether it'd be named the same—and presumably this is a country thing not a world thing here? There are hundreds of countries on my planet."

"Everyone in the Kingdom of Day receives a monthly citizen's stipend of enough money to comfortably live on," Stormcloud explains. "Because otherwise everyone would have to work just to house and clothe and feed themselves and that would hardly be fair. I've heard they don't have anything like it in the Kingdom of Night, but I wouldn't know the details. Hundreds of countries, really? The place must be enormous. Or the countries very small."

"Well, I think the official count is one hundred ninety-something. How many countries are there here? And how big is this place?"

"There are two. And, let me see... edge to edge across the borderlands, uninterrupted, I'd expect a fey of your size could walk the whole width of the circle in a hundred and twenty days."

"'Edge'?"

"...yes?"

"Er, is this not a spherical planet?"

"—I'd say 'of course not' but clearly that's not a matter of course. The world is circular, and has an edge. Is yours a sphere? How does that... work?"

"My world has a basic principle that everything attracts everything else, proportionally to how much stuff there is and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between things. That force is pretty weak but for sufficient amounts of stuff can be strong enough to, like—be gravity. And since it's the same in all directions everything that's big and massive enough ends up becoming a sphere, and that's my planet. So down points inwards."

"...that sounds strange," she says. "But I suppose it works for you."

"How's it work here?"

"Down points, ah, down, and the world is a circle of land and ocean under a dome of sky. It's possible to go out past the edge but not possible to come back afterward, so we don't know what's out there but we assume it's very dangerous."

"...I think I like my world's rules more."

"Perhaps the King will be able to help you return home."

"Maybe he will, but I kinda like it here. Everything's—more."

"What do you mean?"

"It's—difficult to explain. The colours are more colourful and the edges are sharper and the shadows look more like proper shadows—it feels sorta like I used to live in a painting, and a very good and realistic one, but now I just stepped out of it into the real world."

"Oh. Well, I'm glad you're enjoying it here." She starts leading Sadde into the city.

Follow follow. "So, what's this world like?"

"Well, what do you mean?"

"I mean—you were talking about country size, if your whole world is like you said my planet is way, way bigger, and I was wondering how you'd describe its basics? Like what the two countries are like, what the King's like, are there political subdivisions, what sapient species are there here—we only have humans—"