"Time will tell." Sigh.

Evara returns.

"I don't suppose you have any books? On local culture, I mean."

"Not on local culture specifically. I've got books, but I'm no anthropologist or librarian or anything."

"What sorts of stuff do you have? If you don't mind me asking."

"Hm. Farming techniques, navigational books. An encyclopedia of critters. One on commodity prices. Construction and engineering. Various stuff like that, nonfiction. A few novels."

"The construction and engineering stuff could be interesting – you're probably more advanced than we are, at least without magic, since you have these airships?"

"Oh, mine's unique, I'm a genius, built it myself." He doesn't even look like he's joking. "There are others. Maybe we are. Or possibly we just specialize differently. Different environments make different technologies useful."

"Our constructions are – well, mainly large walls and small buildings within these, nowadays. There are some older areas with larger ones…"

"Some of the older cities, rather far from where Evara's from, have large universities? Lots of books, lots of space, rather high-status but not much is done with it."

"A decline, eh? I'm sad to say that's the case with Cloudbank, too. Maybe creating metal will slow it down."

"The magical creatures were, apparently, less of a problem in our history."

"So it's the critters' fault?"

"They have quite a lot of impact on trade and exploration, and people seem mostly content to just… sit inside the walls that were built to protect them."

"There's nothing wrong with safety. I suppose the knock-on effect of impairing trade is pretty bad in the long run. Are there flying magic evil creatures?"

"Yes, but less of a problem and the walls can keep a lot of them out anyway."

"I was wondering if airships would be viable, or easy targets, mostly."

"It seems like you can go quite high up, and you'd be pretty safe up there, but if you tried landing at night I expect you'd have trouble."

"I don't know what the pressure ceiling on your planet would be, but I can definitely imagine going several miles up. Landings are easier during the day, but overnight stays would be needed, and there would need to be docks built, and supplies for the ships. I doubt you have float-grass drifts that I can just cast out a net and get more hydrogen from, like here. It's native."

"Yeah, it would definitely take a lot of doing to get airships going back there."

"There's no guarantee there's a way back, anyway."

"It can still be interesting to speculate on things that are unlikely or will never be, though."

"Taking your world's knowledge of technology and our world's… I mean, fact it has a ground you can dig into, seems like we'd both be better off, yeah. Shame about the various creatures."

"Like I said, I don't necessarily know that we can actually build a lot of stuff I've heard of. Lightbulbs are pretty far up there as far as tech level goes."

Shrug. "If anything it might be inspiration for people working on this sort of thing."

"Lightbulbs have been around for a while for us – perhaps been around again, I'm not quite sure if they existed at some point in the past – but things are mostly stalled except in a few small locations."