"Are you fast on the other side? And do you come through the same size?"

"Yes to both, it's convenient in some ways but not promising for the prospect of moving back there eventually."

"Is that something you want to do?"

"I don't strictly have to, but there'd be some advantages."

"Can we go through?"

"Sure but you'd fall, I made the gates in midair to reduce the odds of somebody coming through in the other direction. - they're closed now, but when they settle they're open, so if it had happened while I wasn't checking there would have been some time."

"Can you make gates between places in this world?"

"No. Not directly, I could make two gates right next to each other on the other end and it'd effectively work like that while they were both open."

"How long do they stay open?"

"Until I close them."

"You could have gates on opposite sides of the world, so it was always daylight in one of them. Always summer in one of them, too, if I'm right about how seasons work."

"...how do seasons work?"

"So if you go far enough south of here there aren't any, and if you go ever farther south, there are some, but they're reversed. If seasons were caused by how close the sun comes, which is the first thing most people think of, then they'd have to be the same everywhere. But if they're caused by how many hours of sunlight you get, then this makes perfect sense. So the question is, how are the earth and the sun moving such that the number of hours of sunlight changes like that? My father thinks the earth goes around the sun, like, so, and then if the earth were additionally tilted -" he draws a diagram - "that'd get you the varying lengths of a day."

"- how mechanical!"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, my world is flat, and different places have different ways of being seasons or days - I'm from a place where it's usually autumn and usually midafternoon, and you can tell the difference between that and just the climate because sometimes it does go through the other seasons in order and the other times of day, it just stops again in autumn and midafternoon respectively - but they don't all work in a way you can just model like that."

"Huh. That sounds nice."

"Does it? I liked it but I assumed that was personal preference."

"I don't mind things changing but nights and winters are too long. The way it works for mortals is that night lasts just long enough for them to sleep, which seems elegant."

"Huh. I don't know, I'd consider living somewhere it was winter all the time."

"Everything dies in winter and it's too cold to go very far and the nights are very long."

"I think I must have better cold tolerance than you. Maybe because I'm from an autumn place, and it's sometimes chilly there."

"Cold's also less bad when you're big."

"It is?"

"Yep! Smaller things heat and cool all the way through a lot faster than bigger things."