"What are the major polities in this world?"

"Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, Northern Water Tribe. There's a Southern Water Tribe but they're practically extinct. All the Air Nomads are dead."

She slaps the wall behind her and a rough sketch of a map raises out of the stone, with borders drawn in. There's one main continent in the center, marked as Earth; an archipelago in the southwest, marked Fire; two capping landmasses at the north and south marked Water. Fire's claim extends over the northwestern quadrant of the main continent.

"Huh. Seems rather few, to me..."

"There's only four elements. And not all the land is populated. There's a desert here," she indicates a big chunk of the eastern middle of the continent.

"I suppose if you had limited magic like that it might shake out to one polity per, yes. My world had dozens on a single continent, but for the most part everyone had the same magic."

"Sounds complicated."

"It could be, at times. Meant we rarely had the sort of fight where one person invades everyone else, at least."

"Must be nice."

"Heh. I think we spent more time at war overall, though. Hard to keep the peace when any one upstart can break it."

"This war's been dragging for a hundred years, so..."

"Longer than we managed stable polities! We only had reliable borders for about sixty or seventy years, at the last."

"Mm."

"You must be horribly unimpressed with us."

"I am reevaluating my opinion on the existence of the Avatar as a stabilizing force on international politics."

"Oh? Why?"

"Your account of your world recontextualizes Fire Nation expansionism and the beginnings of the war. The Avatar before the current one was Fire Nation. After he died, the Fire Nation built up their military and swept the Air Nomads before the next Avatar could become fully realized."

"Ah, yes, a single powerful individual will often do that. Expansionist policies in my world were held in check by the threat of everyone else teaming up against you, mostly."

"The Avatar is singular. Perhaps unfortunately."

"Probably makes things more vulnerable to one vanishing, or happening to be bad at their job."

"The past century is good evidence of that."

"Sounds like a rather fascinating story, all told."

"I guess."

"I do so love history! It's a pity my world doesn't have good records - perhaps in one of these worlds I'll have to convince my friends to stick around long enough to get familiar with a library..."

"There's no library in this village." And she's not inviting this woman back to her house to browse her private collection.

"Do you know where we'd find one?"