"Agreed. I don't want to spend all of my time making magic lights. It's a thing I'm happy to do, but not to the exclusion of other things entirely. It's kind of boring."

"Exactly. So we want a planet that obviates the need for lots of tedious magic."

He snickers. "Yeah. If at all possible, anyway."

"Mars isn't terrible, really. But it could use more atmosphere and water."

"It's an option, too! But I don't know a spell that forms an atmosphere and creates water."

"Me either. Can you run water through a portal or will that wreck it? I can desalinate if I have to, we can just steal some of the Pacific Ocean, mwahahaha."

He laughs. "I can run water through a portal. I'm worried about screwing up an ecosystem with that method, though. We might find a water planet with a terrible atmosphere and no ecosystem that's a better option to steal water from."

"Yeah, that's fair. We'd have to steal really a lot of water from the Pacific to wreck anything, though, as long as we strained out the fish. Water levels have been rising lately because the ice caps keep melting."

"Oh, well in that case we might be all right. Though I'd prefer to talk to some people that specialize in the Pacific specifically and ask, 'Hey, if we steal a lot of water will it not screw up the ecosystem?'"

"That is reasonable."

"I try! On a practical note, ice is probably easier to find in the galaxy than water. If we have no other options, that's one, though transporting it might be a pain."

"Yeah, that's the problem is moving the stuff. With water you can gain energy from it, just put a water wheel attached to a battery or whatever under the receiving end's waterfall." She adjusts snuggle, humming with thoughtful contentment. "Mana doesn't go in batteries, right? I'd imagine you'd have mentioned."

"If you want to get technical it can, but it's so hilariously inefficient that no one does. It doesn't like to stay where it's put and sort of - leaks. And the mana that leaks is just gone, no going back to the person it came from or anything."

"And you can't put it into people, I imagine?"

"You can, but there are a few more problems with that besides just the leaking problem. It has some... effects? I'm going to go with effects. If it's a long term thing the person becomes sort of addicted to it and go into withdrawals when it's gone, or possibly worse and it just kills them. If you're wondering why I know this it's because a few centuries ago there were some horrific and unethical tests done."

"Oh dear. With a track record like that I'm almost reluctant to wonder aloud what would happen if you tried storing it in your own daemon."

"Hm," he says. Then he tilts his head. "That... Might work? Maybe? It has to go into something that's alive, which obviously she is. I don't know how she'd do with the vaguely addictive quality or whether it would even be worth it with the power loss. It might help that she's part of me, I'm not sure. I'm kind of curious about testing it, but I worry about some of the effects."

"The extent to which daemons are alive as opposed to, like, natural magical constructs of some kind, is actually kind of controversial. They don't eat, for instance, and aren't born, and spend years of their lives without fixed physical forms at all. But they count for most purposes."

"I'll have to look into it. Extremely carefully and with excessive amounts of caution, considering. She is my soul-in-animal-form, and all. It's a good idea, though."

"Yeah. Little tiny tests if there's ever a compelling reason to have some mana stored in her."

"With permission and lots of safety protocols too," Adarin adds with a smile. "I don't want to be mean to my magic talking bird, I like her."

"Yes, that too."

"It would be great. We'll work with what we've got, though, it just takes a bit more creativity and conservatism."

He snickers. "Yup, and we'll use it to fix the world."