"Yeahhhh no. Where would you even put them - anyway I'm reasonably certain you assume correctly."

"They'd have to float. Boats?"

Crow considers for a moment. 

"Maybe. There'd have to be a lot of emphasis on being - little and fragile in the face of the Infinite Sea - they wouldn't make it comfortable-feeling, for humans to be in a Vast domain - but I think you could plausibly have boats."

"We can't get everybody in the world on boats but it would give slightly more slosh around the edges of any plan involving storing people in your sea."

"I do reiterate that boats would still be a Feeding exercise and I'm competent to not let people drown even without them, but if it makes you feel better then sure."

"Are you competent to not let people sink and inhale water, or are you merely competent to not let them die of it, and do you have some explanation in mind for how boats would be 'a Feeding exercise' with more explanation less capital letters, with reference to how I was in the Sea and mildly disturbed for reasons not directly related to how big it is?"

"I am competent to not let people inhale water, or at least experience the negative effects of inhaling water, which - same difference? They'll sink if they would have sunk but it won't hurt them any, they'll just mysteriously be able to breathe just fine anyway."

"People on boats in the Sea would experience, approximately - the keenly felt sense that your boat is very very small and fragile compared to that on which it sails, and that though the Sea is being gentle your boat would absolutely not protect you if it stopped - not that it would actually stop, that's just part of the feeling - and generally the hard-to-ignore knowledge that the Sea is very very much bigger than you are and than anything you can build is."

"It would likely be - not exactly the same, but something very like a much-magnified version of what you felt visiting the Sea. Magnified because - if it were not people in boats could begin to think themselves meaningfully protected from the Sea due to boats, and this is - these words are not exact but the closest words I am finding are 'anathema to the Sea.'"

"...I am here mainly thinking about, like, little kids. Grownups already understand the world is ending and we don't have an option where all of us don't go through the world having been ending; whatever happens to them in the course of getting them somewhere to live is what it is. The thing I am trying to protect people from here is things like - if somebody can't tread water and hold their baby at the same time, you're not going to be able to do this transportation at any scale while processing everyone individually, let alone in a way that lets you tell strangers' babies apart, right? If they are on a boat they might be background aware that their boat could be smashed to smithereens and they could all drown! But they will not specifically drop their baby in the sea to get carried off by the currents, survive drowning, and wind up on the ground surrounded by spooked people who don't recognize it and have their own problems."

"Ah, I see, boats less as a futile attempt to make this comfortable and more to hopefully more solidly keep together kids and their grownups - this makes sense."

"And people together with their seeds and tools and clothes, if we can, or more will die when we get where we're going."

"...fair, even on hopeful plan 'here but after a bunch of nonsense' the nonsense will likely have thoroughly wrecked anything that wasn't put in a Domain, and while some things might want to be separate there's certainly a bunch of things that we'll want to have be with their people, that's well-thought-of. Do mind that stuff, like people, can be harmlessly sent places on its own, though - all else equal I'd probably use the Void or Sky rather than the Sea, for stuff without people with it, just to spare myself the exercise of needing to have not wrecked anything with saltwater."

"Makes sense. .......do you have anything remotely like a price sheet, how many people have how much of a bad time for how long for how much magic you do? Even by order of magnitude."

"Nnnnot really sorry no. Uh - if I do something big and flashy, or at the same level exhaust all my power flying at utter cheating top speed with a Hunt thing chasing me, I'm - alright Feeding deeply on one or two people in sequence, usually, and yes that can still include leaving them alive afterwards. If you want me doing more big flashy things right in a row... I'd guess more two-or-three than one-or-two at that same level of Feeding deeply, and mind that depending on what exactly you have me doing it is possible that I become physically exhausted at some point - actually now that I think about it that shouldn't really be a problem with this sort of thing, it's mostly a problem if the thing I've done is fly myself to the point of collapse because my body fails before my powers do and there's only so much that will consent to be cheated at, so that part had ought to be fine."

"We will also have the slight advantage that people who are in the Sea, even if they know intellectually they're long-term safe, are at least a minor source of Food, but I'm mostly counting on that to be, one, padding around all the questionmarks in this plan, and, two, a source of more certainty that I'll be able to do this sort of thing without nasty surprises at all."

"They're a source on net even though you have to bring them in and out by magic?"

"Unless they're really strangely unafraid, then yes, absolutely. Less so given knowing intellectually they'll be safe, but I still expect people extendedly in the Sea to come out firmly positive, and when I say extendedly I mean on the scale of, like, any more than a double handful of hours."

"Okay. So - possible mediations of the planet. Remove the points; add air and water. Both likely to cause natural disasters, we don't know how bad. Possible mediations of the population: stash them in the Sea and hope the natural disasters don't take that long to blow over, or send them to your planet to be not particularly welcome refugees. ...how hard is it to do all of these things at once? The Sea being a waypoint either way - if we gather people as best we can, stash them, remove the points and add back enough air and water, and wait for the very worst of the storms and quakes to die down, and start putting people back in the aftermath... do you think we can count on enough of your ongoing presence to keep the gates? They're so useful and will only get moreso if there's weather and quakes everywhere and people want to suddenly be on the other side of the world. But they do eventually expire and need to be chucked into points."

"Probably yes, and even if I'm going to leave I can certainly tie up loose ends first. And yeah, I think next steps are probably - make whatever preparations we're going to, gather your people, stash them in the Sea, and start doing things about the planet in the removing points and adding air and water kind of way - does that all sound about right?"

"But if it doesn't look like the weather and quaking will calm down soon enough," he says, "then they need to go to your world. Are there preparations to be made there? Should I be going there and introducing the idea?"

"I don't think there're really preparations to be made in my world, no - and certainly not that I think would probably be worth leaving, same thing I said earlier about being a little worried I'd manage to lose this place."

"I don't expect my spell to have that problem. It might have other problems just because it's a new spell, but if it works, it will work how I mean it to work."

"Ahhh, fair enough. Still, I can't really think of - useful preparations that don't at best amount to 'cause a bunch of problems sooner and hopefully more controlledly' and I don't want to do anything of that shape because we're still hopefully on plan 'make this place be a place again instead of causing a bunch of noticeable problems in my world at all.'"

"So if we're to be refugees we'll be surprise ones! Grand. Okay. People with small children on boats, everyone else told to gather up - we won't be able to convince everyone, people will believe all kinds of nonsense, I expect to be accused of rounding villages up to sacrifice to disappearance points thirty times, but - everyone who we can get word to, who'll come, in the vicinities of Gatesnest so you can reach everybody by gate in quick succession, and stashed, and then you do planetary engineering, and we find you a few volunteers to - nonlethally drown? Float for a really long time? In recompense for your services."

"Mind that I can be places through the Sea, if you tell me what places to be, even if there aren't gates, and I can bring you with me if that'd be useful."

"Also you should, uh, probably find who the volunteers are going to be before I do the planetary engineering, so you have them ready."

"And any important nouns or pets or so on can and should also be either rounded up and stashed individually or put on boats, whatever makes most sense."

"...nouns?"

"...sorry, I talk in a way sometimes, blame my family. Things, important tools or objects people care specifically about or whatever."