[There's a couple things he might have wanted but he didn't ask. And we like how we look and Book knew that so we wouldn't have wanted anything from Lightning.]

[I am so curious how this all works genetically, but I don't think you probably know.]

[No idea, sorry. We look like our parents? And parents are pretty much always cohabiting adults.]

[So do you have--how many parents do you have?]

[Four, of course.]

[Two's the norm here, since people don't generally cohabit. Considering how many fundamental differences our worlds seemed to have, four seemed like a good guess but we didn't want to assume.]

[Well, only two of them actually decided to have a kid and got us, the other two have other spouses.]

[That sounds...really complicated.]

[I guess? They're not awake at the same time as their cohabitors, there's only ever two of them at a time.]

[Yeah, but--you can't move somewhere else easily because you'd be dragging someone else along that you can never directly talk to, if they wanted to move with you they'd have to negotiate with their spouse's cohabitor as well as their spouse...logistics kind of stuff.]

[Oh. Yeah, people don't move very much, especially not once they're of an age where somebody's married.]

[We don't think it sounds fun, being stuck like that. Not saying your way is worse, or anything, but--that sounds like a downside.]

[Well, they don't do it for fun. We wouldn't want to be separate though. ...We do sort of wish we could fall totally asleep if we wanted.]

[Sleep's nice. I could try sending one of you to sleep if you wanted, my power goes pretty far beyond just talking.]

[It's not that sleep is pleasant, it's, um, I have a crush on somebody and Holly doesn't at all and it's awkward. But he's not here. But it might happen again one day, I guess, even if we can't get home.]

[Sending you to sleep the once to try it would be a lot easier than making you able to do it. I could try, but...that seems like the kind of thing where I'd have to spend a lot of time observing more of your minds than most people are at all comfortable with to have a decent shot.]

[We don't really know enough about your magic to know if we'd want you to try.]

[I have...mind magic comprehensive enough that I try to avoid letting strangers know how comprehensive it is so I don't get mobs with torches and pitchforks after me.]

[There's no mind magic at all except moving souls around where we're from so we don't know how comprehensive strangers you usually meet expect it to be.]

[What I can do to someone else's mind seems primarily limited by my ethics and skill.]

[Yeah, that could be pretty scary. You seem nice about it though.]

[I try. My limits are pretty much self-defined but I put a lot of thought into defining them.]

[I guess I'd mostly be worried that you know how minds work but not how souls work and something would be messed up if one of us went all the way asleep. Book was able to move out okay but he was always the most able to fade back and not pay attention.]

[A valid concern. I've never been sure that there was a meaningful difference between a mind and a soul myself, but--unsurety goes both ways.]

[Yeah.]