'What.'

'We didn't recognize the kind, it looked like a snake with a big mirror for a face, and it was chasing us and we weren't fast enough, and then - we were here. We don't know if it got our brother and his cohabitor too.'

'A snake with a mirror for a face? Cohabitor? Demons don't exist. Here. Demons don't exist here. Presumably they exist where you're from. We don't know anything about them.'

'Our brother knows more about demons but he was asleep, his cohabitor was running away at the time. ...Cohabitor is the person who lives with you? Our brother and his are normal, they aren't awake at the same time like us and you.'

'We're unusual because we were born all together. Our brother too until he moved out.'

'And people who are born normally just--move into each other? Why?'

'So they don't have to sleep. Well, our brother moved out because he's a boy.'

'That part makes sense, but why would people not want to sleep?'

'So the klaonso don't eat their souls.'

'What...what are klaonso?'

'They're an insubstantial kind of demon. You can't keep them out except with really expensive wards, so those are for children who haven't cohabited yet and everyone else doesn't sleep physically, they just let their cohabitor take over. But we can switch fast and be a little bit awake at the same time.'

'That's terrible. Don't your bodies need to sleep?'

She pats their backpack. There is a small mouse cage dangling from it. 'That's what mice are for. A lot of ours died on the trip though.'

'How do mice make you not need to sleep?'

'I put the sleepiness in them instead,' says Holly, who has been mostly dormant for this conversation but emerges to take credit for her magical prowess.

'How do you that? Did you invest to get it? Does everyone's investiture make them not need to physically sleep?'

'...What are you talking about?'

'You said you put the sleepiness in the mice. What, is that some, I dunno, demon world person power separate from investiture?'

'It's troportation, anybody can do it.' She touches one of several colorful tags sewn to the inside of her jacket; and tag and jacket swap colors. 'Like that. You can't do that?'

'I've never even heard of anything like that.'

'Oh. Well, everyone where we're from can do it.'

'You also have demons and a flat probably-not-a-planet. It doesn't surprise either of us that you have magic we don't.'

'What's yours like?'

'What do you mean? We just have heart investiture.'