"Not even any animal species?"

"Oh, some of those, but sapients no."

"By the way, how did species appear here?"

"Why, where'd they come from in Galatea?"

"No clue, religions say the gods put us there but as an atheist I'm pretty sure they didn't."

"Well, I wasn't around at the time."

"I wouldn't suppose so. Are there no theories, beyond the creation myths?"

"There's evolutionary theory, it's pretty tidy."

"What's that?"

"It's sorta complicated if you haven't heard of it before, a book would do a better job."

"Guess I'll look it up, then."

"Try Speciation And Nichefinding."

"I will!" he says, grinning. "Other than that, how do you feel about another evening of me looking at your magic?"

"What're you gonna want to see?"

"At this point I'd mainly just want to do that thing I analogised to figuring out what other axes of rotation there might be."

"But this has me doing what?"

"Nothing in particular. Perhaps flexing one or two spells but I don't think there'll be much gain from that."

"You are welcome to hang out and gaze at me."

"Thank you very much," he laughs, and does so.

Kaylo reads, and writes things, and at one point casts a draft analysis and stares right back and then uncasts it and mutters to himself and goes back to the drawing board.

"You're awfully cute when you're frustrated. Something up with the analysis?" he asks.

"Didn't show me anything, even a glimmer I could use for a new draft."

"Do you have any idea why?"

"Probably underspecified what I wanted or just guessed completely wrong about where it might be."

"I could telepathically bounce what it looks like to me?"