"You'd need to pick a trigger to have them glow," says Akien. "Unless you want them on all the time. And the brightness can vary depending on the conditions of the surroundings."

"Put them in a little glass case, physical location of a notch on a piece of wood on the bottom, reacts to position of the notch? I'll sketch it and make it in my workshop once we're well and truly clear of the storm and I set down for the night."

"I could probably do that," he says. "Without any horrific side effects, even."

"Later then. That will be fare to a trade hub and we can discuss anything else afterward. I can probably do without navigational assistance now, we're clear enough, just going to keep going to be safe. Keeping your wind effect up for another hour or so would be appreciated though..."

"An hour is probably stretching it – I can do a few more minutes fine at this rate, but if we want it done for longer I can't do it so strongly."

"The storm's reach is long and its grasp is subtle. I would prefer to keep flying away from it very fast as long as possible. Lower intensity over longer time works."

So he gradually reduces the intensity he's holding the wind away with.

"I should get started on the glowing things, then," he says. "Got any rocks, chunks of wood, things I can make glow?"

"I have something specific in mind, but I can't show you yet. Please just wait."

"– Sure."

"Go ahead and ask questions - local guide mode -if you want. I just can't leave the controls yet, see."

"So there are a bunch of floating islands, there are storms like that one, and there are floating ships like this." Pause. "Is there ground, somewhere?"

"Yes. I don't advise trying to find it. It's hot enough to boil water and melt lead down there. Not to mention the sulfur."

"… That sounds like quite a large problem. Not one I've encountered before."

"Are there… just a lot of volcanoes around, or…?"

"Pretty much yes, though we don't know the exact reasons since so much of the high technology people used to use dried up or broke or fell in the centuries since the Stargate closed."

"The Stargate being?"

"...The way back to Earth? If Earth even exists."

"We just appeared on an island. By way of being eaten by a Los. I don't think 'Stargate' being 'the way back to Earth' was obvious."

"It's a background fact of life here. I'll try to be more thorough in future explanations."

"– What's Earth?"

"Earth is... The planet humanity originated from. Do you know cosmology? I think you had electricity, but it's very hard to judge knowledge backgrounds like this. The highest population anywhere, the most advanced technologies. Habitable surface, seven continents, two thirds covered by ocean. And humans left in every direction from Earth heading to the stars, sending stargates ahead of them. The stargate is supposed to have connected two regions of space. Send things through instantly, instead of taking years or decades to cross the black sea of space. One of the stargates was here. And they mined this planet for stuff and explored the rest of the system. But then - and stories vary here - Earth shut it off, or it was sabotaged, or there was some kind of accident. And it stopped."

"… Okay that's a lot larger scale than I was expecting. I thought you meant, like, a huge air path that's hard to get through, not another planet. What sort of – we have lightbulbs, low quantity, and I think maybe a few  other things, nothing like that."

"Yeah, that's where the phrase 'lost technology' comes from. Nobody knows how to make stargates, or fusion engines, or proper computers, or photovoltaic cells, anymore. We can make lightbulbs but metal's rare and so we don't have good sources of electricity. Generators are kind of expensive."

She looks at Akien. "I think – we might be able to help with metal, depending on how rare it is?"

"It'll be slow, at first, but if it's worthwhile I could invest in producing metal more quickly? Requires – uh, rock, wood, natural materials, but I can convert them."