"What kind? Well, I suppose a lot of places have some kind of independence day, and there are some that have to do with annual cycles. Then there's Sealing Day and the anniversary of the death of Liru-a's first emperor and the Day of Revolution which has nothing to do with anyone's independence day, all happening within a few days of each other, so people tend to treat the whole week as one long holiday. And in some places full moons are always holidays, sometimes only for a subset of people. And then there's Sacrifice Day, which is more fun than it sounds."

"What's fun about Sacrifice Day? And what's Sealing Day?"

"Sealing Day is the anniversary of the defeat of a species that used to live on our planet that was wholly and inherently evil. Sacrifice Day is - originally, the idea was that the gods gave us a lot of blessings so we should be moved and pay them back out of gratitude. These days, it's broader, you don't only make offerings to the gods - you don't even mostly make offerings to them - you mostly give to your friends or the poor or both, and get together with your family for a big meal together where you list things that have made you feel grateful or made you feel inclined to help others."

"- how did it happen that there was a species that was wholly and inherently evil?"

"I expect the gods probably made them that way, but I'm not sure I know what you're asking."

"My planet doesn't have gods, so I don't know how they work. If gods made them that way I guess my question is why the gods decided to do that."

"I have that question about almost everything the gods decided, and answering it about any given thing doesn't suggest an answer for anything else. That feels - related to why educated people tend not to believe the gods are ongoingly active, honestly, but there's no better answer for where all this came from in the first place."

"- my world has people on it and no gods, but it also doesn't have magic, so I don't know."

"How did you figure out that it has no gods?"

"I guess we didn't? It's sort of like asking how we figured out that it didn't have any other sapient species. We didn't think there were supposed to be any and none ever presented themselves."

"Huh. Well, how do you think your world started to exist?"

Nelen can attempt to give her the layperson's understanding of the laws of physics and evolution if that is what he wants.

"...Hm. Well, I don't have any reason to think that isn't true here but I wouldn't really expect I'd know."

"That's fair. Magic would be hard to explain but if it's all about herbs and it just does things like sleep and numbing maybe it's just drugs, I don't know."

"You mean because the herbs might contain some substance within them that causes sleep? They do, a bit, if you just eat them, but I don't know of any that move your soul into a jar if you just eat them. There are substances that kill you, but that's very different."

"- move your soul into a jar?"

"It's not uncomfortable, at least from what people who've experienced it have said. It's like being asleep."

"How is it different from being asleep?"

"When you sleep, your heart beats, you breathe, and if someone shakes you you'll probably wake up. And when you sleep, if your heart stops beating, you'll probably return in a new body as an infant and not remember anything unless you do a lot of work to recover your memories. When your soul is placed in a jar, your body dies, and you can be put in a new one without properly going through death and rebirth, so you have more continuity."

"- where do the new ones come from?"

"Uh, a normal way for rich old people to source new bodies is to round up half a dozen beautiful, healthy people aged fifteen through twenty or so, and pay them all a year's wages to enter a lottery, and put the winner of the lottery in a jar for a while in case better options come up. In some jurisdictions, condemned criminals' bodies are made available, but that's not allowed here out of concern for the incentives it creates. Or do you mean where do human bodies come from in full generality?"

"I meant the first thing. Wow."

"Do people where you're from just vanish forever?"

"Yes."

"Like mermaids. I'm sorry."