"Am I going to have to start wearing a sign around my neck to remind people? How do I write 'where I come from, reaching for power to rival the gods gets you fucking killed' in your language?"

"I, uh, don't think you had quite gotten that communicated to me. Do you just have really nasty Great Mages?"

"A god is not a wizard. A god is a god. And they don't take kindly to upstarts."

"You have terrible interventionist deities? That's...that must suck."

"Yes. Also, the universe is shy about its underlying laws and if you try to do science it will kill you in defense of its privacy."

"Step one: become gods. Step two: Find you universe and make it sit down, shut up and behave itself."

He laughs.

"No, that is not step two. I'm leaving my home plane for last. The back of the queue, for after I've solved all the other problems that are less likely to get me killed."

"Okay, valid. I'm oversimplifying."

"Anyway, are you starting to see why this world looks like a personalized hubris trap?"

"Should I feel flattered on its behalf that it seems to be working?"

"If you like."

"I am helping tempt you," she says, wiggling her fingers in a parody of a scary thing. "With flowers."

"Adorable petal hats!"

"Adorable petal hats!" she agrees. "I wear a hat on my head. You wear your pants on your legs. We wear our sleeves," she plucks at a sleeve, "on our arms."

Milan giggles. "Adorable petal hats. What an excellent way to learn a language."

"What an excellent way to learn a language," she nods. "I know five languages. I do not know how many languages you know."

"I know two languages. Pax and Laefarrin. Soon three!"

"Soon you will know Pax, Laefarrin, and Genoshan. You will know three languages. I know Genoshan, Anglic, Germanic, Hebrew, and Ashkenazi. My parents are not from Genosha, so I know their languages."

"Your parents know many languages," he observes.

"I speak Hebrew because I am a Shemeshite. Shemeshism is a religion. Hebrew is the holy language for that religion."

"You lost me there."

"Probably too complicated at this level of vocabulary," she sighs. "Um...Day. It is day because the sun is in the sky."

"Day. Sun. How about night and moon, then?"

"It is night when the moon is in the sky. When it is night, the stars are also in the sky."

"Day, sun, night, moon, stars."