"My planet is hollow and I live in the interior. The sun and moon go around it on rotating glowing rings called the sun-circle and moon-circle, and it was unsettling that you don't have those."

"Well, to start with: physics. How does it all work? Why is there a sun circle and a moon circle, how do you live inside a hollow planet, how does it stay together?"

"The Earth theory of gravity is really elegant. In Suranse it does not work that way. When you're in the planet, down points outward, and when you're outside it, down points in."

"...is your planet the center of the universe or something?"

"Well, no one's flown far enough to tell what else is in the universe. I'm not sure we've even gotten past the sun-circle."

"I will probably need a while to digest that." Pause. "Okay, digested, now I'm curious about everything. Does everyone have a tail like that?"

He laughs. "No! Right, so there are two - countries, I suppose - the outside of the planet, Ceir, and the inside, Aluvanna. Ceirene look like Earth humans. Aluvai have claws and fangs and," he gestures at his ear, "different ears, and the ones who live on the inner surface have eyes like mine, and the ones who live in the huge floating jungle in the area of no gravity in the very middle of the planet's interior have tails. I'm a mix."

"Ooh! There's a huge floating jungle in an area of no gravity? Your planet's so much cooler than mine."

"The huge floating jungle also contains huge floating monsters that often try to eat people. That's sort of a general problem in Aluvanna, is huge monsters trying to eat people. My teammates were a bit appalled when I told them that being attacked by a giant snake wasn't unusual or even very frightening."

"...yess, that is an appalling thing. I could probably hold my own against a giant snake, but that. Is not a thing that. Usually happens. Um."

He shrugs. "It just seems normal to me. My mother's the same way about it, though - she's Ceirene, though you wouldn't know it to look at me."

"How'd you get the mixed things, then? Eyes and tail?"

"My father's father is a jungle-dweller, although he actually dwells on the ground, for complicated family history reasons. My father's mother is a surface-dweller. It's not that uncommon for people from the jungle and the surface to mix, especially if one of them is - ah. Would you like to hear the rest of my crazy secrets?"

"We got this far."

"You asked for it," he says. "All right. My grandfather and both of my parents are angels."

"Okay I am going to need you to elaborate a bit."

He laughs. "That's fair. I'm not sure they're really what you'd call 'angels', but the word fits surprisingly well. We just call them 'winged ones'. In Suranse, anyone at all can get their wings if they accomplish something admirable."

"Define admirable?"

"Depends on the person, or it seems to."

"And you just... get wings? Like, they appear? What do they look like?"

"Different for different people. Some have feathers, some are more like a," his hands sketch a shape in the air, "bat's."

"That's an interesting feature of your world," she comments. "So how does that relate to what we were talking about?"

"It's much, much easier to get around the planet if you have wings."