"Of course." He asks about the talking animals on the way, mentioning that they have a couple of similar phenomena in his world but nothing identical.

"Those are mostly summons. They're animal-like people who live in a few small pocket dimensions attached to our own, and if a shinobi signs a contract with one group of summons they can pull some through. The Inuzuka clan also have a partnership with a clan of nin-dogs who live in this realm."

"Oh, interesting. Is it possible for us to visit?"

"Summoners are usually the only ones who get permission to visit any given summon's realm, but some do make exceptions. I can speak to my own summons, if you'd wish to see their lands."

"Please."

"How about I summon one now, then? It'll take until tomorrow morning, maybe, for any requests to filter back and forth to their leader."

"If you think it'd go all right; I'm not very familiar with your culture yet, I'd hate to make a bad first impression."

"I think it will."

He steps to the side of the street briefly, forming a hand sign and kneeling down to tap the ground. There's a cloud of smoke, and a snow leopard appears, with white fur and piercing blue eyes.

"Summoner," says the leopard, voice androgynous. "Why have you brought me here?"

"The visitor from the other dimension wanted to talk to some summons," says Tobirama.

The leopard stretches, and: "Very well." Then, to Raafi: "Are you the visitor?"

"That's me. -I'm not quite sure of the etiquette here, talking animals are quite rare in my world and they usually have a lot in common with their nonspeaking counterparts."

"We are more like humans than leopards, but more like leopards than nothing," they say, tilting their head. "Socially, we're fairly similar to shinobi. I'd be considered one of my summoner's retainers, here."

"That's easy enough. We have lots of kinds of people in my world, it's just that almost all of them are at least roughly humanoid."

"That's very strange. Only humans are humanoid, here, though some humans look different from others."

"Our most common species of people are humans, elves, who are slightly shorter and slender with pointed ears, dwarves, who are much shorter and stouter and all have beards, gnomes, who are very short - an inch or two over three feet - and slightly stouter with pointed ears, and halflings, who are slightly shorter than gnomes and look like humans otherwise. They all have their own cultures and habits, but they vary less than humans do within each species, mostly. The wizard who came with me is a halfling."

"Some humans have green hair or are short or have blue skin and gills. We might be calling different kinds of groups humans. Humans here can interbreed with humans, and can't interbreed with non-humans, is how we define species."

He nods. "Those species can all interbreed, with magical help with the size difference in some cases. We do have some that can't, though, at least without more help than that. The difference we look at is, we have gods, and different species were made by different ones."

"Some people think we had gods, but that was a very long time ago if it happened at all. We maybe have spirits, but none of them could have made a people."

"We definitely still have them; I've met mine - Fharlanghn, the god of travel. I get my magic from him, too."

"Interesting. Some think maybe the first shinobi got chakra from a god, but I haven't heard of it being wide-spread."

"That sounds possible, from what I know of gods. It'd be strange for you to stop having them, though, if you did once."

"Why?"

"It's not really the sort of thing that happens? It seems to be possible for them to die, but it's very rare if it is, and I wouldn't expect one to lose interest in a place or a people they'd taken notice of, that doesn't seem to be in their nature. Maybe if something changed so that they were irrelevant, but I wouldn't expect that from a god who gave a people chakra and a culture that still uses it. We do have a few gods who are reclusive, but even they'll take action when something important happens with their domain."

"What's a domain? And none of our myths mention gods paying much attention to more than very exceptional humans."

"A domain is a god's area of particular interest - Fharlaghn's domain is travel, Yondala who made the halflings has their wellbeing as her domain, Obad-Hai's domain is wild places and the balance of nature, that kind of thing. They don't often take interest in individual people, but if bandits are making a major road too dangerous, or someone is threatening the halflings as a whole, or someone is trying to build a city in the deep woods, they'll take notice of that and send their followers to do something about it, or occasionally go themselves."

"Followers?"

"The closest concept to domains I know is - I think there's a myth, that Amaterasu who was the sun grew angry at her brother once, and so she went into a cave, and the light vanished from the world until a different goddess danced to lure her back out. But we would say Amaterasu is the sun, not that she rules the sun."

Nod. "Gods do have special powers over their domains, but not quite to that degree, at least as far as I know. It could be different in different worlds. As to followers - people often follow a particular god or set of gods' teachings more than other gods, and some of us go beyond that - I mentioned that I get magic from Fharlanghn, that happens because I've dedicated my life to him. Lay worshipers might see the occasional boon or bit of luck, but nothing to nearly the same degree."