Maitimo looks surprised for a minute, then beams at him. "That makes you objectively the best person in the world, you know, easily."

Kib laughs. "I'm pretty pleased with myself! I knew Aly was working on something but I couldn't piece it together till - well. Now it seems silly to invent Storks 2.0. Somebody carried on making them for me, any night now I'll know who."

"And then we can just partner with them."

"Yes, exactly. The storks have a learning mechanism, somebody's got root access, it will be really weird trying to convince somebody Aly knew that I'm her now but much easier than reinventing the things from scratch, took I think a couple years the first time."

"And you know enough, or will soon, to prove it. The storks can learn to carry currency?"

"Should be able to, if I did it right, and I think I did it right."

"I bet you did it right."

"Sent our petition off."

"When should we expect to hear back?"

"Valar," he says, "Anywhere from a month to a Year."

"Oh, I won't hurry, then. I will hold out for maximally charming phrases about everything on the info sheet. 'Elves have the following religious beliefs. As their gods literally exist and can do things up to and including close this portal, you are encouraged not to challenge them in public contexts or with Elves you do not know well.' Etcetera."

"I think it's so odd to use the same words for 'religious beliefs that there's no evidence for' and 'stated opinions of the actual factual deities.' And yes, that should probably be on there. Though 'close this portal' is not anywhere near the upper limit of things they can do, as I imagine you realize."

"My world doesn't have context for deities who show up and do a crackly thing to the air whether you like it or not and make magic portals, so I'm using the context I've got to bridge to the concept I need. It's closing the portal I'm worried about - I don't think I want people paranoid about smiting, do I?"

"They can't help the crackling thing, they have tried many times to do normal human forms but they can't do it. And I do not think paranoia about smiting would help anything, though paranoia about respect, might, if you don't have institutions towards which deference is expected."

"Yeah, I'll be clear about that."

"Do you know anything about the culture of the city on the far continent you suggested?"

"By distant reputation only. Shine code is not efficient for cultural exchange and shipping physical goods is expensive. It's just the biggest city there and I've never heard anything really awful about it."

"We can scout it out before we announce there's a portal to an alien world. Do you think you got storks on the far continent?"

"They don't get tired or grounded in bad weather so yes, I assume there are some, but probably fewer."

"Alright. Well, shipping goods is about to be much cheaper, hopefully that's not too disruptive."

"Only positively, I think. Shipping companies might be mad but they can still go to more individual destinations than a couple portals, they'll just have to reshuffle their routes, and they should benefit as much as anybody from the influx of stuff."

"Yeah, we're not going to have Valinor as a go-between for shipping in your whole world, that doesn't seem like it'd increase quality of life as much as other things we'd do."

"It's definitely not nothing, but handling the volume you'd need for it to be really high impact would be awkward."

"Inventing something that does a shipping trick might be easier and less distressing to the Valar. There are lot of avenues of invention no one's pursued because who cares how long a shipment takes."