Here is a fairy. A surprised fairy. He's rather tall, and his wings are startlingly white.

No binding on a random summon. That would be terribly negligent back home, but the language he just received does not seem like an Earthly language. Whatever's going on, playing along is a suitable initial response.

"Oh little ones, didn't anyone warn you that fairies aren't all kind and nice?"

The children stare with wide eyes at the fairy.

And then, all at once, they bolt.

"This is your fault!" screeches one of the children to the no-longer-the-best-god girl.

"Raezenoth!" screeches another, more thoughtful child.

"Neither are all gods," says a voice echoing from the desert around them, in every language that Nick speaks. "Hello. I am Raezenoth."

"I'm not going to hurt you," he had started to stay, but chokes off somewhere around 'to'. "Hello, Raezenoth, I am Nick. And confused."

"That," says the presumed god, "makes two of us. Welcome to my domain. You were... summoned, by the circle?"

"Yyyes. I would urgently advise against attempting a repeat performance." And he shuts himself up before talking about bindings and demons because what is going on. "Domain?"

"I will see that a repeat performance is avoided. I am a god. My domain is the desert around you. It is, in many ways, me, and I have control over it as you have control over your own body. Will anything happen if I erase the circle?"

"No, that won't affect it. Gods. Huh. I don't find that as far-fetched as I thought I would but, well, it still seems pretty implausible." He looks at the mess of toys and neatens them up a bit, then flies out of this - house. "The voice thing is helping."

The circle dutifully erases itself from the smooth stone floor. Or, to be more precise, a bit of the floor is blown away by wind that comes from nowhere and then replaced with identical stone floor.

"It is one of the easiest demonstrations of divinity. I can provide others if you would like."

A fairy and a demon could have done that. But he never really doubted it in the first place. "No, no, I believe you. Do you happen to know which one of those children finished the circle? They're the one who can send me home. I don't want to go before I'm ready, nor do I wish to be stuck."

"I will ask." Pause. "I know which, and he's agreed to help send you home when you wish to leave. How might he do that?"

"Children can be, ah, unpredictable. Is it your judgment that he won't send me away by accident or spite?"

"I do not necessarily need to tell him how to send you home until you are ready to go, provided your presence here doesn't affect his in some manner." Pause. "Does it?"

"No, no effect at all from keeping me here. He would send me away by focusing very hard on wanting me away for a solid minute."

"I see. Thank you." There is another pause, presumably filled with Raezenoth doing something else. Or maybe he's pausing to be polite. It's hard to tell. "What are you planning to do while present?"

"Explore, probably. I like new places. Do you need anything moved? Fairies move things."

"That depends entirely on whether or not you can move my neighbor. Can you move entire domains?"

"I have a limit, and while it's pretty big I think entire domains at once might be outside it."

"Pity. Then no, I don't require anything moved. I presume you are flying by whatever mechanism you use to move things?"

"And if you wanted me to go mess with your enemies I would have wanted a good reason and some pay. Yes, that's how we fly. The wings are just decorative."

"Reasonable. Do all fairies fly, then?"

Is that approval? It sounds faintly like approval, but it's hard to tell with omni-present-panlingual godvoice.

"Yes, we all fly. Everyone being indestructible and immensely telekinetic makes fairyland a bit chaotic, but it's better than the other way around. Do gods have temples? I think I want to see a real temple."

"We do. Of the ones closest to you, my favorite is the one to your north east. You are indestructible?"

"Yep. It's quite convenient. That's not invulnerable, mind you, so please don't test it." He ascends and has a good look at the terrain.

The terrain is pretty obviously desert, but a very varied and interesting desert. There are interesting rock formations over there, and a cute little town from where Nick came from, set into a sandstone hill, and winding roads that go to the north and to the west.

"I was not planning to unless you gave me sufficient reason."

"Desert comes in interesting. Very nice. The indestructibility is why I strongly recommend against more random summoning until I decide whether to teach someone how to do it properly. It can be very hard to get rid of a troublesome fairy."

"Thank you. Yes, it sounds difficult. Thank you, for not being troublesome."

"I imagine troublesome people find being troublesome amusing, or something, but I don't." He flies off to the northwest at a fairly sedate speed, swooping down to investigate the interesting rock formations along the way.

They are interesting! Some of them are shaped in ways that don't make sense from ordinary rock cycles.

If Nick is paying enough attention, he can even spot a subtle cave entrance, in one of the bigger and more impressive rock formations.

"That is clear." Pause. "It is in my power to grant blessings to non-divine beings. Would you like one?"

He does notice the cave. He stops and peers in curiously. "I'd be happy to accept if, as I assume, the blessings don't come with obligations."

"It is possible that other gods might take offense to you if you had my blessing upon you. My ocean neighbor, Varkalosix, is most likely, but is not the only possible candidate. But there are no obligations."

The inside of the cave is surprisingly green. Interesting moss clings to the wall and ceiling, and there's a pool of clear water further in. The cave goes on further, but to know what else is in it, Nick would have to explore it.

Since it doesn't seem claimed except presumably by Raezenoth, he has a drink of water and explores a bit. "I'll shut up and say thanks, then. What blessings are there?"

The water is cool and refreshing.

"The blessings that I grant are improved endurance, reflexes, flexibility, resistance to dehydration, advantageous winds, and a resistance to the effects of desert elements, such as sunstroke and windburn. You may choose whichever one you would like."

Further in, there is a cavern to the side that's small and sort of room-like, and lit by a small hole that pokes up through a spot in the ceiling. It looks like it's probably a good place to sleep, if someone particularly wanted to sleep in a cave. It even looks like someone's done it before; there's long-cold remains of a campfire by the light hole, presumably to ventilate the smoke.

The cave goes on further, but without a light, Nick will have a bit of trouble navigating.

"Hm. Reflexes, I think." He has a flashlight in one of his coat's many pockets. He turns it on to keep exploring.

It doesn't feel like anything at all, but Raezenoth reports, "Granted."

If he figures out a way to check, he'll notice his reflexes have improved.

The cave system is on a slight decline from the entrance, and splits off into a maze of caverns. After a bit of exploring, though, a logic becomes apparent to them - parts of the cave that go further in go down, and parts of the cave leading to the entrance go up. A person can navigate their way out by following the incline, but actually learning all of the ins and outs of the cave system looks like it would be a lot of work.

(It'd be very easy for someone to hide in here and not be found, but still be able to find their way out.)

He does notice the improved reaction time when he's flying around. He realizes the implications of the cave's design eventually. "This place is clever." But it's not interesting enough to explore every nook and cranny. He flies back out and resumes northeasterly progress after about ten minutes of flitting around.

"Thank you."

The desert continues to be interesting. There is a cleft over there, and little stubborn looking bushes in that direction, and over there is a large impressive overhang, and that over there looks like a small mountain, and on top of it is a building that looks kind of temply.

Aha, the temple. Probably. He flies to it and in, looking around.

It's well kept, but looks a bit deserted. Maybe people don't like to deal with the stairs. It does look like there's a lot of them, to get up here.

The ceiling is made out of roughly hewn, crystal-clear quartz that catches the sunlight and sends it in abstract patterns across the pale blue floor. On the near-white sandstone walls are carvings that look like they depict events, and in the center is an altar of some kind, with various ordinary-looking objects sitting atop it. There's writing on the altar, if Nick cares to read it.

Right, going places is difficult for humans. He does go up to the altar to read it.

Dedicated to Raezenoth, breaker of chains, god of freedom and the desert winds.

Thank you for the chance to take our lives into our own hands, reads the altar. Followed by a list of names, presumably the builders.

"I really like your domain, Raezenoth. It's difficult in some places, but fair. Offerings, eh? I may as well, but what to give..."

"Thank you. Leaving an offering is encouraged but not required, and I care little for material value. Whatever you think is appropriate will be fine."

"I know a particular piece of art I think you'd appreciate, but it's stored in a rather expensive machine. Hm." He sets his flashlight down on the altar, scrawls instructions on how to use and recharge it (heat one end, or turn a little crank, or sunlight, it's very fancy and durable), and appends the note with A good tool, well taken care of. Please keep taking care of it.

And then he goes to investigate the wall-carvings.

The flashlight disappears shortly after being put on the altar. (A god is curiously investigating it.)

"Thank you. I will."

The wall carvings depict some events! The set of carvings in front of Nick is of some chained people breaking their chains and running off into a desert. They built themselves a life, until it looks like slave hunters showed up to take them back. Except, they were stopped by what can be presumed to be Raezenoth, who is depicted as lovingly carved swirls of wind, blowing the slave hunters away. The formerly-chained-people are happy, and go back to living their lives.

Another set is of a person who appears to have lost everything. He comes to Raezenoth's domain, and finds things to use to build what he wants to build, and he builds it, and is happy. Another person shows up, petitioning the sky to build their house for them, and the wind depiction of Raezenoth blows the person out of the domain.

There seems to be a theme, here.

The theme is 'I'll give you opportunities, but do the actual work yourself'. Nick approves. Freeloaders are annoying at best.

...He is suddenly curious whether this world is a planet or not. He might as well save himself the finicky bringing-air-along maneuver of going to space, if he can. "Say, Rae, is this world a planet?"

"Yes."

Curiosity resolved. He goes back to touring the carvings, even if they all have similar themes the individual stories are interesting.

"If you have questions about the flashlight feel free to ask, by the way."

"It seems straightforward," says Raezenoth. "I haven't had any trouble with it."

The carvings continue with the theme. Slavery is bad, and Raezenoth is fair, and everyone is welcome if they want to enter Raezenoth's domain. ... Except slavers. They can get a stylized lightning bolt in three separate carvings.

"I expected questions along the lines of how to make it."

"What happens to suitably repentant former slavers? If there even are any."

"My acolyte is currently busy, but promises that she'll take it apart and try to figure out how it works later. She might have questions for you, but at the moment, I do not," says the god.

"They are welcome if they are actually repentant, though I think I would hint at them to live somewhere away from former slaves to prevent unwanted tensions."

"Reasonable. You should warn her not to try to open the battery - it's labelled with a lightning bolt. What's an acolyte? Is it like blessings?" He's out of wall-carvings to investigate. Back outside to the pretty desert mountain.

"I will warn her. An acolyte is a person trusted and chosen by a god, to be some combination of their ally, confidant, missionary, defender, advisor, and speaker, and is granted the god's divine power. I grant flight."

"...I think I want to explain summoning to you. Though you will not like some aspects, I think, the first thing to know is that answering a summon is always a voluntary action."

"Good. Though I suppose you cannot discern the location you are summoned to?"

"No. And furthermore, it is traditional to summon daeva with bindings to prevent troublesome ones from causing mayhem. I was summoned without bindings in this case. The bindings prevent us from doing certain things, but cannot compel action. They range from a relatively lax 'do not deliberately or negligently cause harm to any person or any person's property' to 'do nothing except agree or disagree with the deal I will propose'."

"..... I see."

Raezenoth: does not sound pleased with this development.

"I have not made a serious study of bindings, but I stress that a malicious unbound daeva is extremely dangerous and the bindings are very necessary. And answering a summons is voluntary. Every time I do it I expect to be under bindings."

"I understand the necessity for safety, and agree that a malicious unbound daeva is extremely dangerous." Pause. "I think a suitable compromise is to summon a daeva safely in a binding that will not impede their ability to talk in any way, discuss with them what bindings they are willing to be under, and then dismiss and resummon them with the appropriate bindings if they are acceptable to both parties."

"...That's one way to do it, I suppose. The point of summoning is trade. Summoners and daeva work out a deal, daeva's services for various objects usually, and once it's been agreed to the bindings gain exceptions to help fill the deal. Daeva can't be un-summoned if only one part of the deal is done."

"Loopholes are dangerous. Vague terminology is dangerous. Saying 'yeah' or 'sure' casually is dangerous, since a malicious daeva can interpret it as acceptance of a deal."

"I understand. It should be taken very seriously. What sorts of things do daeva prefer to be paid with?"

"Fairies will accept most things considered valuable to humans, with the exception of, for example, vehicles. The other kinds are less easily payable, their abilities render material goods a bit moot, but art, stories, and other media can work. The other kinds are also even more dangerous than fairies, though."

"What is the type of danger they present?"

"Risabra change things, which can include changing peoples' bodies to air. Ciavri make things, including explosives, poison, large amounts of lava..."

Pause.

"That does sound dangerous."

"Yes. It's why I didn't want to tell you at first, and why I'm emphasizing bindings so much. But trade..." He takes a deep breath. "Trade is the beating heart of civilization! Done properly and not exploitatively, trade massively benefits both involved parties. And new trading partners in daeva will help people here, if you're sufficiently careful about it."

"You feel very strongly about this," observes Rae, sounding amused. "Would you like to stay and help facilitate trade with daeva?"

"I think so. Though I should probably go home and buy a bunch of books on various useful subjects off someone if I'm going to be here a while."

"I can help facilitate this. What needs to be done to resummon you?"

"I'll write out a circle- A safe circle, one designed to get only me. No bindings." He opens his pockets to get a piece of paper and starts drawing.

"That is agreeable to me, if you don't mind me or my acolyte summoning you."

"A summons involving a god might behave oddly. Better not risk it. I'll need a few hours to get everything I want from the other side first, too."

"Very well. Would four hours do?"

"Yes, four hours would be fine."

"Okay. Tell me when you'd like to leave."

"May as well be now," he says, as he finishes the writing around his circle. "Remember to do all the writing before finishing the circle. And not to summon anyone else until I can go through a good book on bindings."

"Yes. I'll let the child know that you'd like to be dismissed."

That happens! Nick has about a minute before he returns to whatever place he was summoned from.

He patiently waits out the minute scanning interesting desert landscape from high above.

And he calls in favors and downloads a lot of books and even acquires an honest-to-Raezenoth printer.

In four hours, he gets a summon.

Which he takes, of course.

"Hi!" says the woman who summoned him, brightly. "Welcome back, I'm Rae's acolyte, nice to meet you."

"Hello, and likewise." He takes a curious look around at this new person and location, then floats out of the circle. "I'm Nick, if you hadn't heard."

Their surroundings seem to be a cave of some kind, and the person seems to be a twenty-something woman in practical put nice looking clothing, well-worn shoes, and a vial of sand around her neck.

"Idania. So! I hear you have books?" She looks at him, and his visible lack-of-books, and raises an eyebrow.

Out comes a tablet computer - a flat metal square with a lighted screen on one side, he floats forward a bit to hand it off. It is displaying something in a foreign language. "Getting it to translate them takes some time, alas. I could try and figure out what books would be most useful while it's working, unless you can think of something more fun to do."

Idania inspects the tablet with fascination, then looks at Nick and grins.

"Probably! But - how does this work, am I correct in assuming that it contains all of the books ever...?"

"Not all the books ever. A lot, certainly, but according to some estimates there are over ten billion books in existence in my world. The library I put on this has a few million."

"You know what, I'm feeling generous, just a few million can count as all of the books ever for our purposes," says Idania lightly. "So how does it work - it seems kind of like magic, but I bet it has something to do with the light and how the light's changing, does it keep a, a tiny library of some kind inside that it displays? How does it make light? Is its mechanism for making light infinite, does it need to be wound or fed with coal or something?"

"Now that is a couple weeks' worth of explanation. Hmm, short version... It's not magic, it does have a tiny library, which can hold words and pictures and instructions for how to display things or whatever else just as easily. It knows what to display because of a thing called a processor, which is basically reading instructions someone wrote, called programming, that would take up several shelves of a library by themselves, and doing ridiculous amounts of math very very quickly to carry them out. It makes light with tiny machines that use tiny amounts of tame lightning, electricity, pulled from a battery. Same mechanism as the flashlight, just smaller. It does need to be charged up again sooner or later, but I brought a generator which catches motion and turns it into the same tame-lightning."

"That sounds really, really complicated, and I want to know all of it yesterday."

"Computer engineering and programming books are first on the list, then. It'll speed up the translation if I load up the right program and repeat everything we say in a couple other languages, do you mind? I can try to explain things while it works."

"No, go ahead. How many languages do you speak - how do you speak this language, Rae can't have taught you all of it and he didn't mention you having language powers - let me know if I ask too many questions, I can stop if they're annoying and just hover over your book-thing for months instead."

"Daeva learn their summoners' languages, presumably to help with negotiation. Let me count, I've been doing this for a while......... About 300 if you count different dialects, more like 100 if you don't. I know what it feels like to meet new tech, ask away."

He tap-tap-taps on the tablet to bring up a screen with a bunch of little pictures, then a slightly less book-like thing that has written down their conversation so far on one side. Nick touches the first sentence and starts jabbering away in what doesn't seem like just one other language. The other side accumulates words, color-coded to link up to the ones on the left.

"Okay so you said it was powered by 'catching motion,' what motion is caught, is it built specifically for your awesome magic powers?"

"Magnetism does more than just lodestones. There's proper books to explain it properly but the short version is when a magnet is pushed around in the right way, it pushes on electrons without needing to actually touch them, and gets pushed back as expected. I'm not explaining this very well, am I? Well, it's complicated. Lightning and electricity are just different kinds of moving electrons. The traditional generator is a spinning thing inside a long coil of metal wire. It doesn't actually matter where the spinning comes from - you can boil water and have the steam spin the thing instead, if you're not a fairy. I'm not sure if humans or fairies invented it first, but I'd bet on it being humans."

"What are electrons, do they have characteristics besides being pushed by things? Are they just in lightning and electricity, or are they in more things?"

"Hm, this involves chemistry and I never was very good at chemistry. Thinking..." He investigates the language, does this language have a word for 'atoms'? Or at least some of the elements?

It has names for a lot of the elements, or to be more specific, Idania knows names for lots of the elements, and not all of them are in this language. She probably doesn't realize they're elements.

It does not have a name for atoms, however.

"Wait, this is chemistry?" Idania giggles a bit. "So guess what I'm good at!"

"How lucky. So, an atom is one of the simplest possible materials. Atoms are made of smaller things, but that's not relevant yet. All physical things are atoms, mostly chains and blocks of them. There is a list of substances that are made of atoms called elements. To name a few: Hydrogen, helium, carbon, oxygen, sodium, iron. Atoms are made of protons and neutrons, which are themselves made of quarks but let's save that for later, with a shell of electrons around them. Because of how the electrons are arranged, energy levels or something I'll have to find the book, the most stable thing for an atom to be is sharing some of its electrons with other atoms. Water is two hydrogen atoms sharing electrons with an oxygen atom."

Idania is going to interrogate him about science for a while. How much will Nick tolerate her science-related questions?

Reasonably well, though he gets frustrated if she keeps pursuing things he claims not to know much about. He does call for pauses to help the computer learn the language. And occasionally throws in some sarcastic jokes, when he thinks of a good one.

She actually doesn't push if he doesn't know much about, but she will theorize occasionally. Pauses occur when pauses are necessary for the computer.

And she seems delighted with his sarcastic jokes.

How nice, an excuse to make more sarcastic jokes.

The computer can now produce pages of text that are about half Jorten and half unfamiliar words. The ratio of foreign words to local ones is higher in the more science-based books, unfortunately... He gets hungry enough to notice, sooner or later. "Can I buy a little food off you?"

"How willing are you to accept knowledge as the currency you're paying me with?" wonders Idania, fishing out food from her pack. Travel rations, by the looks of them, though they don't look as unpalatable as some travel rations sometimes do.

"If you don't mind knowledge being the trade then I don't either. I do have some metal coins from home, I'm sure metal's still valuable here, right?" He doesn't mind not having steak and wine, but the limited amount of hungry fairies can get is unpleasant. Travel rations are fine.

"Yes, but maybe not as valuable as it would be in a world without gods. Because sometimes gods will make precious metals for people, and without them they just show up where ever." Pause. "I mean, granted, fairies have lots of magic to get it, but."

Travel rations! Idania will have some, too. She also pre-emptively offers Nick one of her canteens.

"Do gods have much precision? I think they might make demons and angels less necessary. Not completely redundant, but somewhat." At the canteen, "Thanks." He doesn't bring the canteen to his lips, just the water.

"They have some pretty good precision, Rae regularly makes foundations for people to build houses on, and elaborate cave systems, and will personally nudge people towards things they can use to help themselves, but it all does actually come from somewhere. Without followers, a god's domain will shrink until the god eventually dies."

... Idania seems to find the casual display of magic amusing, but doesn't comment.

"Hm, a tricky business. What other gods are there? Rae mentioned a hostile ocean one to the south but I can't recall her name."

"Varkalosix. There are, uh, lots of other gods. I could name a good portion of the major ones on this continent, but couldn't name all gods in existence. Want the list of gods I know, even though it's incomplete?"

"Sure. And I imagine they all like different things, right?"

"Yep. Let's see, gods nearby...

"North's got Cartolomir, a harvest god who's kind of focused on livestock and people blending in with society. Very boring, doesn't like Rae very much, but they're far enough away from each other that it amounts to exactly nothing. It's also got Tamaryse, more small scale but not nothing, goddess of - I forget the exact thing, but it's basically summarized as 'clouds and rain and stuff.' It rains a lot, there. It's kind of annoying. Don't know about the secondary things she shoots for, but people seem kind of melancholy there. Probably not something cheery.

"The east has got Perinixu, Opedist, and Kalandax. Perinixu's goddess of - well, she'd call it sanctuary, I'd call it healing in the vein of 'anti-plague,' but she's very picky about how her domain is run. Doesn't like troublemakers at all, or things that damage her control of the domain. It is well run, just. She's in charge. Opedist is super old, god of mountains and stubbornness. He's just like - sat on his domain for centuries now, stubbornly not doing anything and not moving except when he absolutely has to. Not a bad place to live if you want divine protection from jerk gods but be left otherwise alone, I suppose. Kalandax, who is right next to him, is a god of volcanoes. Violent change, sometimes necessary, but usually with no regard to who he stomps on. He and Opedist do not get along. They have been going at it for most of my life. It's not so much a war zone on Opedist's side, but Kalandax's - well, watch your step. Might trip into a lava lake.

"South's ocean, and Varkalosix. Storm goddess, gets sailors to pay offerings so she doesn't throw a storm their way and sink them to the bottom of the sea. Only thing keeping her above being on the level of a plague god is how she'll give some favorable winds if she likes people. She's just excessively playing favorites, instead of saying 'worship me or I kill you.' ... Also she has a slavery thing, it pisses Rae off. It doesn't help that their domains are practically cuddling because Varkalobitch decided that she wanted - you know what, this is not unbiased, I am trying to be unbiased. Ahem. She focuses on - er, creative tactics and helping out lots of established systems. Like whaling. Or fishing. She does fishing too, I guess. Also some mercantile commerce. If you trust her to not sink your boat I guess you can make a ton of money." She makes a face. "Favoritism."

Idania coughs, then continues, "West has several smaller gods, and actually a recent god death. Rae uh, helped with that, the god was an asshole. He had it coming. There are two goddesses I haven't had the chance to meet yet, one's a spring goddess whose details I don't know at all because the jerk recently deceased god was in the way, the other's - I don't actually know. Young, or Rae would have heard of her before. But people seemed to have a good opinion of her, so, not a plague god, which is nice. I've kind of needed to check that out, but - free time, bit of a distance to go even with flight, not directly relevant to anything Rae's doing. The last's Bereth, another god of harvest, something about dependability, less boring than Cartolomir but rather small scale. Then, less pleasantly, there's also a god or goddess of decay, but I didn't stick around to figure out the specifics, they're far enough away that they're kind of hard to tackle, but Rae might try to kill them eventually if Varkalosix ever dies."

"Decay sounds nasty, I almost want to go there and smash a temple. If it's as bad as I expected least."

"Probably. The place didn't look to be in shambles when I saw it, so it's not one of the 'so evil it's suicidal' ones? But decay god. They are not nice deities. If you smash a temple I doubt anyone will care, but watch out for acolytes."

"I am somewhere between not really and really not afraid a god or acolyte could actually manage to kill me. Daeva are extremely durable."

Snort. "Hey, different magics interacting could be weird, have half a care for your own safety! You haven't finished translating for the computer, I still need you."

Heh. "Oh, if that's all I am to you, I'll hand over the keys to knowledge before running off to poke a decay god and keel over."

"Thanks! I appreciate it!"

No, he can't respond, too busy laughing.

Idania is giggling, herself.

"Though, if you actually want to go poke the decay god, I can give you tactics advice."

"Not yet, I ought to get used to this world first. In all seriousness, I think we should have someone carefully summon a demon at least once, and get them to make a nice big pile of durable technology, and the things to make more things. With any luck we'll find one who'll take the name of your favorite author or some kind of animal, they can't do living minds, as payment. Instead of wanting sex or a soul or something of that nature."

Nod!

"Works for me. We can summon demons and then go, 'No thank you,' and then immediately put them back if they want things we don't want to give. ... When you say 'soul,' what do you mean, exactly?"

"I've never heard it defined, not sure they're even real, I've just heard that some demons want them and almost all humans really really don't want to give them."

"... Huh. I guess I'll follow suit, then. For safety. I am the squishy mortal and I am delicate and breakable."

She seems to find this sentence amusing, for some reason.

"Somehow I get the feeling 'breakable' is not an appropriate adjective, here."

Giggle.

"I mean, to be fair, if you're comparing me to gods and, apparently, 'extremely durable' daeva..."

But that smile says that he is on the right track.

"Point. Demon-summoning adventures should wait until we have our shopping list and a nice big place to put it all, though."

"Yeah. Though the big place to put it all isn't a problem. Do we need a large indoor-ish area, or would outdoor work?"

"Indoors for a lot of it, I think. Some of the things I'm thinking of are rather delicate."

"Oh Raaaaaaae!"

"I can make an underground cavern suitable."

"Thank you! We're good, how big of a space do we need?"

"Again, not sure yet. We want to get an idea of what to ask for, how much of it to ask for, that kind of thing. Oh, right, a demon can just make buildings if you want to avoid the effort of a cavern, Raezenoth."

"It is not very costly, and if the cavern is mine I can add changes later."

"Also he kind of wants to help," says Idania in a stage-whisper.

".... It would be interesting to watch."

"We'll make it a cavern, then... I think the translation's probably close enough now to start showing you some books. It's just missing a lot of vocabulary. I could print some books out with enough paper and ink, the printer's designed to use any kind of ink, or I could go home and buy another computer so we can both browse and decide what to print and distribute later."

Idania considers.

"... Much as I'm curious about the computer, that would presumably mean I'd have to wait longer. How long would it take to print out books?"

"It can do ten pages a minute, with enough paper and ink."

"That's not bad. Rae! I would like to request a way to get myself a ton of ink and paper. Nick, you want to help with material retrieval, or leave it to me?"

"I might as well help, we can keep chatting about science, it's fun explaining this stuff to someone for the first time."