Jensal nods once. "Well, the shren houses are going to evaporate, more or less overnight, so there'll be plenty of unemployed miracles to sift through soon."

"Yes," she says. "I'm looking forward to it. Plenty of opportunity for my favourite pastime. It's just a pity I don't know more about this world; there's a limit to how helpful I can be without good background knowledge."

"I can tell you some things. I've been around a while, which means I've accumulated a lot, though it's neither guaranteed to be perfectly within date nor particularly well-traveled."

"Well, it'll be a start."

"Seen anything that's confused you yet? I don't know where you're from, but you look human, so it can't be that far a leap."

"I think the most obvious difference is that you seem to use magic for things that are done by mass-produced non-magical gadgetry in my world," she says. "Like lighting, and whatever you called the dragon council with. Is - I'm going to guess wizardry, based on what I've heard - is wizardry that commonplace here?"

"Anyone can learn it, and it's steady money - you have to invest in the schooling to be a full wizard, but enough people do. And it's not hard to learn just one spell or a small handful if that's all you want, so there's assembly lines of people who know - say - how to enchant communication crystals but nothing else, who do that after a two-week training course all day long. People learn perhaps ten household-use spells so they don't have to hire people to dust. People with teleportation licenses. That sort of thing. There's a few countries that don't use magic and a couple of species that can't use wizardry, but it's common most everywhere else."

"Hmm," says Libby. "Do you have interworld transportation? With local magic, I mean, not relying on anything from outside the world?"

"It exists. I'm not personally a wizard; you'd have to talk to Ehail. Or some other wizard. There's a school of them in this town, but I haven't interacted with it in the last few decades because the headmaster married a dragon."

"Noted. But the fact that it exists is heartening," she says. "The kind of interworld transportation that got me here works on its own unpredictable schedule; it's nice to have other options."

"It's not commonplace, but why that might be I'm unsure."

"I'll see if I can find out."

Jensal nods. "What else do you want to know?"

"Hmmm. How about an extremely basic geography lesson?" she suggests. "Most of what I know about your world is its shape. I haven't so much as seen a map yet."

"Extremely basic, all right." Jensal pulls out a sheet of square paper and loosely outlines three continents and some major islands. She draws a little cross in one of them. "We are here. Continent's called Espaal, country's called Esmaar. This continent is Nanela, this one's Anaist, the giant island is Mekand, these islands are various other countries - Petar Erubia Egeria - Ehail's house is here, the Corenta house is here, the iceberg one is here." She draws in a little island in the place where Mekand, Nanela, and Anaiast nearly touch: "That's Dragon Island, the council bases its operations there, you're not allowed on it unless you're a dragon or a thudia. Nanela's got three big countries -" sketch, sketch, "and a lot of informal sparsely inhabited wildnerness. Espaal's got six big countries. Anaist has got lots of little countries I'm not going to draw. Most of this north coast is part of Ertydo though. Mekand's it's own country. There's six nations of merfolk at least according to the recognition of abovewater governments; it might be more complicated down there, Quaro -" she taps the mark of the location of the iceberg house - "would know better than me."

Libby nods, examining the map. "It's a little weird that the edges of the map correspond to actual edges," she comments. "I'm used to spherical planets; if you want to map those on flat paper you have to pull weird geometric tricks and wraparound is unavoidable. But here, you conveniently produce paper the same shape as your planet."

"I don't think the choice of paper shape is related, but yes, it's handy if you want to draw an impromptu map. The oceans go through in some places, and everything's about the same shape on the bottom, but there's effectively nothing there. Or on the sides."

"Hmm, I didn't know the oceans went through. I did know the bottom was uninhabited - Ehail suggested it as a good location for taking skeptics on test flights."

"Occasionally someone tries to colonize it, but it's not near anything, and people who can teleport usually can also afford nicer places to live than halfhearted attempts at colonization. There's nothing to mine, the soil's worthless for growing anything, and no country considers it a successful escape from their jurisdiction if one flees there pursued by the law. So, it's empty, though I can't guarantee that you wouldn't find a hermit or three if you looked very hard."

"Hmm," says Libby. "For some reason I'm idly daydreaming about colonizing it myself, but that does sound impractical. If I ever have that much magic to spare I might as well just make my own planet. I get more design input that way."

Jensal raises an eyebrow. "I suppose that follows."

"I imagine there are a lot of things that would be easier with my very own planet. No rush on that, though. When are you going to make your announcement to the house?"

"Dinner for the general announcement. I'll warn the minders of the smaller children, first, and I'm sure there's already grapevine reports, but."

"And when's dinner? I'd like to attend the announcement if it's convenient, but I'd also like to go check up on Ehail and Lazarus and Chris."

"Two angles. You can be present if you like. So can your friends."