"Well, you can follow me home? It's 100% safe there. They'd also probably have some way of getting you more prepared for whatever you were dealing with before you got here."

"I don't think I can count on getting another door? And … you're a human girl, right? It was a violent problem and I'm not sure if your parents would want me to share too much detail."

"Why would need to get another door? The one back to where I live is perfectly fine, right? And of course I'm a human girl, what else am I supposed to be? Also, I don't get why it matters what my parents want. There wouldn't be any point to telling me, though. I won't be able to help you with any violent problems."

"I'd need another door if I wanted to go back to my world from yours. I'm not a human, Bar's not a human, last I saw the healer and guard weren't humans. If you do things your parents don't want they might hit you, but it's no skin off my nose, or they might get mad at me, but you think people in general won't."

"My parents would NEVER hit me! They would get mad if you said something mean, though. Is there anything I can do to get a door to your world? I doubt we could help you with that..."

"Huh, okay. I could use the door to get to my world now, it's just that people who I think were trying to kill me were chasing me when I found it, so I don't really want to."

"Would the door disappear if you went into my world? My thinking is, maybe I stay here, you go back to my world and get help, and then you take the door back to your world? Does that sound like a good plan to you?"

"It seems reasonable, though if it'd be easier for me to immigrate I may be interested."

"Feel free! We'd be so happy to help someone who's totally different like you! We really like helping people in tough situations."

Karasauriu suddenly looks suspicious. "…can you tell me more about that?"

"Well, we have something called basic income. Basically, everyone gets enough so that they never need to work, because lots of people do helpful things that have negative side-effects, and they pay everyone else for the negative side-effects they're doing, and we're rich enough that you can live well of the money they have to pay for doing those. And we really like being able to care for people and make them feel safe and happy, like by hugging and massaging people in hospitals. And we think letting immigrants move in and be well-cared for produces that same nice feeling."

This does not make Karasauriu look all that much less suspicious. "How stable would you say things are?"

"Things seemed pretty perfectly stable to me? Like, we spend tons of money to pay people who have kids, because we want to make it so there aren't any problems with too many old people and too few young people? Can you give me some examples of things that might not be stable?"

"Volcanoes. The liquids in lakes being water and not anything more reactive. Plants with lacework patterns growing the best. Whether healing magic looks like the same kind of magic as zombies use or the same type temple water uses. I could go on."

She doesn't mention mental states, that's offering too easy an answer.

"Well, volcanoes haven't caused big damage for over a century now! Also, we could probably handle volcanoes making everything cooler, even if it would be a terrible thing to happen. We only have water in lakes, and plants don't have lacework patterns. Also, I'm pretty sure we don't have healing magic, and I have no idea what zombies or temple water have to do with anything. Although maybe I should really read more about how we do medicine? I feel like I should know about healing magic if that's a thing."

She fiddles with the fake gecko slightly above her wrist.

"If you're going to learn book magic your teacher will explain about the kinds of magic, and temple water and zombies are different kinds. Healing comes from the gods, and it usually works about the same sort of way, but the type of magic it is varies."

Candace's fidgeting draws Karasauriu's attention to the gecko, which looks strange and very calm, if it's alive. Asking if a familiar is an item is rude, the counterpart less so. She gestures to it. "Is that your familiar?"

Candace looks on in confusion to hearing the explanation of magic. Nothing she's hearing makes any sense.

"What's a familiar? This thing is my continuous glucose monitor. It chirps to let me know if something's going wrong and constantly sends a signal to my phone, so I can constantly check my levels."

"Some book magic people have animals they have special bonds with, a familiar is one of those. What's glucose?"

"Well, this is a fake gecko, it isn't even alive. Glucose is kind of like, the kind of sugar that ends up in you blood? I have an illness where it doesn't change in a healthy and slow way, but in a much more sudden an dangerous way, so I kind of need to use a special anti-sugar when there's too much of it."

"Huh. You have anti-sugar? What happens when it touches sugar?"

"It makes the sugar move into my body and out of my blood? I don't think it does anything special to the actual sugar."

"Oh, okay. So it's not like anti-feldspar."

"Not remotely. I think... Anyway, you said you wanted to immigrate? I think there could be some worries about illness, either you getting sick or us getting sick. But at the same time, we think it's almost fun to handle worries like that, so I'm sure we can handle it."

"If you're telling the truth, sure. I like the idea of stuff like volcanoes not being my problem, haha."

"It sounds pretty impossible to deal with volcanoes being your problem! And yeah, I know it's pointless to say it, but I am telling the truth. I really want to make life better for you and help you, even though I've only met you just now. Actually, I think that this magic door could be a really good chance for us to be able to help people, and for them to help us. Like, we'd be really happy to have people who like raising children or working on farms more. Those are things we have to do, even though we don't like them too much."