"Oooh. Not magic?"

"Not even a little bit magic!"

"Nice."

"Mhm. If you're really interested in this stuff you should probably ask Emily; most of what I know about it I absorbed from her."

- it occurs to me I have never introduced. I'm Kaede. He looks at Emily. Emily's your sister, I presume?

Yep.

"And my name's Edie."

It is a tremendous pleasure to meet the two of you, he sends, doing an exaggerated bow that's not exactly one Edie will recognize but similar enough that its meaning is clear.

"I mean, it's a bit late for that, considering that you already asked me out and we've been flirting since."

It's never late to show proper form and courtesy to people.

"We don't so much have bowing protocols for meeting new people here, I hope you shan't be too terribly offended if I don't reciprocate."

It's mostly a royalty thing where I'm from, anyway, he sends, straightening up.

"Royalty that bows or royalty that is bowed to?"

"The two things." Both?

"Both," she supplies.

"Both," he agrees. The higher up you are, the lower you bow, to indicate your rank does not make you better than other people. The rulers typically kneel.

"Huh. Not bad."

"Different here?"

"There's lots of different customs surrounding royalty depending on the surrounding culture but a lot of them really do not have the 'your rank does not make you better than other people' thing."

"Interesting. What do they have—" Instead?

"Instead," she supplies. "And, um, it varies. There have been a few claims that the royal family were all descended from a god, at least one claim that the King automatically was a god, several of 'appointed by divine right'..."

Darn his lack of fluency. Rulers back home are thought to be divinely appointed, but that's sort of part of the whole thing? That they're there to serve and protect and use their magic for the common good.

"Well, not so much these days, but historically 'yes, we are very much better than you' has been a ruler thing."

It technically is a thing back home, but not an overt thing? It's just, you know, the thing everyone believes, not the thing they actually profess.

"Yeah."