"Well, now I know, I guess," Emma shrugs. "...thank you for explaining things, by the way. I didn't even know this happened because of my name until you bought me from River."

"You're welcome. Anything else you want to know?"

"Not immediately?" she says, after a moment's thought. "It's just- things will come up, and I can ask. It's nice. But, thanks."

"You're welcome. I have much less to occupy my time now the gate is trying to find the spot I aimed it at, so we might as well make conversation."

"Well, what about you? I don't know how much you wanted to know about my world, I did kinda a terrible job explaining..."

"I'd like to know all about it, but maybe it's hard to describe."

"I could probably describe things, I just- don't really know where to start?"

"If I went through the gate with you when it fixes to its spot, what would I see?"

"More forest, actually. We live next to a park, I know it pretty well. Probably part of our house. It's, um, big? Two stories, lots of windows, painted kinda blue-grey. There's a garden in the back, Mom tries to grow vegetables but only really manages flowers. It's me and my mom and dad, I don't have siblings, there's a woman named Sharon Mom pays to clean the house every week, there's a gardener but I don't really know him at all. Um, what else... they've got cars in the driveway, I guess, do you know what those are? Do you know what everything I said was, for that matter?"

"Cars are definitely the most confusing thing you mentioned."

"Huh. Sounds like it would be bumpy, going fast on wheels."

"Well, we made roads for them. Bigger better paths, basically, covered with flattened rocks, to make it smoother? They're usually about the width of two cars, so you can have one going each way. And- I think cars do something special, to make it less bumpy, I don't really know how it works but my dad is always talking about how his car drives 'smoothly' or something."

"Huh. I guess that works if you don't have wings. The queen has a chariot, but it flies."

"There's flying ones too! They're bigger, and have more seats, but they have metal wings and then you can sit in them and 'fly'. They're called planes. They go crazy fast but they're expensive and really hard to drive and have really specific roads that they can use, and- um. Are hard to get off the ground?" She's not attempting the concept of 'fuel' right now. "So you only use them if you're going really, really far away, usually. Especially cause there aren't a lot of... roads, for planes... so sometimes there isn't one near you or your destination or whatever, and it's faster to drive. In a car."

"Huh."

She considers explaining vacations, but shelves it; it's probably not immediately relevant to Life In Her World. "Do you travel, at all? Or do you mostly stay with your tree?"

"Well, I move around to forage, and I go a little farther to get books, and sometimes I go further than that to have an idea of who and what's around in relatively easy flying distance."

"Where do you get books from? I haven't seen stores, or money, but I guess you just trade for things?"

"Yes, usually. Or I'm only borrowing the books."

"Nothing's free?"

"Nooooot very much, no. And if it is, it's probably for a reason? Like, they want you to try something so you'll buy more, or something's falling apart and they don't want it, or stuff like that."

"But you're all mortals - if you run out of money do you just die?"

"You- you can, yes. Most places have- we call them 'charities', they'll give you stuff if you don't have money. Usually food, sometimes clothes, sometimes a place to sleep. But they don't have a lot of money themselves, so the stuff isn't very good, and then you still couldn't, um, pay someone to let you go on their plane, or things like that."