"...nothing else is... right."

She shrugs and reaches for more dumplings. "Well I dunno. It just kinda sounds like you haven't figured out what you're supposed to be doing yet. Maybe it's ruling the world. But I find it's not great to get super married to specific futures, because, y'know, sometimes you get whisked away from California and then have to deal with wilderness survival and exiled princes, and it sucks, but you gotta keep on keeping on, y'know? Even if it does make it.... kind of unclear what you're supposed to be doing."

She chews her dumpling thoughtfully.

He looks thoughtful. Or possibly grumpy. It's kind of hard to tell which.

"I might be projecting."

He makes another Sound Of Minimal Amusement.

"No, I think you're right. Sometimes... things happen that were never supposed to happen... and you don't just shrivel up and disappear. You're still there, even without—all the things your life was supposed to be for."

"Yep! And sometimes it turns out it can be for different things. - I am not super sure what the different things are, right now, but I'm gonna figure it out."

"Good luck. I guess."

It is supremely obvious to her, when she's said it this way, that God or fate or the narrative has tossed her here, on exiled teenage prince of a major world power that is currently trying to take over the world.

She is super unclear what this means, but whatever she's supposed to be doing is probably tied up with whatever he should be doing. Because this is where she is now.

"So you're looking for the Avatar right now."

"Yeah," he says, with yet another example of his apparently endless repertoire of vaguely unhappy faces. This one looks sort of pensive.

"You got any, like, leads?"

"You were my lead."

"Oh. Well. Sorry about being kind of useless on that front."

"It's not your fault."

"Well, no, but I'm sorry anyway. I'd ask if I could help but I... don't actually know a lot about this place, let alone where you'd go to find the Avatar if no one else knows that right now."

"Yeah. It's tough."

Sigh.

"And I don't suppose you have any idea where a very lost person would go to find a probably-magical way back to her home realm."

"...the Avatar, probably."

"Well. Then it sounds like we're both stuck on the same thing."

"I guess so."

"I wish this helped us in any way. If you needed a... me, I'd offer to tag along for hire, but I don't know that I actually solve any of your problems. I guess I can talk to people without terrifying them."

"...talking to people without terrifying them might be... useful."

"This is totally within my capabilities. I require food for one human and one dog, sleeping arrangements for same, some number of coins but I'm not up on local exchange rates so I don't know what's fair, and if you start doing any war crimes in my presence we're not gonna get along very well. I can also fight. Preferably with a bow. I am much more impressive with a bow but I haven't been able to obtain one so far."

He contemplates these terms for a couple of seconds.

Then he says, "What's a war crime?"

"Um, so where I come from there are rules, in wars, that people mostly abide by, to avoid war being more horrible than it has to be. Stuff like, uh, don't attack civilians, especially don't attack children, if you take prisoners adhere to certain basic rules about the conditions they're kept in, don't, uh, genocide a bunch of innocent people, that is also against the rules. Don't go around raping or otherwise torturing members of the opposing side. Is this, like, seeming like a natural category yet - "

"Kind of?"