"I dunno? I guess not, Dad's always annoyed when we lose a lot of people in the war even if they're all Ceirene."

"Ceirene?"

"Ceir is the outside of the planet, Aluvanna is the inside. You look Ceirene to me, I guess 'cause there isn't an inside of your planet for you to be from. Aluvai have the fangs and claws and long ears, like me."

"Gotcha. Uh, I do care about people of different ethnic backgrounds and nationalities, yes."

"Huh. I'm not sure I care about anybody," says Tias.

"...sounds lonely."

"I guess. Wouldn't it be exhausting, though, getting mad every time somebody dies even if you've never met 'em?"

"I don't hear about all the individual deaths but the war was exhausting for that among other reasons, sure."

"Oh, what'd you have a war over? Not invading aliens, I'm guessing."

"First time the planet got punctured the city on the far side appeared to have been attacked."

"Oh wow. Yeah, that'd do it."

"Sure did. But then we all discovered that actually the problem was the planet getting eaten."

"I bet that sucked."

"Tremendously. Hence my attempt to go looking for alternate dumping grounds and somewhere to escape to."

He laughs. "Makes sense."

"Thank you."

"Hmm," he says. "I think I wanna go back to the depressing wasteland and fuck around with my inexplicable magic powers. Wanna come and watch?"

"I'm under a bit of a time constraint. If you don't want to help and you don't want me to try to send you home either I should probably go back where I came from and get more people investigating the wastelandness of this planet."

He shrugs. "How would I even help if I wanted to? Wouldn't 'finding out what my inexplicable magic powers even do' be a pretty good start either way?"

"I guess it depends on what they do. Do you want to help?"

"Well, I dunno! Depends how!"

"If you could make this planet less wastelandy we could find another dumping ground, presuming hospitable planets no one will mind us moving into are fewer than empty ones. If you're tougher than a mage you could scout. You could introduce us to the folks back home and we could ask if they've got space."

"They've got tons of space out in Ceir if you don't mind the invading murderous aliens. But making the planet less wastelandy might be fun."

"I kinda mind invading murderous aliens but they sound solvable."

"Then maybe you could talk to my dad. —He's the king of Aluvanna, I forget if I said."