"Axis, not Heaven or Earth. Axis is the Lawful Neutral Outer Plane. Uh, humans, magic items... deserts? Elves? Falafel?"

"It was a literary reference; is there an actual universe called Heaven? We have deserts and falafel but not elves as far as I know. Uh, pegasi, computers, universities, baseball? And what does it mean for a plane to be Lawful Neutral?"

"There's a Heaven - Lawful Good outer plane - and an Earth, that's one of the Elementals. We have pegasi and universities. Uh, everybody in the plane is - no, that's not true, some people in Axis aren't Lawful Neutral, but that's the way to bet. The natives all are, and the dead people, and most of the gods."

"We don't have gods, at least where anyone can see them. And our dead people don't, uh, do stuff. They're just dead."

"What, are they all getting eaten by daemons straight off - that's awful -"

"Nobody eats them, they just--stop existing. The bodies get buried, usually. It's really good that people in your world can keep living after they die; I wish we had that."

"How do you mean they just stop existing, what's happening to their souls - I could probably make a soul-trapping thing so somebody could take your soul somewhere appropriate to let it out before it dissolved or whatever, I never have and it'd be hard but I'm good at what I do -"

"I have no idea how souls work in my world, or if we even have them. If anyone has a way to detect them I don't know about it. You make magic items?"

"Yeah. Jewelry."

"That's interesting. I do too. How does it work in your world? I draw runes on paper and then say an incantation."

"Oh, I'm not a wizard, I just... make jewelry. Though I've worked with wizards now and again, and clerics."

"What's the difference between a wizard and a cleric and someone who makes magic jewelry? Or did you mean you make the jewelry and a wizard or a cleric does the magic part?"

"I've done it that way but now I can make the jewelry magic on my own as long as it doesn't require anything really spectacular. But I can't cast spells, I can just make jewelry."

"Huh. I can do it both ways, but with items you can make it do the same thing over and over instead of needing a new casting every time, so I pretty much only do items. It sounds like your world works on different rules."

"I think selling spells is much more lucrative than making items but more of a hassle to have to do your own sales and wizards don't typically like to do sales. What items do you do business in?"

"Things that make you invisible, lights, I have a healing item but selling healing has a lot of laws around it; my biggest seller is things that make members of other species look human so they can live in human society."

"- why is healing bogged down in legislation -"

"Because I'm a kid with no medical training and I can't prove my methods are safe because I haven't tested them and I can't test them because I can't prove they're safe."

And because if she wasn't a dragon they might well not be safe, to be fair, but she can't be fair because even if whoever abducted them probably knows about her business they might not know her species, and Ismat almost certainly doesn't.

"Medical training - are they not safe, compared to not being healed -"

"I've never had anyone end up worse off. But, uh, not a lot of people know magic healing, so I've only had a handful of volunteers who were willing to try something new."

"I guess it'd be hard to come by if you don't have gods. If the damn door would open I could get you some missionaries, fix that right up. - well, maybe after my brother in law checks that their souls wouldn't dissolve if something happened to them, that'd be a bit much to ask."

"What are your gods like, other than good at healing magic?"

"Depends on the god. In Osirion we mostly favor Abadar, god of trade, but now and then I'll say a word for Shelyn or Nethys, gods of beauty and magic respectively."

"Are those the only ones? What do they do, how do they interact with people?"

"No, no, there's dozens, but not all of 'em have active churches in the area and not all of those are relevant to me. Uh, they pick clerics, who can do magic, especially healing, and who carry out their will in the material plane. My husband's a cleric of Abadar, and his brother's Abadar's mortal aspect, pharaoh of Osirion; the church handles banking and insurance and regulatory compliance and pilgrimages to Axis and social services and such, so Merenre, my husband, does that, and my brother-in-law rules the country."