To teach children about the “string of pearls” their planets are a part of, teachers and parents have strings and beads to demonstrate their connectedness. However, they also demonstrate the role of gravity by using metal balls, similar to Earth’s ball bearings, to illustrate the point, using a larger magnet to hold the last ball in the chain, and from the strength of the big magnet they manage to pull a line of other balls along with it. When the large magnet is pulled away from that first ball, the chain drops away and the balls all separate.
The worlds used to be separate in reality, isolated, but there is a force similar to what we think of as magic that operates in their worlds, and some people can facilitate travel between the beadworlds. Women’s intuition, or the ability to decipher body language, is considered a sort of magical aptitude, rather than a cognitive one, and men usually lack it or are not strong in this intuition. There are alien and fantasy creatures there, including the Tormaunts.