(Cultivators) (are) (less) (vulnerable) (to) (disease) (and) (you) (have) (not) (yet) (personally) (interacted) (with) (anyone) (who) (wasn't) (fortunately) 

"I think if I wait, like, a month or two, that should probably be plenty of time for anything I had on me to cycle out. - hey do you have the germ theory of disease because that's important."

(Germ) (theory) (?)

"Most diseases are caused by tiny living things, too small to see with the naked eye, called germs. They die if you boil them, among other things, so if you have, say, water that's making people sick, boiling it before drinking it can prevent that. Unless it's, like, lead poisoning, which is not a germ. This also implies quarantine procedures for the sick and it being important to promote handwashing and getting on inventing the sewer as fast as possible if you haven't already."

(We) (are) (familiar) (with) (the) (concept) (that) (cleanliness) (is) (important) (for) (health) (and) (boiling) (suspect) (water) (makes) (it) (safer) (and) (being) (around) (the) (sick) (spreads) (sickness) 

(What) (is) (the) (sewer)

"Carries away waste in pipes so it doesn't contaminate other things. I don't know much about how they're constructed. When I can contact my brother I can ask him to look stuff up."

Nod. 

(We) (can) (keep) (you) (away) (from) (non) (cultivators) (for) (a) (few) (months)

Nod nod.

(But) (yes) 

(Even) (if) (Wei) (Wu) (xian) (and) (Wen) (Ning) (are) (irrecoverable) 

(There) (is) (much) (good) (that) (could) (be) (done) 

"If we're really lucky it'll become possible to go back and forth between worlds."

Nod. 

"I will have to give everyone a heads up on the dynamic thing but the upside potential is huge."

(I) (do) (not) (know) (what) (that) (would) (look) (like) 

"Oh, you could hire people to come in and build you sewers, for one thing. Fabric gets cheap! Electric lights are cool! We have flying machines! And you guys aren't just subsistence farmers sitting on natural resources, either, you can trade cultivator-y stuff, it might be asymmetrical but I think it can go really well. Maybe we'll figure out how to eclipse people from here by sending them over on the correct dates and send them back when they've gotten through control training and then you can have eclipsed too."

(That) (sounds) (good) 

(I) (also) (do) (not) (know) (what) (role) (looks) (like) 

"Uh, I have never been to the China of my world let alone studied its history from a thousand years ago so I don't know what it looks like in the nearest comparison culture, but in mine it's like, there are different ways to address strangers depending on their role, like I'd be called 'ma'am' instead of 'miss' which is for subs and children - the conflation of which is less awkward than it sounds but still at all awkward. And when somebody's pretty sure they're growing up to be a dom they get a collar they can give to their sub later to wear, which is, like, not all the way to married but is still a signal of seriousness. And subs kneel by their doms in public except when that's really impractical. And doms have short hair and subs have long hair, except when they don't - like, I can't tell what you are actually but if you walked down the street in my world you could probably convince people you were a dom in spite of the hair because it's understood that long hair doesn't signify submissiveness in Asian cultures except when they've gotten really Westernized... Is that the sort of thing you mean or am I barking up the wrong tree?"

(That) (is) (what) (I) (meant) 

"Cool. Kids figure out what they're gonna be in their early teens usually but some people are obvious early and some people are confused late. There's a notable dearth of legible social roles for switches and nondynamics; former has a more lively activist movement. Doms're overrepresented in politics and subs in medicine, among other professions."

(The) (Lan) (sect) (has) (only) (had) (one) (female) (sect) (leader) (in) (our) (history) 

(The) (best) (doctor) (of) (our) (generation) (was) (a) (woman) 

"In my world most cultures went through a really long period of considering gender and role, if not the same thing, at least much more closely related than they are. Modern statistics suggest that women are sixty percent subs, ten percent switches who would have probably presented sub in that context historically, and thirty percent doms who - either some of them found that being raised with the expectation they'd be subs got them at least as far as 'switch', or they pretended in public and if they were lucky they wound up with subby husbands, since the stats are the other way around in men. By the time I was born it was generally understood that gender's not important unless you're specifically trying to have kids and role's the one with social import, although, like, testosterone - the hormone that causes among other things male puberty - is correlated with some things, so social scientists are still fairly interested in gender."

Nod. 

(When) (you) (explained) (role) (neither) (Brother) (nor) (I) (thought) (it) (was) (the) (same) (thing) (as) (gender) (although) (I) (suppose) (there) (are) (some) (who) (would) 

"Well, as long as nobody's going to tell me I can't do things because I'm female, I can adapt."

(That) (is) (unlikely) (to) (happen)

"Cool."

The Lan disciples seem reasonably fine just missing a night of sleep but Isabella is not expected to be up at five the next morning. 

A few days later, during language lessons, Sizhui idly asks her if she's given any thought to the ribbon thing.