Rafiik isn't tired yet, his internal clock thinks it's early afternoon, but he can catch up on his meditation and practice katas for a few hours until it feels like he could at least nap.

Asrek and Eilha keep playing.

(He'll shoo them out before he starts on the katas, actually, the music is nice but he needs the space, and needs quiet to focus on what he's doing.)

Asrek stays outside (silently) to keep the flames going, dimly.

He can tell that there are people outside, but he can't tell the difference between Asrek and passerby, and doesn't think anything of the lights.

He'll spend a few hours on katas, being careful not to get too sweaty even though that means skipping his favorites, and then he'll move most of the blankets to the foot of the bed and get comfy under the remaining one. It'll take him a while to get to sleep, still, but he'll manage it eventually.

The Emperors search the shrine and can't remember anything noteworthy that used to be at the location.

There is a deep network of tunnels, regularly patrolled and examined. The main concern, up to now, has been preventing attackers coming in that way, not archeology. They call in a vampire to examine the area.

She's not an archeologist but she once found a fossil while prospecting?

Meanwhile, a equartier runs towards the capital carrying a tengu and a human man.

By the time he learned that his employer was the Lei Empire, he knew too much. An alien with powers beyond the understanding of science. Con-men preaching the Exploratory heresy. Danger to the whole world.

Well, he's certainly practiced at appeasing people stronger than him.

And with luck, he can steer this towards the Lei and the Democrats destroying each other. That's not treason at all! He should get a barony from that!

Ah, to be the first human ["breeder"] baron... he'll have an elph as his top butler and some good human girls and he'll have as many sons as daughters - no, twice as many sons! - and he'll raise them up right, to be strong and wise and kind. Kind to every species, even the ones that don't deserve it.

Eventually they arrive at the Lei capital. Presumably. It's not like he'd recognize the place, and they've been underground the whole time.

"Welcome, sir. We'd like to adjust your coloring and give you stamina and toughness and pain-tolerance, and maybe other things that we'll figure out while you get some rest. Would you please allow these lieflings to target you?"

They called him sir and not as part of the performance!

"Of course. Very clever." He touches each liefling's green bumpy hand. Boop, boop, boop, boop...

They'll let Rafiik sleep in as long as he likes.

It's about twelve hours after Mirana left when he wakes; after an extremely awkward interaction in which he learns what chamberpots are for he props the door slightly open and begins going over his language notes while he waits for them to notice that he's up.

They "notice" soon enough and bring cornbread and fried vegetable stems and fried meat for breakfast.

"What food do you like to eat the most? Is this food similar?"

"I like most things! But in my home some things aren't used as food -" and he points out bugs and organ meats as two of those things, with the help of the sand table. "This is good, thank you."

"What do you use bugs for?" Turning the organ meats into fertilizer, she thinks, but guessing out loud is a chance to be dangerously wrong.

"Mostly nothing. Some kinds make things - do you have bugs that make a food that tastes like fruit?"

"Oh yeah!" And they generate a species of people, too.

Rafiik's people can afford to keep bugs that they don't use for anything. 

Hm, not sure of a useful direction from there, move on. "What is your music like?"

"Do you want to hear some?" He has a tiny music player and headphones in one of his pockets. "But I only have a few kinds, we have lots - my home knows lots of other planets, we get music and things from them."

He sets up the music player and demonstrates how to use the earbuds before offering them to her; the first song is a bouncy, fast-paced pop piece.

!

!

!

The whisshopper is also astonished and eager to try making sounds like that later.

This is ordinary for him which means it has to be ordinary for her. "Huh, nice and loud." She nods with the beat and points at the music player. "Who made this?"