It could be either, yeah, he really did only just get here and they haven't written to any other Crafters yet or read any books. Which reminds him, the fleshcrafter friend he mentioned a minute ago is interested in meeting Vesherti (or whoever's going to be his main point of contact with the locals, but he's under the impression Vesherti has taken the project on in at least the medium term?) over the ansible at some point.

"Yes, I've taken on the project of being the point of contact for Crafters. If we turn out not to work well together, or once we end up with too much contact for one person to handle, I can pass the project on to other people. But I would be delighted to talk with your fleshcrafter friend! Do you know if there are times of day that would work better for them?"

She's most readily available in the evenings - the time of day is roughly the same here as for her. She's willing to make time earlier in the day if she needs to but it'll take her a few days to arrange for it, she's usually fairly busy.

"The evening should be fine," Vesherti agrees.

He's going to be working long days for a while, probably. But that is so totally worth it to be the point person for alien contact.

"Are all of your ansibles from one person to another person? There's no pebbleclinker for sorting letters to different people? I'm pretty sure there isn't, but I ask because our pebbleclinker people are working on a prototype for connecting an ansible to our phone system, so if there were something like that I could talk to your friend without having to bother you for the use of your ansible."

Not on anything like the library's scale, no. Little pebbleclinkers that let people send messages to their neighbors who also have ansibles to it are pretty common but he doesn't know of anyone who's trying to expand theirs like that.

Vesherti nods.

"Alright, that's what I was expecting. Will you let me know what evening works for both you and your friend, then?"

Sure, he'll leave her a note when he gets home. If tonight works for her does Vesherti want to know about it?

"Yes, please."

All right. He thinks that's pretty likely.

He's ready to move around a little - maybe not leave the park entirely but have another look at the shops around the edge. He kind of wants to get a local-style robe for himself, is there anyplace with those here?

"There is!"

Vesherti scans the shops, and points at a clothing shop near the far side of the park.

"Most clothing shops have pre-made robes in a few common cuts and colors; if you'd prefer, we can also find a shop that will cut a robe to fit you exactly, or make custom designs. But that one is probably a good starting place."

A pre-made one is fine; he intends to convert it to crafting material anyway so he can make size adjustments and things from there.

He heads over to look in the window.

The shop is a little smaller than the restaurants — people are less likely to suddenly decide to buy a new robe while spending time in the park — but there are still a variety of clothes available. One of each style is displayed on either a hanger or a mannequin. More copies of the garment are then stored rolled up on shelves behind that, in the four basic colors (red, orange, green, blue) plus a few in brown or grey. The shop sells not only robes, but also undergarments, socks, hats, shawls, scarves, shirts, and skirts. Pants are absent, for some reason. The other garments have more patterns and subtle color variation than most of the robes, although the robes aren't all one flat color. The prices are higher than someone from Earth might expect, for clothing, but Traveler probably doesn't see anything unreasonable about them.

The three main styles of robe on display are: a long but close-fitting version, a shorter loose and swooshy version, and a long-sleeved version made with thicker fabric. There may be more styles hidden away inside — not all of the shop can be seen from the windows.

The chart they showed him when they were first explaining things seemed to indicate that the different designs of robe mean something, but he didn't get an explanation of what, should he know more about that? Also he's a little surprised to see orange robes here, could he get another explanation of what those mean?

"Orange is not very popular — it's sort of a softer red. If you just treat it as a shade of red you'll be fine," Vesherti advises. "The designs of robe are kind of about a mix of things, including where you're from, what the robe is for, and what you think looks good. But the difference between those three designs is that they're gendered. The close-fitting version is something that you'd see more men wearing, the looser version is something you'd see more women wearing, and the long-sleeved version is something you'd see more people who aren't men or women wearing. The association is very vague, though, even more than gender usually is. You can wear any style and people won't read too much into it, especially since you're a Crafter and we haven't really talked about how Crafters do gender. You do look fairly male, according to how we usually parse these things, and I get the same sense from your crafting. A few very traditional people, or people who are very bad with faces might think you are a woman or a person who is neither male nor female if you wear those styles, although you can always just clarify."

He is male, yeah, and prefers to be unambiguous about it. There are gendered trends with clothing, for Crafters - vests tend to be masculine and hair ornaments tend to be feminine, for an obvious example - plus some communities pick up gendered fashions sometimes, but most Crafters just wear what they like.

Vesherti nods.

"Yes, it's the same here. As I said, the trends are pretty vague. In this part of the world, there were historically more social distinctions between genders, but those have been weakening over time for several reasons, not least of which is that there is more travel between cities now and cities disagree on what things should go with which genders. You could wear a less styled robe —"

He points at a plain robe which comes to somewhere between the lengths of the others hanging tucked away in a corner.

"— or you could wear a skirt instead, if you wanted to avoid gendered clothing. For men's clothing, though, there's that robe, that hat —"

He points to a green great stellated dodecahedron fascinator.

"— or there may be some more styles in the back that we can't see from the window. Clothing shops tend to put the most eye-catching designs near the windows, to catch people's attention."

He thinks he just wants the robe, for himself, for today. His fleshcrafter friend would like the fascinator, though.

He peers through the window a little more, checking for other interesting things tucked away in the back, and then gets out his phone to find out if he remembers the procedure from earlier well enough to make a purchase here. (Yes, mostly, though he's not quick at it.)

There's less call for clothing order deliveries, but þereminia values standards. Following the same procedure will see a shop attendant come out a moment later with a rolled up men's robe in his chosen color.

And the fascinator, presumably; he'll have to convert it to crafting material and then copy the shape onto the ansible for her but that won't take long. He asks the attendant to put them in the grey saddlebag he's added to his walker for the purpose.

They nod to him, leave the items in his saddlebag, and then head back inside.

Nice.

He's -- well, actually, it occurs to him that there's not actually much need to wait to get preserved food until he's going to want it, so while he was planning on leaving the dill carrot thing for the end that can actually happen whenever. And it came up last night that he really shouldn't use his existing emergency alert system here - it's dangerously loud if they can't make perfect sound mufflers to counter it - so he should probably find out what the local options are for that sooner rather than later, but those two are the only other things he's particularly planning on looking for today. What else is there to do?

"We can stop by a tiny-lightning-devices shop, sure."

"For options that involve staying outdoors — we could go see a music performance, or go see the public gardens. Or we could climb up and get a view over the city and look at the architecture. We could try some samples of different styles of food, or get other things that you want to stock up on. You can get copies of our books on your phone already, but we could go by the physical library building and pick up printed books. You could talk to more ordinary people who are hanging out outdoors. Hmm."

Vesherti taps his chin thoughtfully.

"We could go take a boat down the river and see some of the older buildings that were first built along the river. Or I could see if there are any big non-physical games going on that we could join today. You could do physical games too, but I would worry about someone bumping you by accident. Later in the day, there's going to be a play that we could attend, but that's not for a while. There are probably more things that I'm not thinking of, and there are plenty more things to do indoors if none of that sounds appealing."

Seeing more of the architecture sounds nice, and he's curious about the gardens. He wants to hear some local music at some point but he's not especially in the mood for it today, and he expects he's going to want to spend a day on that topic when he gets to it. He should probably not overdo it with the local food right away. The library might be interesting if there's a way to make that a quick thing rather than an in-depth one, but he's not expecting that to be the case. He does want to talk to people; he's a little worried about that getting overwhelming but it went fine when he tried it last night, he expects it'll go fine again today in practice. And he likes watching physical games, not so much participating in them.

Of those, the architecture viewing and talking to people sound the most straightforwardly fun.

Vesherti nods.

"Alright. There's a tall building with a nice view over the rest of the city that we can go visit. Then if any of the buildings catch your eye from up there, we can go look at them in more detail and stop and talk with people along the way. The building is a bit too tall to climb safely, but I think it has external stairs we can use. Does that seem like a good plan to you?"

Sure, or if Vesherti wants to try a personal floating rig he can craft up two of them.