"I thought you meant each other and that would be less food than the food you'd need to eat to make the milk."

"Yeah, it'd be a bit weird. Cows mostly, bred to produce lots."

"...Huh. I guess you could do that without magic."

"You have magic cows?"

"We use DNA magic for things we farm. But you could breed them to do the same thing. I think it would take longer."

"Yeah, it takes longer. They can do genetic engineering now I think but I don't know how they do it."

"Purples do it?"

"I think it's some purple some green?"

"Are the other castes not allowed or not able?"

"Oh, not even that, they can do it if they know how, they just can't get paid for it. For all I know there's retired oranges and yellow interns in all those labs."

"Hmmmm. What do you know how to do that isn't - the thing 'Atan' is about?"

"Well, not a ton. I can drive. I don't know if you have trucks. I did the intro courses in plumbing, in school. I know not zero things about Amentan anatomy because I was for a while going to be working with my mom and she does autopsies but I stopped going to work with her, uh, just the other day."

"You don’t have to be a wizard to do plumbing here."

"That's good because I'm not a wizard! Maybe I can be a plumber."

"Yeah. Your job can be entertaining me with stories about Amenta for a while but you've got at least that other option. Or learn to weave, cloth's really expensive and magic doesn't help very much."

"I know how to quilt a little bit but I haven't tried weaving."

"You don't have to be a wizard to make quilts, either."

"Are there sewing machines?"

"No! Do you know how to make them?"

"No but I do know the basic insight that makes them work!"

"I want to know about that! If I can make and sell sewing machines from your description I can give you one in twelve of the, uh, money circles that I get when I don't count the money I pay to make and sell them."

"...coins?" she suggests. "Uh, I have... no idea if that's fair."

"Coins! Yes. Our coins are circles. I have no idea if it's fair either because I don't know how much of it is the basic insight and how much of it is other things."

"I think you can probably get a really basic sewing machine with just that and some way to make a wheel turn? And like, being able to put together machines with moving parts, at all. Fancy sewing machines have more features but those I can't help with besides knowing that they are nice to have."

"That sounds like the insight is probably worth more like half. But I maybe don't want to hear it yet, now I want to try to think of it."