"And that glowy thing your sister was doing, is that also a thing you do or something else?"

"That is iethat. She is an ithue," he says. "About a third of Sessiaki are. I'm not."

"...Stop me if all the questions are intrusive or you get them all the time or they are insufficiently flirtatious. Alternatively, ask me questions about wizardry or notebook birds or what I have learned from talking to inanimate objects."

"I don't actually get them very often, because the set of people who know my mom is Sessiaki but don't already know all about them is extremely small," he says. "You talk to inanimate objects? I suppose you implied that earlier. What do they say?"

"Depends! Plants range from extremely stupid, like grass, to fully sapient - most trees. This is only on my world, Syntropy - not even the stars outside of Syntropy are worth holding a conversation with, and stars back home are really smart. My wizard manual will talk to me about what's inside it, answer questions, direct me to page numbers. Grace is a person and always knows what I've written in her. Other stuff will answer basic questions about its properties if I ask it."

"Does this space plant say things?"

"Good question." Cam looks at the nearest part of contiguous space plant, which is the railing. "Hello, space plant!"

"I'm a space plant," says the space plant.

"Yes you are. Anything else to say?"

"Is it saying things?" says Ike. "I can't tell."

"It says it's a space plant. It's a big space plant. This isn't Syntropy, so that's probably all I'm gonna get out of it."

Ike giggles. "It's true! It is a big space plant. It might even be the biggest space plant ever. It's definitely the biggest one I've seen. But then, I have only seen one space plant."

"I am not aware of larger, but then, I don't know what Aianon has been up to for the last sixteen subjective years in Origin while Jane was broken."

"Maybe he was space gardening the whole time," says Ike. "Maybe Origin has space forests now."

"Maybe! I know he was there in the first place to put an ecosystem on Saturn. Do plants on Saturn count as space plants?"

"No," he says decisively. "Saturn is a planet. They are planetary. Planetary plants."

"Planetary plants," snorts Cam. "Very well. But perhaps he became bored with ecosysteming Saturn, and Pat's world has space forests now with space plants ten times the size of this one. I cannot ask it, for it is not the sort of thing it would know."

Ike giggles.

"Aianon made me a fruit once. It was heart-shaped - I mean, anatomically correct heart-shaped - and it was tasty so I kept the seeds. The trees have not turned out very clever - they are brighter than this plant, probably since I grew them in Syntropy, but they wouldn't win any contests within the world. But they are uncommonly emotional. They're always happy to see me and know who I am because they were made for me."

"...That's adorable," says Ike.

"Isn't it just? I mean, I have befriended a tree, but this is on another kind of level."

"Heart fruits!" he says, giggling. "Heart fruits. Heart fruits that love you."

"Well, the trees love me. The fruits, once picked, are not so full of mental activity that I feel any qualms about taking bites out of them. I did have a very anxious few days when I first learned to talk to things. Quizzed muffins, etcetera. I'm still slightly vegetarian on those occasions when I don't eat conjured food."

"...Yes," he says, "I suppose eating food that was aware enough to love you would be slightly horrifying. Did the muffin pass the quiz?"