Hello. Can I interest you in a drink?

"...Uh. What. I mean, yes, but what."

"So this isn't my cousin Joreth's new bar and that's why there's no one here?"

This is not your cousin Joreth's new bar. Although often there are more people here than there are right now.

Here's one! A handsome person in weird clothes with gold eyes.

"I think I'll take the recommendation, then."

"Oh, hello. I have some introductory napkins," she offers, holding them out with one hand and scooping up the orange frothy with the other.

"Introductory napkins. Just the thing." He reads them.

"My name's Pletha. Pletha Wistraika. What's yours?"

"You seem very foreign, but then, apparently this is an interdimensional bar, so I suppose it's not that surprising."

"Yeah, I've never heard your language before and can't place the outfit."

"...If you've never heard my language before how are you speaking it?"

"I suspected some sort of translation effect might be in place, but it seemed strange that you could tell what language I was speaking if that was the case. What's a dragon?"

"Big shiny flying reptile. ...With shapeshifting powers. If that was not implied."

"If you're usually a big shiny flying reptile that certainly implies that some kind of shapeshifting was going on, although it needn't have been under your own power. If you're not really human is that why I can't tell what gender you are?"

"...I'm the same gender all the time," he says. "Aaaand I don't think anybody's ever had trouble telling."

"Well, if you're usually a dragon there's no reason the shapeshifting has to include your gender's scent," she points out reasonably. She sniffs. "I mean, I can't really smell you at all, but maybe whatever you smell like is more apparent to dragon noses."

"No. I mean, obviously there's physical differences, no one would mistake a picture of me for a desi, but you could be a desret or a desan or maybe even a desmi but that's less likely and I couldn't tell. How do you tell the difference between desan and desret and haran and harmi without smelling?"

"Oh. That's very strange. So you're just modeling me as some sort of...composite haran and harmi? I think that bothers me and I'm not sure why. I'm harmi. If you say you're both and neither I'll believe you, anyway."

"Sure," says Aurin. "What is... uh... the point of having so many? Like... uh... examples... sprites, sprites sort of have three sexes, I haven't personally met any sprites but it's a thing, but they have them like that because of how sprites work elsewise, what's the way you all work that needs six genders?"

"I'm not sure I understand the question."

"Uh, I don't know if you're enough of a prude to object if I rephrase."

"I'm not a prude. Go ahead."

"So, do you actually need all six to reproduce, that sounds like a lot of hard-to-arrange orgies. And if you don't, why would it... happen?"

"Oh, no, of course not. You only need two people to reproduce. I'm still not sure I understand the rest of the question, though. Why wouldn't it happen?"

"What about other species in your world? Like... squirrels. Are there six sexes of squirrel?"

"I think most non-primate mammals only have four sexes."

"...Which four?"

"Well, not the same four as humans, obviously. I think there's one that's like desret and desan and one that's like if you crossed desan and desmi and one that's like if you crossed harret and haran and one that's like haran and harmi."

"That's weird."

"It's simpler!"

"Well, yeah, and not having any spices in your food would be simpler, but it wouldn't be as much fun."

"What's so fun about having six genders?"

"It's--it's who I am. I'm a harmi, not some kind of harmi/haran hybrid. And you don't get as much to choose from--I'm not terribly attracted to desret, so if desret was all there was I'd have to pick between marrying someone I didn't like like that and not being able to have children. And I didn't mean to say that having two genders was worse, just that simpler doesn't necessarily mean better."

"...If there weren't a harmi/haran distinction you wouldn't miss it," Aurin points out. "And there's plenty of variety even with only two? Like, I guess we don't smell like much, but people do all kinds of stuff with the 'being a guy' basic idea."

"And even if you didn't have spices, you could still have fruit sauces and cheeses and sparkleaf and stuff to give food extra flavor," she shrugs. "There's lots of ways to be a person with the system we have too. I'm not saying you're horribly destitute, or anything, but you're way, way out of anything I've ever seen before. And vice-versa, I assume, I'm sure I'm plenty weird to you."

"Yeah. I'm not getting anything substantially different-and-interesting as far as I can understand off the words - I mean, figuring out culture from words is not very reliable or in-depth but still."

"If you're not used to gendering people by scent, you probably wouldn't. I mean, someone whose species didn't have genders at all probably wouldn't see much difference between your desret/desan and your haran/harmi two genders either."

"I mean, there's the obvious, but yeah."

"And if your species reproduced asexually the obvious probably wouldn't seem to matter as much. I get your point, though."

"I can actually smell the smell," he mentions. "It's nice. Just doesn't scream 'major feature of gender' at me."

She smiles a little smugly when he mentions how she smells. "And a member of a sexless species would probably be able to observe that I have pectoral adipose reservoirs and you don't. It just wouldn't scream 'major feature of gender' at them."

"They wouldn't have a concept of major features of gender."

"True enough."

"So can any two people have kids together without magical help where you're from, or just certain matchups...?"

"...No, of course not. Any desi can get someone pregnant, and any hari can get pregnant, but--wow, I was not expecting to have to tell someone about the swans and the minnows today. A desret can get anyone pregnant who can get pregnant, which is all three hari genders and also desmi. A harret can only get pregnant by a desret or another harret and can get anyone pregnant who can get pregnant. A desan can get a haran or a harmi pregnant. A desmi can get a harmi or another desmi pregnant. Haran and harmi can't get anyone pregnant. Um, have I forgotten anything."

"...I don't know, I completely lost track of that halfway through and may need a chart."

"...Bar, can I have paper and a pencil please?"

If you borrow a whiteboard and marker instead I won't have to add it to your tab.

"What are those?"

Behold!

"Ooh, nice. Do you have more marker colors?"

Here is an array of them.

She selects the black and the green and the red, and makes a chart

"Huh. Okay. So... why can't the four combinations that don't work, work?"

"I don't know, they just don't."

"Huh."

"I wonder how two-gendered people fit into it," she muses, tapping the green marker she was last using against her chin. "Maybe you're too different from us just on account of the genders thing, or maybe your genders aren't compatible, or maybe one of your world's desi could sire a child on someone like me."

"No idea. I mean, if nothing, else, even on my world two people who couldn't normally have kids can do it with magic."

"Really? How?

"...A wizard does it? I don't know the technical details. You need a woman around to carry the kids, usually one of the moms if it's two women or like an aunt if it's two guys."

"I wish my world had magic."

"...It doesn't? What does it have instead?"

"...Not...magic? We have, like, boats and printing presses and midwives and physicians and carts and stuff."

"What-all kinds of thing do you do with magic?"

"I mean, I'm a dragon, we're very magic, I'm using magic right now to be bipedal and non-clawed and stuff. Light our houses? Tell time? Get rid of headaches? Have biologically unlikely children? Not me in the last case, I don't have any kids."

"We use bark tea to get rid of headaches, candles and lamps to light our houses, spark candles, sundials, and waterclocks to tell time, and we don't have any dragons to make bipedal. So I guess we do alright without it."

"I guess. Sounds inconvenient though."

"Like how?"

"Having to light a candle? Without magic? Or being able to turn into a cute baby firebreathing dragon and do it that way? I dunno, just sounds annoying. You must not have scoots either - those are flying vehicles."

"No, we don't have those."

"Or teleportation or - how does your planet even work? I think planets are magic."

"Uh, there's dirt, and plants grow in it, and there's mountains and rivers and oceans...? What about planets would be magic?"

"I don't remember, this was a long time ago, I'm out of school now."

"To the best of my knowledge my planet is not magic." She looks contemplatively at the bar. "Do you do books?"

I certainly do.

"Can you show us whichever of his school books would have explained how his planet is magic?"

"...Is your planet actually a square or is this demonstrating atypical artistic license for a textbook."

"...It's square. I've been to a couple edges. Why? Is yours a circle or something?"

"It's a sphere."

"That sounds inconvenient."

"...How?"

"Well, you could only live right on the top of it, right? It'd have to be enormous compared to a square to give you the same living space. I guess you could sort of build into the sides? Or underground, do you live underground?"

"No one lives underground, so far as I know. But I don't see how an enormous planet is inconvenient."

"So it's big enough that you have enough space on the top of it?"

"Yeah. And that might be how your planet is magic and mine isn't, if sphere-planets can work without magic and square-planets can't."

"Maybe. I guess spheres are pretty simple? But so are squares."

"A sphere is more resilient, though. If you take a piece of clay and make a solid sphere out of it and then you make a square out of the same amount of clay, the square breaks way more easily."

"What's going to break a ten-mile-thick planet?"

"I don't know, I'm not from your world and I'm not a natural philosopher, anyway."

"Well, having a square planet has worked so far."

"Right. With magic."

"Yes."

"Which my world doesn't have. As far as I know, at least."

"I guess. Weird."

"I think we've established that weirdness is relative."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Magic does sound nice, though," she allows, a little wistfully.

"I don't do a lot of it myself. Got an aunt and a cousin who're wizards though. Had a girlfriend once who was a witch. And another one who was a fire mage."

"What do those mean?"

"Wizards do spells with gestures and nonsense words that do whatever. Teleporting and stuff. Witches make potions like the headache thing. Fire mages do fire."

"I suppose I could probably have guessed the fire one."

"She was fun. My kinda dragon also does fire. Differently, but still."

"How do you do fire?"

"Dragons can all breathe fire, in natural form, right? Some of us like it better and are better at it, I'm one of those."

"Oh, like wyverns? Come to think of it, wyverns also fly, although they're not scaly."

"We don't have those. Maybe like wyverns? I don't really have room to shapeshift in here and let you compare."

"Wyverns are flying beasties that eat fish and other kinds of meat and blow fire at you if you get too close. Sometimes people can catch them and train them, especially if you can get 'em from the egg, but it's risky."

"Sounds it. There are little critters in Elcenia that look more like dragons than anything else and they're called drakes. People keep them as pets."

"Sounds a little like humans keeping monkeys as pets. Cute."

"Yeah, they're cute. Lots of different kinds. I'm not so much a pets person though."

"I like them in theory, but not so much in practice. I enjoy petsitting for my friends sometimes, but I'm always glad to hand them back by the time I'm done."

"Yeah, exactly!"

"I might feel differently about a tiny winged lizard, but that's probably the novelty talking."

"They can be high-maintenance."

"Ah. Never mind then. I'm saving up my tolerance of 'responsible for another living thing with high maintenance needs' for when I have kids someday."

"Is that the sort of thing one saves up?"

"I don't know! I certainly wouldn't want to run low on it, in any case."

"Tell me about it. When I have kids they might stay that way for a couple hundred years."

"Yikes. That sounds like a challenge. What do you mean, 'might,' though?"

"Dragon habit is to marry non-dragons, most of whom don't live as long as we do or take as long to grow up, at least for the first thousand years or so. Most of those kids take after their non-dragon parents but occasionally you get a dragon egg instead."

"...You can casually interbreed with other species? Must be a magic thing."

"Most sapient species can interbreed. And if they can't and want to: magic."

"How many sapient species do you have? I was assuming it was you and humans, pretty much..."

"Oh, no, there's lots. I mentioned sprites, there's them. There's elves and dwarves and halflings and leonines and skyfolk and merfolk and fairies and pixies and vampires and... I'm probably forgetting something but that's at least most of them."

"That's a lot. I'm going to guess you have so many sentient species because of magic somehow."

Shrug. "I think we've established I don't remember clearly what basic things are in fact magic."

"Oh, sure. I'm just blaming everything flagrantly different about your world on magic at this point."

"I don't blame you!"

"With the possible exception of the gender thing, since genders per species varies even in my world."

"Yeah, that I have no explanation for. I mean, there are people who are born sort of in-between or unusual in some way? Either in how they're shaped or how they feel about it. But they're not common. Also it's not a thing that happens to dragons, we get to sex-select kids and the sex-selection doesn't make mistakes."

"Honestly, the fact that you have humans with only two sexes is way more surreal to me than the fact that you have giant scaly lizards that can shapeshift. And have only two sexes."

"Well, you're clearly not the same kind of humans, I'm inclined to translate it that way but that's just an approximation really."

"And if you find a way to convince the part of my brain that find things surreal of that I will be impressed."

"What are the differences besides smell, anyway?"

"...Between desret and desan and between haran and harmi?"

"Yeah."

"Well...for one thing, the smell thing is a bigger deal than you seem to think it is. It, hm, it doesn't just tell you factually what gender someone is. There's, you know, meaning to it. Like the fact that I have breasts doesn't just tell you factually that I'm a childbearing gender, but also serves as a focus for attraction. And everyone smells differently, so you can tell someone's gender but you can also tell who they are. On I guess a more practical level for someone like you...on average, harmi have larger breasts and wider hips than haran, and desret are a little taller and a little more muscular than a desan, and of course the interfertility thing," she gestures at her chart.

"...Can you not tell who everybody is by looking at them?"

"Well, yeah, but I'm not trying to describe its practical utility, I'm trying to describe its social importance. Think talking to a species that doesn't have a spoken language and explaining that you can tell people apart by their voice, kind of thing."

"Sprites don't have spoken language! They communicate by dancing."

"Well, there you go."

"I wonder how the translation effect would render it. I'm out of practice at not falling over, though, and doing it without wings is the equivalent of having a terrible accent."

giggle. "I have no idea! Bar, any light to shed on the subject?"

"Might be synaesthetically weird in the other direction," she muses.

"I guess. I don't think the translation effect is actually... doing anything to me? It wouldn't improve matters, anyway. So I don't know what that would be like."

"Sure."

"I will dance a sentence for you if you're really curious."

"I wasn't before you offered but now I am."

She bursts out laughing. "That is fantastic," she giggles.

Aurin takes a bow.

"And it was synaesthetically interesting."

"Yeah? How so?"

"Oh, like--it was half like I was hearing it in my language, and half like I was just understanding the language as it was."

"Huh, must've been weird, you've got really different word order going on."

"Very weird! But fun weird, not even just vaguely unsettlingly weird like the gender thing."

"...Am I that unsettling? I don't find you unsettling, just oddly specific."

"I don't find you unsettling, per se, it's just--I feel a constant low-level suspicion that you might be misgendering me. And even if you aren't, if I met anyone else from your world, they aren't guaranteed to be so adaptive."

"I remember which one you told me you were. I don't understand the baggage around that, but you don't understand the baggage around my gender, either, and it doesn't bother me..."

"Maybe I'm more sensitive about it than you are."

"Yeah, maybe. I do remember which one you - hey, the bar's a person, did you ask if the bar has a gender?"

"...Bar?"

Obviously, I am made of wood, rather geometrically at that, and cannot be said to have a sex, but I prefer to be considered (in his understanding) female and (in yours) harmi.

"Okay, sure."

"...Are those equally, you know, correct?"

The first concept does see more use than the second, but no, not particularly.

"...What do you mean that the first concept sees more use than the second?"

A plurality of patrons are accustomed to a two-gender system; an outright majority experience a bimodal distribution. Six is rare.

"Oh."

"That's a lot. I think I'm glad I belong to a species that has a number of sexes that are easier to work with than that."

"The difference between six and five hundred and twelve is an order of magnitude larger than the difference between six and two."

"Yeah, I know. But think of the variety!"

"Well, there is that."

"And the prolonged confused experimental years in adolescence. Yeesh."

"Pfff. Not everyone goes through experimental phases, you know."

"You'd have to, if there were five hundred and twelve options! What if you'd just never met anyone of gender three hundred and eighty-two besides one grandparent and a glimpse of the postal commissioner through a window? What if your cut-rate education only covered seventeen through ninety-five because they needed the rest of the class time for other things? You'd have no idea!"

"If you've never met someone of gender three hundred eighty-two I'd love to know how you plan to experiment with them."

"You'd have to go find them, of course. There would be mixers."

"But how would you know to go looking in the first place if your education was so lacking?"

"Because your textbook on genders seventeen through ninety-five mentioned it was abridged, of course."

"For three hundred and eighty two in particular, I mean, and not the rest of ninety-five through four hundred. Four hundred and one through five hundred and twelve being the ones you've met outside of class, of...course...shit, I just realized we're being super racist against some species neither of us is ever going to meet."

"I think assuming they didn't have a sense of humor would be worse, frankly."

"Yeah, but we're making fun of a difference between their species and ours. I don't think they have to lack a sense of humor to have a right to be offended by that."

"Well, I wouldn't do it if they were here, I'd just ask them instead of speculating."

"Still feels rude."

"As you like."

"I've never really gotten the point of experimenting, myself," she says thoughtfully. "How do you not know in advance whether you want to kiss someone?"

"Not having thought about it enough?" shrugs Aurin. "I was so thoroughly distracted by girls that I didn't notice my much smaller inclination to kiss boys, at first."

"Huh. Okay."

"I dunno, maybe that sort of thing doesn't happen to you all? Love at first sniff."

"Heh. No, experimental phases are totally a thing in my world. Just not for me personally."

"Is there a set of genders it's usual for each one to be into, or... not?"

"Most people are attracted to most genders, but it varies wildy. Sometimes there's a stigma if you're not attracted to any genders you're interfertile with," she admits.

"What about if you are attracted to some of those but wind up settling down with somebody with whom you are not?"

"Well, it depends on whether it's Sealed or not."

"...Uh, if you promise not to add any more people to the marriage, and it's not currently possible for the marriage to produce children, there's some stigma for that, but if you leave open the possibility of adding someone who could make children happen people won't bother you over it even if you never actually do."

"Are marriages normally multi-person arrangements, then? That's not unheard of for humans at home but it's usually two people."

"Not always. I only have two parents. Anyway, the more people there are the rarer the arrangement is, since of course everyone in the marriage has to want to be married to everyone else."

"No sort of networky things? I have had as many as three girlfriends at once but they weren't all interested in each other and one of them had a boyfriend who the other two and I weren't seeing and so on."

"'Wants to be married to each other' can amount to, 'you and I get along really well and would be happy to live together in this house both having sex with this third person but not with each other and cooperatively raising any children that ensue.'"

"S'pose. Do married people sometimes have outside partners, then? Who aren't the childrearing type or whatever."

"If the marriage isn't Sealed, yeah."

"But Sealing cuts that off along with the possibility of marrying extra people?"

"...Technically it doesn't absolutely preclude it, but the cultural associations with Sealing--you're not supposed to do it if you still want outside partners."

"Some people at home say that about getting married at all. Monogamy is very popular."

"That sounds...inconvenient. Is there a cultural expectation for getting married at all, where you're from, or do most people just live together unmarried?"

"It is very much the normal thing to do in most modern Elcenian human cultures to date around, more often serially than in parallel, in one's teens and twenties, and eventually pick one person to marry and be monogamous with indefinitely. Variations include not doing the 'eventually' part, not being monogamous with your eventually in one fashion or another, and getting divorced because you picked the wrong eventually. And there are cultures - fewer now than there used to be - where they do arranged marriages."

"Divorces happen sometimes. They're a lot messier when you have more people involved."

"They can be pretty bad when there's only two, but yeah, I bet it's a lot worse if it's five people all packing up their stuff and yelling."

"I think when it's five people it can be okay if it's, like, two of them don't want to be married to the other three anymore and vice-versa but the two and the three still want to be married to each other, but yeah."

"Oh, yeah, I guess you could also get fractures like that."

"My parents are happily married, though, and there's only two of them, so I don't have a lot of experience with that kind of thing."

"I also had two parents! My dad died when I was a baby, though."

"That's sad."

"Yeah. I don't really remember him so it's not a looming feature of my life, though?"

"Mhm. It's sad for your other parent, though."

"Yeah, she hasn't remarried. He wasn't the first husband she lost but he was the first she was expecting to keep, I guess? Or she thought it'd be weird while I was still a kid and hasn't started thinking about it yet now that I'm not."

"Do you have any half-siblings?"

"Not alive. Variously distant generations of half-niblings, though."

"That sounds...hard. On your parents."

"It's a dragon thing, I think I explained? We live a really long time. ...Oh, uh, possibly relevant is that full-blooded dragons have a stupidly high infant mortality rate? I can't even remember off the top of my head how many times they had to try to get me. So our choices are basically 'marry a series of shorter-lived species, see children live to adulthood reliably' or 'marry another dragon, watch a dozen babies die'. Also people who've never been married before seem to be bad at picking relationships to last four thousand years, dragons who marry other dragons early divorce more than average, so the first marriages are sort of practice? Some folks sidestep most of this problem by marrying vampires, though. They've got flexible lifespans. Divorce problem still exists but infant mortality problem does not."

"...Uh. I think if I was a dragon I'd marry a vampire or never have kids."

"That's also an option."

"I have a large number of negative feelings about that system but it probably wouldn't be practical or helpful to enumerate them."

"Not really, no."

"Mostly they have to do with the idea of dead babies."

"Yeah."

"So why do vampires have variable lifespans?"

"So, they drink blood, and they live as long as the average of all their lunches."

"...Huh."

"Yeah. I feed vampire friends sometimes. If I was going to marry one I'd be her sole food source. Probably the kids too."

"That makes sense."

"Which would mean I couldn't have all that many. I dunno how many I even want though."

"Me neither. It'll depend on a lot of things, probably."

"Yeah. For one thing I don't even know who I'd be having them with, I don't even have a girlfriend right now."

"It's kind of odd how you gender the word (significant other/non-committed). I hadn't even known my language could do that."

"...There's gender neutral versions but we like being specific and don't have to memorize three times as many vocabulary words. How are you hearing things like 'mom'?"

"...Parent? I mean, I can tell it's a diminutive."

"Huh. So when I was contrasting my mom and my dad you didn't necessarily notice which one was the one who's still alive."

"They were different diminutives. I don't call my parents the exact same thing, I could track which one was which."

"Huh. Not even a word for, I dunno, incubating parent, other biological parent...?"

"Technical terms, sure but you don't call them that."

"How do marriages with a bunch of people in them divide up all the words?"

"There's lots of diminutives for parent, and sometimes you can add stuff--I have a friend who calls her parents red-pari, yellow-pari, and renna."

"Why the colors, do those mean things?"

"As I understand it, they were originally an infantile reference to the relevant parents' favorite colors. To be fair, I've met her parents, they really do wear a lot of red and yellow respectively."

"Huh. Okay. But what I meant was how do they all agree on who's pari and who's renna and so on."

"...There isn't, like, a cultural script for it or anything. They just--decide."

"Huh."

"How do your parents decide what to be called? I'm assuming there's more than one possible diminutive--per gender, apparently."

"Depends on the language, really, but yeah, there's generally enough options for same-sex couples to work something out."

"Well, there you go, then."

"But there's usually only two of them even so."

"There's lots to pick from. I imagine most people just find something they like and work it out if there's a collision."

"Makes sense."

"So if you only ever have two parents, is that why your last name only had two syllables? Not that no one has two-syllable last names where I'm from..."

"...Dragons don't do last names, we do line names. My line name is my father's entire personal name. Dragon names are always two syllables like that."

"...Oh. What's the difference between a line name and a last name?"

"Last names belong to whole families; line names have to do with gender and color. If I had a sister, she'd have my mother's line name instead. Or my mother's first name, if she was a silver like my dad instead of a gold like me and Mother."

"How do last names belong to families? I guess if you only have two genders a kid is always going to be the same gender as one of their parents, at least, you could just give them their same-gendered parent's wholesale..."

"...Okay, last names among humans in the country I live in belong to whole families. How do yours work?"

"Usually a kid's last name is a combination of elements from their parents. My name is Pletha Wistraika; my parents are Forrin Herraika and Marret Wistmaele."

"I live in a place called Corenta, and there, when two people get married they pick an ancestor's name, first or last, if they're lucky they can find one on both sides of the family, and then that's their last name and their kids' last names. M'cousin lives in Esmaar, and there households all have a last name; when people get married they move into one or the other's house and use that house's name. Or they start a new house and pick either one of the two."

"Huh. I guess that makes sense as a way to do it."

"And some other places it's gendered, one or the other keeps their own last name and their spouse takes it and the kids all get that one, and there same-sex couples are in a bit of a bind, usually just pick one."

"That would seem to be a flaw in that system, yes."

"Most people like the opposite sex. And some religions try to enforce that. So the systems can stick around pretty long like that."

Snort. "'The system has glaring flaws' doesn't mean 'it is in any way unrealistic or even, frankly, unexpected'."

"Are there similar problems in your world to make you so cynical?"

"Spoken like someone who has never tried to navigate the Lellepin City bureaucracy."

"Indeed I have not."

"In my experience, people don't throw out systems that have been around a long time just because they don't work as well as they did when they started out."

"Yeah. What's wrong with Lellepin City specifically?"

"It's where I live."

"Oh, it's not, like, famously hard to get a building permit or file a noise complaint?"

"Not so far as I know!"

"My town is mostly famous for flavored rice milk and the annual handicrafts festival. The nearest city, where my mom works, is a slightly bigger deal."

"Lellepin City has some semi-famous gardens."

"I wonder if your plants are different."

"I have no idea."

"Well, I knew how to say 'rice milk'."

"Oh, yeah, we definitely have those things. But there are enough different kinds of, say, flowers, that if we had different ones it would be hard to tell because I don't know them all."

"Roses camellias tulips pansies lilacs carnations daisies."

"I recognize all of those things. Uh, hibiscus magnolia lotus lily?"

"Yup."

"So we probably have the same plants."

"Sounds like. Or at least similar plants. Maybe your lilies have eighteen sexes."

"...I don't think plants have sexes the way animals do."

"Some of them do. Well, not the same way, but kind of."

"I'll take your word for it."

Aurin looks in his empty glass. "I should probably go. I'm meeting somebody for dinner."

"Oh, who?"

"Old friend who's in town for the week."

"Well, have fun."