"Yes."

One of the balls of light approaches Lintalai, hovering near her. The others remain near the angel.

"I'm from a planet with thirteen billion people on it and they don't have any magic or any way to get to planets far enough away that some of them might be okay to live on, so they can't have all the babies they want or they'd run out of room, and I want to bring lots of them here, and let them have babies in all the infinity of Arcadia, and I need magic to do that and also a way to make sure they can still use all the things they've learned about how to govern themselves instead of other people trying to do it for them."

The angel's hair moves unnaturally, then, flowing as though blown in an unseen wind that the rest of them cannot feel.

"We are not infinite in number. Thirteen billion is too many for us to protect. How many could live happily on Amenta, if some came to the good planes?"

"Not that many more than thirteen billion. That's why the population controls don't let them get too much bigger. Would you be able to protect more people if you didn't have to deliver messages? Amentans have technology that does messages."

"Yes. That would give us more time. With so many people, you might deserve the attention of a planetar."

The angel looks past Lintalai, and shouts, in a voice that carries with it the sound of bells loudly clanging. The words can be heard over the clanging, though, quite clearly: "There will be no messages now. I must return to the ranks of the angels and discuss my findings. Be well, petitioners."

Then, in a more ordinary voice, the angel speaks to Lintalai.

"What else would you ask of us, until you can bring us this technology? We would wish to visit your world and assist your people."

"Mostly since I don't have a soul and can't do magic right now I need people who can do magic to bring Amentans over, and a place to set up for Amentans to be in first thing till they can build more."

"We will provide you a war-gymnastics teacher so that you have some magic, despite your lack of soul."

"...war gymnastics is a kind of magic?"

"Yes. There are two ways mortals perform magic: war-gymnastics, performed with the body, and spellcasting, performed with the soul. Your body appears as like any other body to mine eyes. You will learn war-gymnastics, and through aligning your body with another plane, you will learn all of the magic you can. This will please you, because you are mortal, and mortals enjoy magic."

"I might be very bad at it because I am very clumsy."

"We will find you a type of war-gymnastics that does not require balance. Your cause is good, and if you need magic to ease your burden, we will assist you in that as well. We will find you spellcasters who may wish to serve this cause, and war-gymnastics teachers who wish to serve this cause, and we will tell the gods who may wish to help you that their help is needed."

"Hey, some of us have messages to hear!"

"The mortal child was speaking to me," intones the angel.

The petitioner shuts up and waits.

"Thank you!" says Lintalai. "I don't want to keep everyone waiting, if you were still going to do their messages..."

"You are the most important thing that any angel in Arcadia is working on. Please, ask whatever you need to assist with your people."

"I also need a way to make money so I can hire people. - and language tutoring would be good, and if there's a magical way to duplicate objects I could make more of my pocket everything. and get started on the message technology thing."

"-we cannot assist with money, for we find it difficult to understand and mortals have never asked that we adopt it. You should ask mortals for advice on money. Language tutoring is best done by another servant of good- perhaps a ki-rin, hollyphant, or unicorn. Objects can be created by some spellcasters as long as they do not contain any writing or other information."

"Oh. It contains a lot of information, that's how it works. I guess maybe I could figure out how to copy mine to a blank one but maybe not completely blank."

"We may not be able to duplicate them. However, perhaps there are other ways. We will ask spellcasters if they know of other tools. Thank you for speaking with us. My name is Mahli."

"My name is Lintalai! Thank you for helping me out, Mahli."

And with politeness out of the way, the angel can move on from Lintalai and rush through the remaining messages before delivering this much more important one.

Daernir does still talk to Mahli briefly, and eventually makes his way back to Lintalai.

"Wow. That was so cool."

"Yeah, that went really well! I'm glad I decided to meet an angel!"