Okay then! Holly catches on pretty well.

As the bus starts moving it soon becomes apparent that these loops really are necessary for not falling over.

Holly's got decent balance, but yes, the loops help.

From there it doesn't take long to get to the pet store, which contains a highly chipper saleslady who is slightly bemused at an order for twelve mice and keeps trying to persuade them to buy a larger cage.

Emily and Edie are going to have to address this for her because Holly doesn't know a lick of English and even Crystal hasn't got more than a few words.

Holly dumps the dead mice outside - she shrinks them first - and cleans the mat on a random leaf with troportation and then puts the mice in.

[Probably a good thing she didn't see the dead mice. Would've made that conversation even less fun.]

[I guess that makes sense.]

[Yeah, the whole not making a pet of them if you're going to use them as batteries thing has merit; people tend to get more worked up about creatures when they go in the small fuzzy family member category.]

[Yeah. I mean, I'd drowse Tyang if I had to and was out of mice, but Tiag's soul won't get eaten if she falls asleep.]

[Worst comes to worst yours wouldn't either, here, but I certainly understand not wanting to confirm that empirically.]

[Sleeping is - you don't even close your eyes and put your head down. Complete strangers will come over and kick you if it looks like you might fall asleep. It's just so terrifying once you're out of the dreamward.]

[We're glad we live here instead. Not having to sleep would be nice, but being able to is also nice and being capable of doing so but your soul gets eaten if you do is a kind of scary we have no desire to add to our lives.]

[Well, I'm glad you like it.]

[Emily's a little surprised you don't have any positive memories of it from when you were children.]

[I think some people do... we dreamed weird.]

[Really? Weird like how?]

[We can hear each other thinking - and Book was there too when we were little - but we didn't have the same dreams and it was really disorienting.]

[Oh. That is weird. Emily and I hear each other all the time too but we do have the same dreams. Or close enough, anyway.]

[That sounds nice.]

[It is. But you only spend so much time each night in REM sleep; it would still be more efficient not to have to. Unfortunately we don't "sleep" in the back of our head even as much as you do, so I doubt mouse-drowsing would be a decent long-term solution for us.]

[Yeah, the soul needs rest too and mice don't have any to put the tired in.]

[Still probably better than caffeine. It was slightly surprising that you had coffee, given that.]

[Mice are better but you don't want to rely on just one thing when you will literally die if you fall asleep!]