"I wonder how she does that."

"Hologram projector or something."

"Where, up her nose? Anyway, uh, not sure how to give a tutorial on pocket everythings -"

She sighs.

She calls up more illusions.

This is her healing a sick person, this is Illia making a diamond out of ash, this is Atennesi raising the city into the air for the first time, this is a glassworker making molten glass flow through the air...

"You're a movie," says Alaior again.

"Sure is, kid," chuckles a grownup, patting her on the head. "Movie aliens. Sufficiently advanced and all."

"Mother do you have any way to jump the call queue," asks Luta.

"Not from outside the office."

"Call queue?"

"The senator is very busy, so when people call him, they have to wait."

"Call?"

"How does the translation not - I don't know any synonyms for 'call' -"

"Phone?"

"Sure, bust out the period piece vocabulary."

"Phone?"

"I dunno what else to tell you -"

Alaior says, "When the waiting is over Auntie will talk to the senator and he will talk back."

"He--talk? He..." She looks around dramatically, indicating that there aren't any senators around.

"The pocket everything gets his talking from where he is."

When this is translated Illia looks very excited!

Alaior giggles behind her hands.

She gestures to the everything, makes a querying sound, and then holds her hands apart. Lightning jumps between them.

Everybody startles.

"Those are really good pyrotechnic gloves," someone mutters.

"Pocket everythings are electric," Alaior confirms.

She seems very excited when this is translated.

Odette gestures at her sister. "Want understand electric."

"I don't know how electricity works," frowns Alaior.

"Now hang on a second," says one of the adults, "how the heck do sufficiently-advanced aliens not understand electricity -"

"Don't understand 'sufficiently-advanced'."

"It's the thing where the aliens know so much technology and hide it real well that it looks like magic or something."

"Magic!" she says brightly, and repeats the alien word she said earlier.

"Oh, magic's not real," clarifies the yellow who explained, "it's just in stories."

"And movies," says Alaior.

"Movies are a kind of story, darling."

...She frowns and shakes her head. "Magic," she insists.

"Magical aliens!" chirps Alaior.

"There'll be some explanation or other," someone opines. "Maybe it's like 'Ruins of the Oyster Lagoon'."

"Is that the one with the noncanonical movie, about the sea people -"

"You're thinking of Oyster Beach Horrors, Ruins is about people who use a lot of lost technology and don't know how it works and think it's magic."

She shakes her head. "Magical aliens."