"No... But doing it this way is more fun anyway."

"Oh, okay."

"Do you live in the ship or are you like, a passenger?" Adam asks.

"I live here with my family." The gender-indeterminate-small-being answers before turning back to Nico. "Have you learned anything?"

"Yep. I can see how the steam pushes on things, then they close it and let the steam on the other one and it goes around. It's cool."

"It is pretty neat," Adam says.

The small being shrugs.

"When you know more about the world you are better at making it do what you want."

"How?"

"'Cause you understand now. See, now I understand that steam wants to get really big when it boils, so maybe I can figure out how to do useful things with that. Push stuff with steam or make my own engine if I want to."

"Or you can apply the same principle to air and use to push a balloon up."

"Balloon don't go up because they are hot," the small one protests, "they have a magical gas inside."

"I meant the other kind of balloon, with a basket and that takes people."

"Balloons that don't use hot air use helium, don't they? It's not magic by itself. Though you could totally make a magical gas, probably."

"Yeah, that's what it's called when they don't use magic, but I don't think they are magical unless you're, like, in a fairy party but then the balloons might not be real at all."

The little one head-scratches. "Are you going to make a balloon with a steam engine then?"

"Probably not. Steam engines seem heavy."

"They are even for huge super strong people like you," the little creatures confirms.

"And you need, like, wood or coal which makes the entire thing heavier."

"Or heat magic but at that point you might as well just do flying magic."

"Why?" The little one asks.

"Cause making a big complicated thing to fly and powering it by magic is probably harder than just flying by magic?"

They are both giving him a weird look.

"What?? Flying's not that much harder than heat?"

"Flying is pretty hard if you don't have wings," the little one says... Longingly.

"Flying magically is much harder than making heat, I am pretty sure," Adam says. "You can fly without using magic."

"...Only for a little while at a time." Yeah it works differently here it takes less red to float than it does to heat something up.

"You're just trying to save face," the little one protests.

"I can totally fly. I just don't wanna waste my magic for the day on showing off pointlessly."

"Do you still want to look around?" Adam changes the subject.

"I'd like a closer look but then they might see us."

"And it does look kinda dangerous to sneak around."

"If I really want to learn I need to find some plans or a guy who made one to teach me, I guess." He shrugs. "But sneaking around is fun, I don't regret it."