Helpless shrug. "I think the pharaoh has gone to some fairly absurd lengths to meet normal people and ask them questions about their lives but it took fairly extraordinary lengths and I mostly study languages, and magic."

"That makes sense. You do go out ever, that's how I encountered you..."

"We just opened up a museum of commerce! I was going to go see it."

"...what goes in a museum of commerce?"

"All kinds of things! It has maps of how far the typical goods sold in Sothis travelled to reach our shores at various points over the past five millenia, and authentic storefronts from many of the same time periods, and a history of ships, and I don't know what else since I did not in fact make it to the museum."

"Sorry."

"That really wasn't your fault at all!"

"Wasn't it? I suppose I didn't know you were on your way to a museum of commerce in particular but I did sort of interrupt you."

"Well, yes, but if you hadn't been more interesting than what I was doing I would've ignored you."

"Fair enough."

"I will go visit it some other time. You can come, if you'd like."

"Sounds fun."

"Do you think Fëanáro'd like it?"

"Maybe, although Valinor doesn't use money, it's a gift economy, so he might need some background, more than he's incidentally picked up from stories I've told him."

"I think there's an exhibit on the history of money! - it's a gift economy? Does that...work?"

"Yes, mostly because nothing's scarce. Except, like, specific people's attention if you are in a hurry."

"Nothing's scarce in Axis but almost all its societies still use money. Then again I guess they would."

"Seems on-brand."

"Heaven doesn't use money but I think this is conventionally considered one of the ways it's not shaped for humans."

"I adjusted pretty well after initial confusion about how on earth I was supposed to get ahold of things."

"How do they get people to do, you know, sewage and so on?"

"They have magic plumbing that requires no maintenance. I'm not recommending it as a model in this respect for places that don't have a ton of highly interventionist mini-gods and a batch of big ones."

"- you know, if their gods set up a sewage system for them I'm going to find some space on the altar for them after all no matter how badly they fucked up with you. That's - important, and human, and not glorious at all, and whoever came up with it is all right in my book."

"It would probably have been one of the Quendi's idea that they just implemented, but okay."

"Still. Couldn't get our gods to do that."