The metahuman has returned! And he's working with the Lei. That's all Tolesi knows, and that's enough.

He won't be able to get close to the metahuman. He doesn't even know the location. But a diplomat's suite was prepared in a hurry half a cycle ago, and it's almost time to exchange its decorative plant.

He selects a new plant, one with a wide pot. It's not pretty enough for a diplomat, but even if someone notices hopefully they'll just think there was a mix-up. He removes the soil, which damages the roots, but it doesn't need to survive long.

The bottom of the pot has a hole for drainage. When a plant goes on duty, normally he screws a stone plug into the hole. He needs something different here: a plug that fits loosely and is a little too long, so that when the pot is placed on a flat surface, the plug will slip upwards into the pot and open a gap. He's not a werewolf and can't ask anyone for help, but he has some gravel and eventually finds a chunk that works.

He surrounds the loose plug with the biggest pieces of rock, then fills the rest of the pot with gravel that gets gradually finer towards the top, ending with a thin layer of soil. 

Two kinds of soil, which look the same when soaking wet, but distinct otherwise, which he can use to write a simple message.

Earlier, he tried to check with his handler via the usual rendezvous with a kitsune in the deep tunnels under the shrine, but there was a vampire wandering around. He'll have to decide by himself.

He writes a single word, fills the pot with water, double checks the mechanism, fills the pot again, and hands it off to an underbutler.

A butler knocks on the door.

Rafiik goes to open it. (They all know to knock now! He'll have to ask Mirana later how they're communicating without him noticing, that's pretty neat that they can pull it off without electricity.)

There's a whole line of butlers here to clean up breakfast, refill the fruit basket, deliver more paper and a greater variety of ink and pens, take away the old potted plant, refill the water pitcher, exchange the towel, switch in a new chamber pot, bring a new potted plant, bring a small bowl of cornbread sticks - oh no the new plant is leaking - grab the new paper away from the puddle, clean up the mess, call out for another fresh towel -

Get rid of that plant! Subtly!

- and calmly pick up the new plant to take it away...

The soil in the pot now clearly shows an Elvish word written phonetically.

Unfortunately, Rafiik has been prioritizing learning vocabulary rather than the local system of writing. He does have a pretty good memory, though, and can use the Force to improve his recall of this in particular. First, though: "What word is that?" he asks Mirana.

"It says 'apple', which means" are they lying about it?

One problem is that Rafiik might leave and ask people outside of their control. 

The bigger problem is that the message is mostly not the word itself, but the whole situation where someone dramatically communicated something to him.

Oh good, lying is exhausting. "A kind of fruit."

"Huh." That doesn't sound very plausible.

"Is this a good time for me to go for a walk? And I want to..." he uses the sand table to explain the concept of cleaning... "I want to go for a walk and clean myself. And maybe do katas first."

"Sure..." The water and towel are right there; she points at them and licks her shoulder demonstratively. "There's a room with a very big bowl of water if you want to get very wet and stay wet for a while? We could walk there and then you clean yourself there? If you touched something that is going to hurt you and might hurt other people, there's a room for cleaning that. It's a long walk but we can help you go there faster than walking."

"No, I'm fine - I can do a Force thing for that if it happens but it didn't happen. I want to be clean when I meet the other Jedi. The room with the big bowl sounds good."

The butler who delivered the plant is innocent and was observing the plant the whole time. He got it from an underbutler whose first meeting with an Emperor is a bit intimidating, but she's innocent too. She got it from the gardener, whom she describes as a catfolk with black fur, pale yellow eyes, large ears, a wide chin and nose - yeah, that's either the gardener Tolesli Ratkeeper or a very good imposter. And he (whoever he is) is gone now. Guards! After him!

The 'other Jedi' just finished changing out of a colorful multilayered costume with more jewelry than he's seen in his life, total, and into a simple robe with a very tricky braided belt, and now he needs to hold still some more so the belt can be worked loose again and his new clothes removed. Time for scrubbing! And a soak, apparently that's important.

The room with the big bowl isn't far. The hallway art does not depict any breeders.

Here's the room. Underground, of course, but there are three catfolk keeping it bright and warm. The pool is about twenty feet across and three feet deep.

The musicians follow behind, sit by the wall, and resume playing.

(Eilha's harp is made of stone. The strings will go slack with the humidity but she can adjust the shape of the nut to compensate.)

Huh, fancy. Also less private than he was expecting; he's not shy, exactly, but he will ask about nudity taboos before he strips - some planets have them, he explains, without expanding on whether his does.

"Nah, go ahead." There are shelves for clothes on the wall.

Some species care about it, including the breeders he resembles, but none of them are here... Is he worried about a cross-species nudity taboo? Does that happen? Does his home have multiple species? If they don't have breeders and species magics, how?

She can ask later if she wants, right now he's taking a bath. He's reasonably efficient about it, though he does spend a little time examining the pool and sneaks a moment of meditation in while she isn't looking to cement the memory of the text from earlier in his mind.

"Are there different clothes I can use?" he asks, as he's starting to finish up. He's been careful not to get too sweaty since he's been here but he wasn't planning on this when he hiked out to the cliff face yesterday. "The ones I have are okay if not."

The pool is set most of the way into the floor and made of even dark blue stone with a slightly rough texture. Away from the entrance, the floor is wavy, with tiny holes in the low spots. There are two spigots, a large one capped off with solid stone and a small one that continuously trickles hot water.

The ledge for holding flame is higher up than in the hallway and curves irregularly. The walls have the same rough texture as the floor, in various dark colors. Near the floor, there are small patches of writing and pictures.

An attendant takes a bundle out of a box near the hot water spigot. It's a towel and a long tunic, loose and soft but not stretchy, colored an undyed beige. Both are warm.

(Everyone else has been wearing similar tunics, in light green, plus darker green sashes with various white embroidery.)

Perfect.

"Do you know when the other Jedi will be here?" he asks Mirana, when he's done figuring out how it goes on.

They're going to have to tell Rafiik about the war, so how does the 'other Jedi' fit into that? Obviously, he can't be supporting the Freedom Democracy. He also can't be supporting the Lei, because then why haven't they won already. They want to set an example of staying out of other people's business, but with the possibility of recruiting Rafiik later, so the 'other Jedi' should also not be passionately committed to neutrality or working with the Allheart Alliance.

So he's a wanderer of some sort. Who doesn't do very much, just observes. Doesn't really care what's going on.

Which means that the prepared lie that now makes its way to Mirana is:

"After lunch. He is coming here from far away."