"Currency in most countries of my world is fiat and backed by the governments but it's not magical. By the way, if these Fates of yours can make new triangles—is this world infinite?"

"Er, yes? As far as anyone can tell at any rate. There was a project to go so far above the suns and stars you get to vacuum and build a giant telescope a while ago, and they think it's empty forever. So a government bought it and used it to spy on other governments, then it got blown up."

Pause. "I'll ask about that later, but back to the point I was going to make, if there's arbitrary amounts of matter being created all the time, why would you need me to provide you with biological matter? How are there scarce materials at all?"

"Scarce materials mostly aren't a thing, you're right. Penelope provides her favorite kingdom with nigh-endless amounts of coal and oil. However, Fates are rare, something like a dozen per continent at most, and they only work so fast. They can't make an entire continent with a wave of a hand. And they have categories that they can't go beyond. And most of them are not particularly helpful."

"I could gather the wood and bones and other things I need to do this myself in a week or two. It would take months or years to process it all. Finished products are what I'm after from you here. Wood already grown to a specified size that nobody has to fell trees, strip, measure, cut. Chunks of bone I don't have to clean and carve down. Herbs already gathered and cut."

"I can do pretty arbitrarily fancy biological stuff, so yeah. What's a continent, even, with an arbitrary number of squares like that?"

"A continent is any contiguous group of squares surrounded on all sides, or mostly surrounded, by void."

"...right, of course, how did I not guess this. Okay, anyway, what and how much bio matter do you want for me to grill you on stuff?"

"About ten tons total, most of the bulk various pieces of wood. Most of this will be materials, a little's restocking my medicine cabinet and I have examples to work from for those if you need it... Hold on, let me get the ship moving again then I'll clear a spot in the cargo hold."

"Sure."

He watches and waits.

"Feel free to ask questions."

The ship hovers magically, but its forward motive force is only partially magic. Once he gets the engines humming again it jumps from about twenty miles an hour to about fifty.

"Okay, so the first thing I'm curious about is Fates. What exactly are they?"

"Beyond 'powerful'? Magic itself, some say. You can turn into one by being stubborn enough to invent a new principle of magic - a new basic action magic can do. There's a lot of theory on what this actually means, seems to be at least partially idiosyncratic... I tried it. Didn't get anywhere."

"Ooookay I am so trying this. So they're all people-shaped?"

"Yeah. Well, except Barnacles and Catoblepas. And Hogweed is sort of a centaur. All of them since the Cataclysm look like kinds of people there are anyway. And, good luck with that."

"Is Barnacles, er, made of barnacles or something? How about Catoblepas?"

"He's some kind of strange molluscoid thing. He just calls himself barnacles. Very keen on the health of sea life. Catoblepas is a giant cat about the size of my ship, made of magma and gemstones. Pretty far out as fair folk go but if there were more of him they're extinct."

"Okay, so, some Fates used to be people but maybe not all of them—except I presume all since the Cataclysm? What are fair folk?"

"All of them were probably ordinary people except maybe the Six I mentioned... Fair folk are a broad category of anything that's not human and not merfolk. Everything from centaurs to fire-eaters-" Which are basically dragons, according to the picture in the dictionary, "to dryads to astels. Every sentient being that has innate magic is one of the fair folk. All known sentient life is human, mer, or fair."

"Did that dictionary contain all known species of fair folk? Do new ones appear? Is natural selection a concept here?"

"As of nine years ago mostly, yes but rarely and suddenly and generally where nobody can study it happening, I heard of that in college, something about species changing over time."

"Hmm, if new species appear where no one—wait did no one ever ask them how they showed up? Or do they appear far enough away from other species that by the time they meet they've forgotten?"

"Most fair folk have, er, non-traditional methods of reproduction, and the stories humans have been able to get out of them say the first few of those just appeared in their favored method. Almost all fair folk are incredibly closed-mouthed about their species traits, though."

"What methods are there? Why are they closed-mouthed? Would I be able to pass as one of those and inquire?"

"Plenty. No clue. No clue."

"What are a couple of examples?"