She would prefer cooked, if possible? (She's mostly thinking of digestibility, familiarity, and it making less of a mess. When they return she needs to ask if death magic or other wards are used to prevent food poisoning.) (She's still unsure what he meant by 'of course you'd do that', and says so). But she can adjust if needed.

"I'll explain when we get home."

Since she doesn't seem to have a preference he gets the pork. The butcher seems to have an arrangement with the fruit seller to handle wards on the meat. It's raw but Valanda visits a nearby building where a human jeweler wearing the heat mage symbol on a necklace agrees to cook their meat for them with magic.

She does not have a preference.

Can she figure out which magic does the food wards?

"Thank you."

That mage isn't wearing a symbol and the wards don't seem to do anything visible.

"Is this the kind of thing you're used to eating?"

Not really, actually, but if he wants to know more she should probably tell him at home.

Well, that's where they're going.

She keeps looking around. Are all the species she knows represented? How do different ones behave? What are the buildings like from outside? (Do they have yards, say?) Are the streets paved? Do they have sewers? How clear or dirty are they?

They are but some are pretty uncommon here. They don't have individual garden plots in front of every building but there's a lot of vertical gardening and at least one large park. The streets are paved with setts. There is no sign of feces anywhere, if she wants to infer facts about their sewer system from that. The streets don't seem to have been cleaned today but they're not dirty enough to suggest they aren't cleaned ever. The outsides of buildings are often painted in dark natural colors, mostly browns and greens. Lots of people have balconies, it might be that not everyone has windows and it's impossible to see in the windows that do exist.

What seems to be the local version of an airplane passes overhead before they're back inside.

What do the buildings seem to be made of? The balconies?

Oh? What does it look like?

Some of them seem to be stone on the lower floors and wood on the upper ones. The plane doesn't have wings, it seems to just float.

Valanda seems relieved when they get back to his apartment.

Makes sense, with the force magic.

Well, hopefully it was just tension and not anything that happened. Does he do anything aside from seeming?

He shuts the door and sits down.

"You asked me earlier why I said of course you'd cook all your meat. I just remembered you didn't have death magic and needed to for safety. We do that here if there's no death mage but it's not necessary otherwise. Anyway, did you get what you need? Will there be any problems with you eating what's available?"

Ah, yes, that is a reason people in her world cook meat. She is glad to hear that is not going to be a problem here even if she eats the raw meat.

She did get some experience in being out and about, which is good to have, thank you.

Nutrition is unfortunately not a subject she's very well versed in, but if humans here tend to be fine, she will probably be fine.

(Out of curiosity, do they have grains/bread? Why the lack of vegetables?)

"You can get grains down south in Anavel Sani. If you want vegetables here we can go gather some. I wouldn't know if humans tend to be fine or not, I don't know that many."

Vegetables are not farmed? And, is the difference-by-location due to species distribution? Is there a similar location-difference in dairy products?

Well, he is human?

"It's due to species distribution, yes, caralendri eat grains and agerah don't. I'm human but I haven't lived here very long, I came from the south. I've met my parents but not many other humans. Only some species make milk, yes, essi and thwilit and ereli and anemones don't make milk."

Understood.

Interesting. Do adults here sometimes drink other sentient adults' milk? She meant to refer to dairy from animals though.

Anemones?

"...There are a lot of niche fetishes in the world and I'm sure I haven't seen all of them, but I've never heard of any adult drinking milk from any person or animal. Anemones are a species of people, you won't have seen much about them on Hari is the Language of the Empire, they live in the water and don't talk."

Oh, how do they communicate?

Interesting. In her world it is common to drink animal milk, from kept animals, similarly to how it's common to keep animals and slaughter them for meat, and it is not considered a fetish. It's also used to make other food products. (Drinking milk from people if one is not a baby would probably be considered a fetish, though.)

"They don't communicate. They can't be told what the law is so they're all slaves. You probably won't meet any. I've never heard of anyone drinking animal milk but I guess it could be food. How do you get it out of the animals?"

Ah, but they use magic, so it's known they're not animals? Whose slaves are they? (She continues to keep any other opinions to herself.)

She doesn't actually know much about that either. It's called milking and she thinks it's something like such-and-such. (If it's not done here she wouldn't recommend just trying it; in her world people whose ancestors didn't adapt to drinking milk tend to have it make them sick.)

Do they eat animal eggs here?

"I don't know, most people that own anemones live on the west coast and I've never been there. Some people can eat eggs, I've had them before."

That reminds her of a somewhat unrelated question.

"If a slave has a child, who does the child belong to?"

"The slave's owner. Is it different where you're from?"

That probably accounts for most of anemone-'distribution', then, she thinks. Still wonders about the rest of it, as well as how they did it originally. (Continues to keep opinions to herself.)

Depends on strata. For Iotas and Omegas it's like that; children of slave Betas are free. Slave Alphas aren't generally having children.