"No electric lights or anything. Pretty low population density, lots of moorlands, lots of goat herds. The mountains were gorgeous, and the water always ran clean, and the forests were still wild. Our rulers weren't too distant or anything - they lived in a castle, but it was the sort designed to shelter the entire capital town - and they'd come to the yearly games and everything. We had a market every ten-day, where you could sometimes buy things from really far off, especially if you went to the capital market. Turquoise beads and gold thread and obsidian knives..."

"That sounds nice, though if I visited I would miss a lot of stuff from home that you presumably didn't know about."

"I think that goes every direction! Most people miss at least some things."

"Yeah. I'm glad I can stay in my original world, even though hiding the changes has been pretty inconvenient. --I have a human-passing second body I've been going to school and stuff in." Using the humanoid feels a bit like driving an RC car compared to living in her main body--fewer moving parts and a sense of operating at one remove, even though the interface is objectively speaking just as good.

"I mostly don't go home? But I don't have as many ties as most people. It's good you can stay where you want to, though."

"And I'm glad you found somewhere that's a solid improvement on where you started."

"Yeah! Opportunities are pretty good in general, it turns out."

"Yup! Marel's whole thing kind of sounds like the setup for a cautionary tale, in my cultural context, but as far as I can tell it's actually just awesome."

"Heh, yeah. No randomly disappearing after cryptically cursing your entire family!"

"I was thinking more like 'transformation has a horrible secret drawback' or 'the things she wants you to do to pay it off are all evil' but I'm glad she didn't do that either!"

"Yeah. Cautionary tales where I'm from are more about - being careful what you wish for, and also exact wording?"

"We've got some of those. Also 'don't trust offers that seem too good'. And 'don't trust strangers in general', but that's a bit silly now that we live in cities of tens of thousands of people and rely on strangers every day."

"Wow! I'd probably find that stressful, honestly..."

"Plenty of people do, yeah. I like it, it means there's always new people to meet. And of course I do see some people often enough to know them pretty well."

"Heh. To each their own! It's good you live somewhere you like, though."

"Yeah. I wonder how many of the people who find Marel's place end up moving to another planet."

"I wouldn't be surprised if it was 'a lot,' honestly, Marel's - the place feels like somewhere that only shows up when you're lost, you know? People who need something."

Serious nodding. "Yeah. I needed a different body. There was nothing wrong with the old one, objectively speaking, but it wasn't good, and this one is."

"Yeah. I was like that, too - it's more the changeability I'd wanted, you know? Lots of bodies feel like they could be a body for me, just... They can start to itch."

"That makes sense. I think I've managed to cram everything I want in a body into this one, but I guess you'd have to ask me again in a year to be sure."

"Heh. It's faster than that for me - but everyone's different, which's pretty good, all things considered. A world of just clones of me would get boring."

"Yeah, me too. I'm not sure anyone wants a world of just clones of them; they'd have to do all the jobs they didn't like."

"That'd be another problem with it, too."

Nod. Gathering useful inventory.

They're a pretty efficient team!

Once they've gotten what they came for: "Wanna head back, or explore some more? We've got spare time, I think."