"Babies don't go to the bad ones?"

"They either all show up here or all show up either here or somewhere we haven't ever managed to find. Probably the first? The number of babies we know have ever fetched up here is on the low side for estimates of how many dead babies there've been through history - this is what I was talking about when I said the Bastion was systematically stealing our population for most of human history, and, like, good for them."

"So by stealing you mostly mean adopting?"

"Yep. They still do and so does the Dead Republic but, you know, so do we."

"Gotcha. Well, I have opinions but they're uninformed so I should go to dead people school for a while, I reckon."

"Yeah. The Dead Republic's an even better place to do that than here."

"That was my thinking. I wanna learn magic."

"Oh, you’ve gotta go on a waitlist for that. It’s not just a question of learning how, you’ve gotta get the power from somewhere."

"I did hear there was a waitlist but I admit I'm not clear on what the bottleneck is."

"The king can only bless people one at a time."

"...literally all magic powers come from, specifically, Jesus? Is that what you're telling me?"

"Welllllll... the way to get magic is to get it from someone who has it. And has enough oomph to pass it on. So that's Jesus, somebody Jesus gave powers to who's kinda hit-or-miss, somebody else Jesus gave powers to who charges up front and I think he creeps on female customers, and, uh, demons. Don't go to the demons. It's not worth it, I heard of a guy getting driven mad when he went to a demon for power."

"Where did Jesus get his powers?"

"Born with them."

"And that's literally the only time this has ever happened?"

He makes an expression that's sort of a cross between a grimace and a sheepish smile. "Well, um. So. Well. So if any other demons have any other half-human bastards they haven't gone and conquered any planes and made themselves famous."

"Oh, is that where he came from. They tell a pretty different story Earthside."

"They sure do. I mean, I can't prove there's not a god whose only son has the kind of powers demons have and not some totally different kind of powers and who also doesn't do anything. There's no proof but it's pretty obvious?"

"Well, it's good of him to distribute them some, at least. I do plan to get on a waiting list. Is there a way to jump the queue?"

"Yeah, sometimes, if it seems like it’d be particularly useful for you specifically to have magic sooner rather than later. If you’re a random teenager it probably won’t seem like that."

"I guess that's not unreasonable."

"So you're not planning on staying long enough I should help you apply for housing, yeah?"

"I think I'm only here for a few days, so someplace to take naps and grab snacks and use a public bathroom of some kind will do me."

"Hm. Do you snore?"

"How would I know?"