"It's possible they tried? But not so I'd notice. My parents aren't important or anything."

"In Osirion they could sue anyway. I think. I'm not really an expert on normal people on account of it barely being permitted to talk to them."

"I'm not sure if they were allowed to sue. I mean, there's a background risk of something happening when you send your kid to college, I think they had to sign forms about that. But I don't know since I haven't spoken to them in twenty years."

"Pax is the language spoken there?"

"It's the most common one in the Imperium especially among humans and the only one from there I know more than a few words of."

"Are humans the dominant species in the Imperium?"

"Yes. Though by a much smaller margin than it seems like is the case here, I think the population's only about - seventy or eighty percent human, something like that?"

"We're just over ninety but people self-segregate a little. What else have you got -"

"Uh, elves and dwarves and orcs and ogres and gnomes and nagas and mermaids and dryads and... stuff, I don't have a list memorized. Golems, some of those are people. Demonbloods as long as they have any human ancestry are allowed to go to school and stuff. Kobolds and goblins and hobgoblins. Yokai."

"Huh. That's - more than we have in civilized society, I wouldn't know if there are some of each of those on an isolated island somewhere."

"I think my native plane is higher magic or something than this one."

"Huh. What else do they have that we don't?"

"Mostly conveniences - I haven't seen any enchanted carriages here, I haven't seen magic mirrors or crystal balls or magical laundry boxes, that kind of thing. Also it seems like I might be the only subtle artist in town, that'd be weird in a city this size on my plane."

"We have magic mirrors and crystal balls but they're very expensive specialty items for exceptionally wealthy people. Maybe your world discovered a way to make them more cheaply? That'd be really useful."

"Maybe. I don't know how they do it there beyond the 'hire an enchanting-major college graduate and have them do it'."

"Is there some reason we shouldn't do a plane shift, say hello, import their stuff -"

"Don't do that, it's - the kind of thing that might count as cheating, you know? They don't have interplanar trade on any kind of scale even though it'd be cheaper there than here if they wanted it. The place I was last month has some of the conveniences but extra don't go there, it's, I don't know if you even have the genre here - it's a science fantasy world, I'm lucky I didn't just kind of die on the spot when I landed here and I still don't know if that was maybe in part their gods protecting me or not."

"It's a what?"

"I guess you don't have the genre. It's, like, you know how if you poke the universe too hard it pokes back? Their universe doesn't do that, you can do whatever you want there. I mean, at least till the gods get scared, then you can't."

" - I don't think there's any sense in which you can't poke the universe except that the gods will get mad?"

"- like the classic example is the time somebody tried to do an experiment to find out how fast things fall and now the entire area where they did that doesn't have 'down' any more?"

"I have not heard of anything like that happening. Things fall... at the same rate unless they're light enough for the air to impede them? Pretty sure?"

"Are you saying that because it's derived from other principles you have in some way, like, a god told somebody that or something, or because someone tried it."

"Someone tried it. While flying, I think, so he could get enough height to be confident."

"And nothing bad happened to them? At all? They weren't even, uh, eaten by a dragon later that month or anything?"