"… I'm actually not sure what a hot-box is like, but I need to be able to see the materials while I'm doing it. Preferably also draw a diagram – I have some chalk."

"Well, I'll show you in an hour or so. You two can go to the kitchen and eat if you want - as long as you don't take too much of my cheese. And no fire." He pauses to write something in the navigation charts and adjust a lever. "Second door on the left. I'd appreciate it if you fetched a chunk of bread for me as a snack."

"Back in a sec," says Akien.

"Thanks," says Ev, and then she follows Akien.

She is back shortly, not Akien, with bread and some other things. "Wasn't sure what you'd want."

"Ah, thanks. Since we seem to be done talking shop for now - what's this about a Los, anyway?"

"I actually don't know much about them? All I know is that there was – a shiny blurry creature thing, attacked me after Akien disappeared and then I found myself on that island."

"Your world sounds like it has its own problems. Hmm. We've very much adapted to life in the sky - I bet the same goes for your Specks and Los and so on, yes? Your society knows how to work around them?"

"Uh – Flecks, but yeah, for the most part it's to stay inside town borders especially when it's dark or foggy, or be prepared slash with a trained sorcerer if you go out."

"I don't know how much of this world's common sense I can verbalize... Always be careful with fire. Watch the wind. Don't throw things overboard, recycle as much as possible. Watch your altitude. Islands avoid colliding with each other, somehow, so if you're on one don't worry about getting hit by things unless there's a storm or a ship coming along. Watch out for bladesquid - they like attacking large sections of green stuff because their favorite prey is basically a big green blob. Most critters are deathly afraid of smoke and fire."

"Fortunately… ish… I can actually create and control fire, in some quantity, so that could be useful. I take it you don't have much in the way of small-ish, typically hard to recognize or magical in some way, creatures that vary in danger from approximately 'sting you if you touch them' to 'will trade your soul for great power' to 'will literally snap you in half because you got in their way'?"

"No. The most 'magical' creature with regards to unusual capabilities are probably fireflowers, but we know how they can explode and survive the experience."

"Huh. Okay, well, if you see anything out of the corner of your eye and it looks blurry when you stare at it, call one of us? Or if you see coins on a desk and you didn't expect them to be there. Or if there are large lurking creatures – hazy, made of shadows, whatever."

"Pretending to be coins, really? I'll keep it in mind."

"They – if you're not looking particularly closely – appear to be small, round and shiny. But basically, the guidance is: if there is anything out of the ordinary, try to stay away from it until you're backed up by some other people or preferably someone who is experienced at dealing with it, i.e. a sorcerer or a town guard."

"My intuition is that your monsters wouldn't have followed you, but intuition is very much not fact. I'll keep it in mind.

"My hope is that they didn't follow, but that Los has been going around and apparently teleporting people to other dimensions, and it ate us at separate times and put us to the same place, so."

"...Great. Okay. I haven't decided if you're both making this all up yet but am leaning towards 'why would you go through all the effort, probably no'. Anyway, yes, I'll watch out for strange things."

"… I would offer to show something but the main thing I can do on such short notice is fire, so, like, no. And it's not like a good luck charm has many visible effects."

"The wind is proof enough for now. It could be some artifact of technology, but if you can also produce light objects and metal... It'd be awfully flexible for a piece of lost technology."

"Perhaps we stumbled onto a motherlode and just happened to find ourselves alone on that island at an inconvenient time."

"Found a cache of tech here in the central bands, somehow lost your ship through hilarious misfortune, decided to lie about it all for some reason? Eh. I've heard stories with farther-fetched plans that worked out. They're terribly unrealistic stories."

"I mean, it sounds like it's probably… more probable than a world with weird creatures and magic? From your standpoint?" She shrugs.

"Who knows what's possible. Maybe Earth has magic and we all forgot. Can't rule it out. Wait and see."

Smile. "I'll be back in a minute – didn't actually eat anything."

Scribble scribble in the navigation charts.

Interesting day. Does it really matter if they're from another world or pretending? (Does one or the other make them more likely to double-cross him? Pretending probably does.)

Hm.