It's harder, because the silk has a tendency to escape, and she needs to support herself on her arms while doing it. But it's not actually terribly difficult — the hard part is in making it look fluid and natural, rather than making it look like flailing vaguely.

When she lets go, she drops a bit farther, because the silk is looser, but she still catches herself above the ground.

Armeŋ smiles at her again.

"You should try that until you feel safe, then you can do the one trick," he tells her. "It's simple: you do the sit, and then climb up and wrap the silks around you. Then, when you let go, the falling, the silks spin you. Then the sit keeps you from falling all the way."

The dancer on the other silks — who has swapped out along with the song at some point — snorts at his mangled phrasing, and demonstrates what he means. She wraps the basic pattern he showed Megi around her hips, and then hauls herself into the air and settles a few turns of fabric around the outside of her hips. When she lets go, she falls and spins, hair splaying out ... before jerking to a stop as the wrap arrests her fall a few feet above the floor. She ends up dangling upside-down, but makes it look natural and starts setting up her next trick with her feet.

Armeŋ is still watching Megi, though, and doesn't appear to notice the other dancer's demonstration.

Really, this is just a new kind of ritual. Different steps, same constraints: The end goal to be a smooth, controlled thematic display.

She practices, adapting smoothly and showing off athleticism under the soft exterior- Her movements are consistent and confident. It's just balance and grace in the air that's troubling her.

She smiles at not getting it quite right. She asks for advice and is clearly learning.

She notices herself getting a bit tired eventually.

"This is great fun but I want a break and some water right now."

Armeŋ nods.

"I was wondering," he remarks. "You are getting less tired than a human, I think, which is very attractive."

He gives her a hand down from the stage, and then just holds onto it, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb as they head over toward the serving counter.

Refreshments include: water (set up apart from the other stuff), a suspiciously recent-looking platter of cookies and cupcakes, little plates of finger foods, and a number of fizzy, sugary drinks. For everything except the water, people tap their phones (or, in one case, their hand) to a little symbol before grabbing some. Noticeably absent is any apparent alcohol.

"You're impressively athletic for a human! And that's attractive! Is it normal here to just... Say that? Instead of slightly indirect compliments? Hmm..."

She will lean against Armeng slightly as they walk.

"Kitsunes are lucky in a lot of ways. Our bodies are full of magic. You know, I do dances for a living, sort of- I am a priestess and many rituals to call the light gods' influence are sort of slow dances. How about you?"

Armeŋ makes a gesture with his hand that Megi may or may not have learned to interpret from context as an attitudinal expression of mild chagrin.

"I have been slightly indirect," he admits. "You're beautiful, and skillful, and I would like to have sex with you. But you are also an alien, so I was wanting to know my Notal is enough good and that I would not say something wrong, before asking."

He reaches across to scratch her ears.

"But, I do like dancing with the silks a lot, and I'm glad you wanting to learn. It's fun to share the things you are liking with people! If you don't want sex with me, I will still be happy and think meeting you is good."

He thinks about her last question.

"My living is ... I don't know the Notal. Freelance Legal Obligations Compliance Investigator. I make sure that stores are following rules, and if they aren't I help them fixing it, or tell the government. It is not very much like dancing! Dancing is for fun, it is movement. Helping with rules is more thinking, less moving. But they are both things that have people! I like people."

Megi blushes!! Quite a bit, actually.

"That's very direct. Is that how you do it? Okay, I can do that. I think- I think I do want to have sex with you. Because I've been thinking 'I wish he would touch me more' several times. I want you to think I look good and say so. I was thinking, I wonder if Armeŋ would like the sight of my breasts tangled up in the silk or in rope. I was thinking, I wonder where he would touch me first. I wonder how his core muscles feel. ...Also, that job sounds a little bit like followers of Erius."

He beams at her.

"Yes, that is how you do it! I think you would look nice tangled up," he informs her. "I could ..."

He stares up at the ceiling for a moment, trying to find the words.

"How about I am getting us some food, and you are getting water, and then you tell me Notal sex words so I can say what I am wanting to do?" he proposes. "I'm not sure which ones the 'core muscles' are, but I think I will like finding out."

She giggles. "Mm! Yes, good. Is doing sex illusions to help with words here a problem? Or do we need to get the private room?"

He thinks about it. The club's policies weren't really written with magic in mind, but that's ... probably analogous to someone showing porn on their phone? Which would be a bit strange, but not a problem if it wasn't bothering people. And also people will love learning new words, so nobody is likely to complain too much.

"It is probably okay? If nobody says to stop. People like learning words," he tells her.

He releases her hand near a free table, and goes to grab a little plate of assorted finger foods. He heard Kitsune like sweets, so he adds some cookies alongside the fried cheese things and the sliced vegetables.

"Alright. And I suppose these words will go on the phones for other people to learn, eh? Hehe. Funny, that sex words will go before certain other ones... Oh, I've been avoiding touching you unless you touch me because you're not wearing a black bracelet, should I keep doing that?"

Ooh, cookies! She nibbles lightly as she begins... Lecturing. Each one comes with an illusion, usually not actually sexually explicit. 'Core muscles' are these ones. The word for this is 'penis' but it can also be referred to by the following slang. This type of act is called that, and this other one is called that... A 'whore' or 'prostitute' is a 'sex worker' but it's sometimes a low-status job on Tirra, ask the diplomat people for more info on that... And so on.

"You can touch me," Armeŋ tells her. "You just had to ask first, and I say it's good."

He watches the illustrations with interest. And then, when she has run through a good chunk of vocabulary (and recovered her breath), he demonstrates his new-found language proficiency. At length, and with great enthusiasm.

"... until they sing of us in legend."

And then he scoops her out of her seat and throws her over his shoulder. He wraps a hand around the base of her tail to steady her as he carts her across the room toward the entrance to the private rooms.

"Does this sound good to you?"

"I think I'm about to feel very welcomed." She kisses the back of Armeŋ's neck. "Sounds good to me~"

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, a cheerful woman is giving Weiss a once over as they both stroll away from the park.

"Your costume's pretty good!" she tells her in flawless Notal. "Did you get someone to hand-sew the robes? That takes dedication! Honestly, it's super flattering that you all would go to so much effort for me."

Oh, are we in character already?

"Nah, these are old and ratty and shined up with magic. I wonder what this planet's museums are like, actually, got any favorites?"

She winks at her.

"'Magic', sure. Well ... I haven't exactly been here long enough to see for myself, you know? But the government people were telling me that the science museum downtown is really something to see."

She sighs a little wistfully.

"I don't know, though. I kind of want to go see the big art museum in ... what was the name? Twin River City? But getting to the other continent would be, like, a whole thing at this point."

"Man, even sorcererboats take like... Three days to go from the frontier to the inner part of the Marches? Fourteen knots? Ish? Crossing an ocean, blech. That's a couple weeks. I'll have to poke the science museum after this card game thing I was going to go to."

She does know jets exist, but would a naive guess at a Weiss know that? This is interesting to think about.

Man, sorcererboats? Did she just make up a word, or did Amkera miss a reference in one of the books.

Well, if she were the real Weiss, she would know for certain which one it was; but she would also know that the people pretending to be her wouldn't necessarily know. But it's pretty clear what a sorcererboat is from context. So if she were Weiss, she would probably not want to pretend not to know what a sorcererboat is, because that would imply that she was pretending to be pretending to be Weiss poorly.

So she should totally behave as though sorcererboats are a normal thing and not something an overzealous Weiss-pretender made up to sound cool. Also, she should probably update in the direction of making up more cool-sounding magic things, to fit in with the crowd — which is a valid update to make because if she were the real Weiss, the real Weiss would think the same thing (except she's probably use real cool-sounding magic things, but nobody else would be able to tell which ones are real or not, so it doesn't make a practical difference).

Light gods! She's having so much fun already.

"Oh man! Are you going to the Card Reality tournament too?"

Her accent on the SCOL words is noticeable.

"I was going to check it out as well! Tirra has board games, obviously, but it doesn't really have big card games like that. Just Sorcerers' Wager or Geels."

"Sure. I'm going in completely blind for the Card Reality thing. I've been reading about the kinds of games, there's a lot you can do. I like the idea of engine*-building games pretty generally? Industrial revolution!" ('engine' and 'industrial revolution', said in SCOL with a Notal accent). 

"Though, Tirra doesn't have lots of stuff that's just kind of everywhere here. Just... Tools, knowledge. The Steelmaking Otherworlder was the best at his thing out of all of 'em and he wasn't that great. It turns out making everything by hand is hard, who knew. Wizardry and witchcraft helps buuuut-" Shrug. "Only ever so much."

...She should show them Homestead. If only to fuck with peoples' heads at how it was "put together in a few days". She doesn't actually want to reveal herself with magic, but anything short of that should be fair game, right?

"For sure. It's actually pretty interesting—"

Shit would Weiss actually know details about the history of the industrial revolution at this point. Uh. Be vague!

"—how much difference a few little changes in circumstance make over time. Now that our worlds have met, do you think there will be as much difference between them in a few years?"

"A few years? Yeah. You can't build a city like this in three, five years from nothing. Even with trade. Fifty years? Who knows. Cursed ground is still kind of a big deal, you know?"

"Well, sure. But there are so many more people here. If only a small fraction of people on Tirra can become wizards, but that same fraction here can become wizards — before you even get into the number of farmers — that's a lot more people to help push back the cursed ground, isn't it?"

Is that overly magic-centric? Probably not; the real Weiss hasn't had long to get used to the impact of having excess industrial capacity.

"Mmh..."

She shakes her head. She doesn't know what the Light Gods are up to. But only priestesses can really get rid of cursed energy, not wizards. Killing the gribblies mostly just scatters it around to reform in a year or three. Which makes it safer for priestesses to purify, at least. There are probably spells for it, but like, that was one time a wizard helped them take out a Cryptid...

"May Galasa guide us to victory, I guess."

Amkera nods.

"Absolutely," she agrees. "Do you see the game shop? I think it's supposed to be somewhere on this block. Hold on, I got one of the Emergency Services people to get me a map ..."

She digs around in a pocket for a paper map of the city with a few different locations circled.

Don't mind her she's just dwelling on THE PEOPLE SHE FAILED TO SAVE.

"...Is that it?" She points at a likely decorative sign.