"...magic isn't a caste so I guess it can be."

"Loki I think you'd have a hard time with. Do you not want to live places if the rulers aren't blue?"

"It's weird. ...blues are bad but having somebody else run things is weird."

"The Elf kings are mostly all blue I guess, if that's important to you."

"We can't go anywhere. Dad won't leave."

"Yeah. Your uncle said. This is our stop -"

Off they get. "Where is this? Who's it for? Who runs it?" asks Adro, looking all around.

"This is in Edda, it's called Avast, it's mostly spillover from Vanda Nossëo, people who work there or have family who work there, we're mostly humans and we've got, like, a democracy and stuff..."

"We've got a democracy."

"Your uncle said most people don't bother voting because they don't count. We have a different kind of democracy where the votes count and we bother voting. I like my senator, he comes door-to-door during election season asking what he can do for us."

"What do you say?"

"Uh last year I said that the train station smells bad after rainstorms and our landlord never fixes things so we have to do it ourselves even though it's supposed to be in the lease and it should be easier to withhold the amount of rent you spent on fixing things it was their job to fix."

Adro decides he is not interested in whether the train station still smells. He peers at architecture and people.

Mostly humans! They're like Amentans with weird hair unless he's observant enough to notice that the women are shorter and the men taller. It's dense new construction, practically all of it. 

"I was thinking we could get ice cream and then go jetskiing if you guys like jetskiing."

"What's jetskiing?" asks Adro.

"It's, like, a motorcycle but runs on water."

"Why do you have one?"

"I don't, I just know the guy who rents them out."

"Oh."

"Is that safe for kids?" asks Adro's uncle.

"The bay's all magicked up to the point where it's safer than staying home. Someone in Elendil developed a spell to stop kids drowning - makes water breathable - and it's mandatory for all bodies of water now most places and then there's lifeguards and shit on top of that."

"Wow."

"Court said maybe I should learn that spell but I bet I'm too dumb for magic and I don't really wanna find out."

"You have to be smart to do magic?"

"Yeah. Not a genius but, like, the kinda person where your friends are like 'fuck dude you're smart', pretty much - should I watch my language around you, sorry -"

"I know swear words," says Adro.

"His dad can't keep his mouth shut," mutters his uncle.