"Plus there's the sensibleness thing. So, yeah."

"I'm much happier relying on the sensibleness thing."

"It's more sensible!"

Giggle.

"But if there is a conspiracy to dispose of nascent Great Mages and Atennesi isn't in on it it might be that the only reason I'm still alive is because I grew up in Genosha."

"Plausible."

"Disturbingly plausible. Neither of my parents is from Genosha. If they hadn't decided to move here..."

"Yeah."

"Could you ask him as soon as he comes to find you again? In Pax, if anyone else is around, I don't think we want to cause a panic."

"Planning on it."

"Good. It's going to bother me until then."

"I find it weirdly reassuring, personally, but I can understand why your perspective would differ."

"Because you expect the world to try to kill you?"

"Yeah. So if there's something trying to kill me, and it isn't the universe itself, this is comparatively much nicer than what I'd get at home but less ominously saccharine than a world with no serious hidden dangers whatsoever."

"Valid, but completely inapplicable to someone with a different set of expectations," she agrees.

"How does one go about learning to bend the universe to one's will, anyway?"

"...You...push it or command it or coax it? I've never had to explain the sensation to someone who was unfamiliar..."

"Presumably you learned it from somewhere...?"

"I've been doing the tiny things for as long as I can remember. Genosha is an extremely magic city."

"It's weird that you say most people don't do magic and yet magic is so natural to you that you can't even explain how it's done."

"This is Genosha. Magic is the point of Genosha. I was talking about the whole world."

"Is the difference cultural, or inherent?"

"Cultural."

"Hmm."

"Well, Atennesi couldn't have grown up in Genosha, he invented Genosha. It would be rather paradoxical. Might be worth asking him."