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"That's a good kind of nice. I'm not surprised, Rannsi's actually the kind of person it was plausible for me to drop by just to see since I happened to be on the right plane of existence. I met her before," she adds, "last time I was on Earth. That was several centuries ago, but she hasn't changed very much, and I'm not surprised her daughter's similar."

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"Maybe they will make spaceships. And then there can be more fairy kids."

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"That'd be nice. There are actually more kids around than usual; they aren't doing spaceships but the Antarctica project serves a similar purpose."

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"Oh, that makes sense."

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"To be honest, I think waiting until the Antarctica colony is well and truly established as successful makes sense anyways. Space colonies would employ many of the same principles, and stress-testing them while the consequences of failure are 'extreme cold' rather than 'the air is gone' and evacuation is a matter of teleporting to another continent rather than trying to get everyone on spaceships and the spaceships full of enough air is probably a good idea."

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"That makes sense too." Nod nod. "How do fairies teleport, is it fairy magic or regular magic or can they do it same as you?"

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"Fairy magic. It's fairly rare, but when they can do it they can take a lot with them, so as long as there's one in every habitat with the skill things are pretty much fine. I don't think betting on them being able to planet-hop is a good idea, though."

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"Why? Teleporting doesn't go through the stuff between the places, so why can't it go to other planets?"

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"Because they have to know where to aim. The Earth is constantly rotating, but all the continents are always in the same position relative to each other. Planets, on the other hand, go around the Sun at different rates, and rotate differently than each other."

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"So they have to know where the planet is and where the sun is and where the star is and where the other planet is," nods Mehitabel. "That sounds like a thing you could probably do but it would be hard and they didn't even know about spaceships at all."

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"Yes. And, of course, if you're evacuating somewhere and you aim for a planet and miss..."

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"Yeah, that would be bad. How... much do you have to know it? If you could point at it on a star map is that good enough, or if you just did all the math but you didn't get it, would that be good enough?"

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"I'm not sure. I've never asked a teleporting fairy. Do you want to put that on a list of questions for next time?"

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"Yeah, that's a good idea." Mehitabel goes and starts such a list.

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And after that: more magic lessons!

And after another couple of weeks have passed, Anaphiel says, "The magic tutor I had lined up is still working on his research project, so that'll be a bit longer, but I found a couple of promising-looking demons."
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"What're they even researching?"

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"They're trying to mimic one of the beneficial effects of vampirism without the underlying mechanism."

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"Oh, cool. Who're the demons?"

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"A wrath demon who runs an anger management therapy practice and a pride demon who's a sculptor. The former feeds on her clients and the latter feeds on her colleagues."

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"That's nice of them! Do they get to know who I am?"

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"That depends on you. I figured I'd introduce you and you could decide whether or not to trust them."

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Nod, nod. "Why would they be introduced to me if they don't know, though?"

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"Because you're a magician-in-training?"

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"Oh, okay."

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"I have a couple of tickets to an art show the pride demon's exhibiting at day after tomorrow."

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