" - I mean, presuming the pharaoh holds on to his crown they'll have people here for us shortly."

"I'm very concerned about whatever it was that acted through the Dome!"

"Me too. But I expect they'll find us."

"They'll have magic they can use to come to you?"

"Yes."

"Do you think it could send the rest of us home too? I can pay for it, though no one's going to be amused if this turns out to be some kind of racket, of course."

"Probably nobody here wants Andalite money, do they."

"If there are some barriers to setting up a currency exchange we take gold, and gemstones, and plausibly lighting, I'd have to know more about it and why it improves on permanent magical lights."

"I guess it might not, permanent magical lights sound pretty good."

" - right but maybe yours are cheaper, or more customizable, or - I'd have to know more about electricity to guess, really."

"I've never tried to explain electricity to someone who didn't know anything about it before. Are magic lights really expensive? Electric ones aren't unless you need ones that are hard to mass produce for some reason..."

"Magic lights are reasonably expensive, so maybe we'll want to buy electric ones."

"Oh. I'm not actually sure if we're allowed to trade with aliens but I guess when I pass quarantine they might think about it."

"Quarantine?"

"To make sure a Yeerk didn't get me while I was gone."

"Why would you not be allowed to trade with aliens?"

"In case something goes wrong like with the Yeerks, I guess? ...I make lightbulbs, I don't know much about how the council makes decisions."

- nod. "What went wrong with the Yeerks?"

"Uh, they turned out to be evil. And now there is a horrible war."

"Oh. I guess that'd do it. You can verify we're not evil, though, if you want."

"...how?"

" - well, we have a spell for it. I guess if you do not have any divine magic you might not."

"How does a spell tell if someone is evil or not? We have spells that can only be cast with malicious intent but that's not even all of the nasty ones."

"The spell is called Detect Alignment. It's not very accurate on the individual level because some people will read evil for reasons who don't say much about their character, but it's fairly informative about whole populations."

"I'm not sure the council will want to assume that will tell them if somebody is like a Yeerk or not."