"Why don't you just use the fires for lighting and temperature, what's better about the lightning?"

"Lightning-lights are a lot safer.  And, I don't know with heating, I lived in the hottest city in the country and you want to keep the buildings cool, not warm.  ...I think with heating it might be easier to warm a whole house than with a fire.  I think there's a lot of blowing air around?  There might be a fire involved somewhere.  - See, this is why - I know it can't happen, but this is why I wanted to talk to gnomes.  There are a lot of things you can do without magic.  But I don't really know how they work, because they were just... around."

"None of the books really explain either." Sigh.

"I like old books.  ...Older than a lot of the technology, mostly."

"How old are the books? They're in pretty good condition, they can't be old copies..."

"Uh, Leagues is about... a hundred and thirty, Midsummer is four hundred, Nile is probably around eighty, and Hitchhiker's is only twenty-something.  So that one's not far off, at least for the parts on Earth."

"I think that one might be hard to translate."

"Yeah."  He sighs.  "Maybe I should really write a book.  Or, piece something together from plots I know and hope that the prose is okay enough for someone to maybe get an idea of how some technology could work..."

"Sure! Do you expect to want a lot of paper early in this process or would you mostly work it out in your head?"

"...I'm not sure yet.  I'll start thinking about it just in my head.  It's not like I can do much writing until I have light more of the time, anyway.  The kitchen's okay for reading but there's not really a clear surface for paper there." 

Nod nod.

"Did I do okay, today?"

"Yeah, didn't I say so?"

"I don't know.  Maybe you did."  Maybe he just wants to hear it again.  (But wouldn't he have remembered - hm.)  "You said we could do it again in the future?"

"Yeah, I guess maybe that didn't sufficiently imply that it went fine?"

"There could have been details.  ...Was it okay for you, saying all those things -"

"I don't like it but I'm used to it. I've lived here all my life."

"I wish I could show you Earth."

"Safe to be a drow there, you suppose?"

"I mean, there aren't any, or any other people besides humans... but that means that people will probably believe you if you say you've painted your skin or have a condition."

"There's a spell that'd make me look like a sunshine elf but it's third circle."

"...Which means it has three holes?  And you can't do it yet."

"Right. I do have it written down but - well, you've seen me do the secret pages, it wipes out most of my slots for the day."

"Right.  I don't imagine it matters anyway, though?"

"Yeah, I don't foresee it coming up."