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	‘Ohhh boy…’  

Jack realised he had opened a can of worms and couldn’t hope to explain things easily for Amber, her mind just wasn’t ready for it. Or is that not fair of me? He asked himself. 

‘No, I don’t mean magic,’  he said, ‘although, from my own point of view, far as I can tell from the many places I’ve seen, magic is really nothing more than areas of science yet unexplored. So I guess you could look at it like that, sure.’ 

Amber seemed disappointed by this, and slightly confused by Jack’s use of the word science. She asked, ‘And the stars?’  

Jack stared perplexed at her for a long moment before replying. ‘At night, when you go outside, and look up into the sky, what do you see?’  

‘Lights left by the gods,’ said Amber, as if Jack had asked a stupid question, ‘A greater light to rule the day, lesser lights to rule the night. They are also more than just that. They are symbols, or icons, left as a type of reminder. Bodies of worship. We do not forget they watch over us.’ 

Jack frowned, more curious than mocking. ‘So all those little twinkling lights in the sky…?’ 

‘Marks of the many lesser gods, of course,’ she told him, ‘the larger marks, like that of Semlin’s Sphere, have been left by the greater gods, like Semlin himself.’

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘for my own people, all those little lights in the sky are called stars. Some of us believe they were created by God, or gods. But I think at this point everyone agrees that they are suns. Burning balls of gas. Just like the light that rules the day, only the stars - the other suns - are so far away they we see them as small twinkling lights we call stars. I haven’t seen your night sky, yet,’  Jack added, ‘But I’m guess the Sphere you mentioned would be something like what we call a moon. Basically a large round chunk of dirt in orbit of our planet.’ 

‘Planet….’  Amber wondered at this word, in a way that someone might scrutinise an adult using bad language around children. 

‘Yes, planet.’  Jack told her. ‘that is what I mean by “my world”. My world has its own sun. Earth, our planet, spins and goes around the sun. The moon goes around the Earth. Every star in the sky is another sun, countless miles away, and many of those suns have other planets going around then. A few of those other planets have life on them, just like yours, or mine.’ He paused, and concluded. ‘I am from a different planet, near one of those small twinkling lights you see in the night sky.’  

Amber Glared at Jack for a long silence, and then suddenly reached across the table and slapped him.

‘Blasphemy!’