"The things we have in abundance are... Biomass in general. Wood, grass, food. Silica and glass. And hydrogen, and air, and water."

"I haven't tried doing things with hydrogen, or silica – at least not directly? – but I can do some fancy things with glass. Wood would be most useful, of those, for the metal transmutation."

"I'm looking forward to helping you experiment now. Depending on what kind of metal, it could be a real boon. My engines are made out of starglass, not steel, for example. That's, eh, a special glass which is much stronger than ordinary glass, which we know how to make but not the science behind it. Still worse than metal for many purposes, but more available."

"I need to know quite a lot about the properties of the metal, for starters, and – metals are far easier than other things, I actually have a set process to get metals, but it varies between them. Gold is not particularly easy, copper would I think be harder than iron but I've never tried copper in bulk, that sort of thing."

"Gold and silver would net you a lot of buying power until you saturate the market - which will happen pretty quick - but not a lot of practical use. Iron is probably the best thing to start on in bulk. Copper too. Electrical devices need it. There's some others, aluminum and titanium strike my mind. Maybe zinc or platinum. Anti-rust. But I've never made an extensive study of metals."

"I would need examples to work from for anything that's not iron or gold… But they should be fine to start, once I'm somewhere less – flammable."

"It involves fire? Or heat? My engine compartments are fireproofed, at least, but you won't find unflammable places common."

"It involves potentially sparks and also smoke if I screw it up a little, which isn't typically a problem since I do it in my workshop or in a clearing in the forest…"

"I have one hot-box in my workshop, is four by three by three feet enough space to do this in?"

"… 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."