"This script is Elven, like I said, and better adapted to writing their language than ours. Elves care a lot about mellifluousness and less about things like not-being-incredibly-fucking-prescriptivist. Anyway. Lemme draw the letters and read you the sounds."

She starts doing that.

She repeats the sounds and traces the letters. Then she tries writing a few of the Adûnaic words she already knows using this alphabet.

"NIce, you're getting the hang of it. Do you people have extended neuroplasticity? Is it as easy for you to learn languages as an adult as in childhood?"

She's a bit surprised by this question. "Learning a new language is really quick and easy during a long enough conversation. We just forget them quickly, too - after a few weeks, if we don't talk to anyone. Is this not true of your world's people? Of plant-eaters in general, or just Men?"

"That is....not true of anyone in our world. Elves can learn languages quickly, because they can see into minds; they also remember them, I think. We learn slowly, or not at all, which is why it's such a problem that the people in charge don't speak the same tongue as their subjects. And if we did speak a language we wouldn't forget it in a few weeks, it'd take years to get rusty. Huh."

"Your memories must be very different to ours. We learn quickly and then forget quickly, unless it's something interesting enough for us to remember. If we're super focussed on something, it sticks around for a long time. Otherwise, it rushes in and out. I know of people who are especially interested in languages and know hundreds of them, but anyone else would forget the first when they started learning the fifth, unless they had to use all of them."

"Hundreds would not be possible for us, at least not a real command of them. But it is not a barrier of forgetting, but of acquiring in the first place. Where is your world? Is the climate similar? Same Moon? Same stars?"

"Climate is different in different places. Colder north, warmer south - until you go far south and it gets cold again. It is like this on the southern coast of my country, but I live a little bit north. There is a moon and stars, but different star-patterns."

"Yeah, that all would make sense if you were on a different continent," she says, "but how have we not run into you, and how'd you get here? How far do your ship sail, exploring your world?"

It suddenly occurrs to her that there is very good evidence that this is a different world.

"We have machines that fly above the clouds - closer to the moon - that can see the world. We make maps of all of it. We have visited every island with people. If we had discovered a people who didn't drink blood, I would have heard about it in the news. This can't be the same world."

"Wow. Okay. Do you know if our stars match the stars from anywhere on your world? You shouldn't ahve the same Moon without the same stars."

"I'm afraid I haven't looked at many star charts. I just know what the stars look like where I live. Your moon might be smaller than ours or farther away or it might just be hard to tell in this phase of the cycle - but it's probably a different moon. How long is your lunar cycle? And how long is your year?"

"Twenty eight days, and three hundred sixty five. Yours?"

This is absolutely terrible.

"Twenty seven days a month! Three hundred and seventy a year! Our calendars are incompatible! I can't celebrate the holy days! Oh shit oh shit the world is going to end oh shit..."

"...what?"

In her panic, Carmen dispenses with comprehensibility. "My people - the Zifarti - we have things we do. Our laws command us to do them. They sustain the world and prevent it from ending. If we stop then everything stops. We all need to do it. I need my calendar!"

"Wait a second. How would you know if the world ended if you didn't do it? That's not observable, right? No one in your community has ever not done something they were supposed to, in all of history?"

"Well, yeah, some people have tried to free-load on the community by not following the commandments and still benefiting from the continued existence of the world - but that's wrong. That's incredibly wrong! Imagine if everyone did that. If we all just stopped and expected someone else to do it, then the world would end and we'd all be screwed. That's why no one is allowed to stop. No one can defect if we don't want everyone to. It's the only consistent position."

"....but the world didn't end, right? They stopped doing it, and the world did not end. Maybe your rituals don't actually keep the world spinning and if you all stopped nothing would happen? In fact, I'm inclined to say that's the likeliest outcome, because there's no way that the continued existence of the world depends on the right number of people doing the right rituals. Are you sure the rituals have been transmitted with perfect accuracy? Presumably some things have altered over time, and the world didn't end, right? Who benefits from this system? Do some of the rituals set up an aristocratic priestly class who can take advantage of everyone else's labor?"

"The world won't end as long as there are at least one hundred people all following the law independently of each other. There are enough of us that the small number of people who've free-loaded didn't ruin everything, but that's because it was a small number. We have our culture and social structure and the expectations of our community to keep us on the right path, so we have been able to prevent enough defection to break everything.

"We know that we're doing the rituals correctly because we've put a lot of thought into it. I mean a lot of thought. We have written books about the books about the books about the rituals; and we still debate those. We have been super careful. We have a well developed philosophical tradition dedicated to keeping track of this. I mean, if your correct observance of a set of commandments kept the world running, wouldn't you?

"I guess you could say there are 'priests'? But I don't see how they'd benefit much from the continued existence of our religion. Most of the people who put a lot of effort into religious work are volunteers, and the few people who aren't live on pretty limited donations. There isn't a lot of money to go around for charity, and a lot of that goes to the secessionists, anyway. I could become a priest if I wanted to and studied hard, but I'd much rather be a history professor. Better pay and more interesting. Pretty much all priests are people with a special interest in religion who'd be unhappy in another job.

"But, even apart from that, everyone benefits. Our religion holds our community together. It gives a sense of common purpose. It let's us be vastly important to the world, in a universe that otherwise wouldn't care. It gives us our art and our music and our stories. It makes life richer, at the same time that it allows life to continue by sustaining the world."

"But think how much you'd benefit from not believing that your world will literally end if anyone steps out of line! How many kids grow up terrified that if they slack or mess up they'll end the world, and that if they stop believing it they'll be shunned as freeloaders by their entire community, and considered morally responsible for the destruction of the world? Look, you were freaked out that you didn't know your ritual calender. Surely you are strictly better off knowing that you don't need to keep doing it?"

"Why would we shun someone who stopped believing? The universe doesn't care what you think about.  There are probably tons of people who don't think that observance of the commandments powers the world, but do it anyway because it's what everyone does. As long as you're doing your part to keep the world turning, why should anyone care why you're doing it?

"And, sure, not being afraid of ending the world is probably better than being afraid, if you hold amount of world-continuation constant - but it's not like we're constantly cowering in fear. Being able to say the right words and wear the right clothes and live in the right house and, simply by doing so, sustain the existence of the world is incredible. I'm not enslaved - I'm empowered. We hold the fate of the world in our hands and tell oblivion 'not today'. Isn't that great?"

"No, because it's not true."

"How do you know it's not true? How do you know what does and doesn't make my world work? Your world is different. Your world has different stars, so it's nowhere near mine. Maybe your world runs on completely different physical laws! Maybe your world's gods are fake, but that doesn't mean mine are -

"- Well, um, there's only one G-d. This is important. But otherwise, yeah, my point stands."

"What have your gods done? What evidence persuaded people that they're real?"