"She's mostly seemed to be too busy to chat about mindsets, so I don't know how much of it came across in what words we did exchange."

"Well, you're right that she's busy. I'm not sure she's slept in the time I've known her. People'd die, y'see, and she hates that. Seems like a place where you have some common ground."

"We have a lot of common ground with anyone who hates that people die."

"Yeah, I'm getting that sense." She nods thoughtfully. "What'd you mean about 'issues with religions'?"

"Do you know what a religion is?" Nelen asks.

"...let's say that I don't."

"So, basically everyone has a culture, but sometimes an aspect of a culture includes kind of - extra stuff? Usually in humans it's about beliefs about supernatural entities of some kind, gods or spirits or something, my species is different there but you seem like humans - and about what those entities want them to do. And sometimes they have decided that these entities, who may or may not really exist in the first place, don't want people to use magic, or don't want to eat food that wasn't grown and processed according to specific rules, or don't want anyone who isn't following all their instructions to exist at all, and we run into issues like that now and then."

"Huh. All sounds a bit abstract," she says, with a thoughtful frown.

"I think so too, my species doesn't have this tendency very much - though it does have some things that are more like that than like anything else, sociologically speaking."

"What I remember about gods isn't much but it... didn't feel abstract like that. I think. Not sure."

"Well, maybe yours existed, sometimes they do."

She shrugs. "Hard to say. Anyway. Take care."

And she's off. The people of the village leave them alone for a bit.

Cassiel is tempted to try throwing surplus fluff into the nothingness but doesn't do it without heroic permission.

The kid from earlier drops by with the cook's promised delivery of a few portions of meat stew. It's hearty but plain, if anyone tries it. The kid scampers off in short order either way.

And then the Hero comes back again, wearing her white-haired face. She looks... frazzled. Discomfited. Out of sorts.

"Hey. How are you all holding up?"

"- fine?" says Nelen, swallowing a mouthful of stew. "Are you all right?"

"It's pretty weird out there. I'll be fine," she says. "Just—I dunno."

She glances around the house in search of somewhere to sit, then shakes her head irritably at herself and stays standing. "...out on the path sometimes I find... people, or something like people," she says. "And I always try to make peace and they always try to kill me. It gets to be a bit much sometimes. Anyway, where are we at on maybe someday figuring out how to see if there's any planets still standing?"

"Nobody's come to get us yet, or managed to send any messages," says Nelen. "Do... the people say anything?"

"Sometimes, yeah. One time a harpy told me she wanted to feed me to her young. I'm not sure her young were even real. She said saving the world is stupid and I'd be more use if she ate me."

And yet somehow the Hero seems more comfortable relating this macabre anecdote than she was when she walked in.

"...wow."

"I was wondering," says Cassiel, "if it's a bad idea to throw stuff out over - there -" She points. "This isn't like anything we've ever seen before but there's a planet with magic that disappears stuff, and it slows down on that if you feed it."

"...can't think why it'd be a bad idea, if it's stuff you won't miss," she says. "I'm sort of curious if anything interesting'll happen if you try it."

Cassiel turns a bit of cloudfluff into something conveniently throwable and hucks it into the dark.

The dark swallows it without a ripple. The Hero blinks after it.

"So much for 'anything interesting'. Anyway, so you're holding out hope for your people to come fix you up, and they haven't yet, is that about the size of it?"

"Pretty much," says Nelen. "Natsuko and I are the only ones who can teleport and she has the mana limitation. All of us except Zanro can be resurrected even if totally annihilated, though. - I guess we can't be sure about Cassiel."

"I have an immaterial soul," Zanro explains.

"I'm indestructible so there's no prior art," Cassiel adds.

"Well, I'd like it if you tried to figure something out for finding more planets, but I can't force you if you don't feel like it. Even a long shot could be worth a lot, though, if no one's coming. And in my experience, waiting for rescue is a pretty doomed endeavour."

She looks around the house again. "People keep telling me there's delicious candy. Still got any?"

Zanro grabs her a bagful.

"I'm thinking about the problem but it turns out it's really bad for my concentration if any time I remember I'm supposed to have an object I have to stop and touch it," says Natsuko. "Even if Boots were here - she's one of the most accomplished research wizards in the multiverse - they say it takes her about a week to invent a new spell and that's if she has something good to build off of in prior art."