"Ohhhhh," he says. "Right, okay. Yeah, in my world the cheap stuff is printed. I guess I wasn't surprised because, you know, those books looked old and expensive, so it's not weird that they're made the old expensive way? But I guess it's weird that somebody who likes books would only have old expensive ones and not new cheap ones they could get lots of. Maybe she just can't go as far as the city to buy them, though? I dunno. I think those are the first books I've seen here."

"Yeah, same. I just find it odd that the book of folk tales wasn't mass-produced. The travel journals make sense to see handwritten, especially if they're originals, but a book of folk tales wouldn't be original. Same with the history book."

"Original? What do you mean?"

"Someone writes their travels down in a journal, it winds up in a bookstore, someone else buys it. It's the original, not a copy. In a world with the printing press, I'd expect handwritten books to be unique originals or elaborately scribed copies. The history book didn't look like the kind of high quality scribing and whatnot that would make sense as a nice luxury to stand out against printed books, which is the only way handwritten copies can compete with printed books. Handwritten originals can compete, because they're unique, or even if copies exist there's an appeal to having the first one. But copies? Not a chance, the only way handwritten copies survive in a world with the printing press is by being luxuries. So we've got no printing press here, which means if we build one we can sell it to the publishers and make hideous piles of money."

"...huh, but don't you just have... old books that were written before printing was a thing? Or has printing been a thing for so long that those are all locked up in museums and what have you? I think it's newer than that, in my world."

"Museums and rich collectors. We've got hundreds of years of printing. You make a good point, though, that maybe the printing press exists here but only happened recently. It's worth checking."

"Guess we'll find out when we get to the city."

"We will." She smiles at him. "It was sweet of you to introduce Ruby, rather than just defaulting to my name as host. We might have to come out to her when we see her again, though."

"...sorry, I wasn't thinking again. Ruby was the one who was there, so I introduced her. —is this thing of yours a secret, though?"

She hums a bit and bobbles her head, not quite a nod, not quite a shake. "We're not used to people being okay about it. We had friends who were, but in our old world it was assumed to be some kind of delusion, and you generally couldn't tell most people. We're kind of shocked by the fact that everyone we've told so far has been so cool about it."

"Well, I can try to keep quiet about it but I'm really not very good at that. A delusion, though, really? Don't people... notice you being different from each other? I guess that's less obvious to most people than it is to me?"

"You don't have to keep quiet. I... it's scary but I want to try to have a life where we don't have to hide."

She takes a slow breath. "And yeah. Even when they see the different behavior and body language, they assume that it's just damage or attention-seeking behavior."

Torok makes a profoundly baffled face.

She shrugs. "For all there was more knowledge and technology, our old world could be profoundly dumb sometimes. They had a lot of problems with trans people, too."

"Problems with who?"

"People who realize that the masculine or feminine body and social role they were born with isn't who they are and decide to move to the other side. Or something in between. Or something entirely different. The word in our old world was 'transgender', or 'trans' for short."

"I don't think I knew anybody like that in my old world but around here it seems like it's just... normal for people to mess around with their body however they feel like."

She grins. "Which is one of many reasons why we keep saying 'our old world' and not 'our world' when talking about where we came from."

"Yeah. Mareth's pretty nice except for the demons and stuff."

"We'll just have to find a way to stop them. No worries, it's only impossible. Give us a month or three and we'll be doing an impossible thing a day, I bet."

"What, all of them? Sounds like a tall order. Not sure it's impossible, though, just... the kind of thing where if you're going to try you'd better not screw it up?"

"It will take much better weapons and armor, but I'm not going to risk trying until I'm sure our gear is good enough."

"Oh oh oh speaking of armor what's your armor made of and is it the same stuff on Diran's hands and feet?"

"—mine's bee-girl chitin, Hazel made it for me, I don't know if I can get any more bee-girl chitin though so they might not be able to make you another set if you want one. And Diran's arms and legs look like they've got the same stuff but I don't know if it's from a bee transformation specifically or a different one, I don't even know how many bug transformations there are."

She nods vigorously. "That makes sense! Don't need any right now, just really curious about it. It's really neat how many transformations there are. Do bee-girls molt, is that how you got the chitin? Or some other way?"