Eventually Maitimo's parents suggest to him that if he wants to sleep at home today they should head out. He declares that he wants to sleep here. They shrug and leave. He settles down in a bed of brightly colored flowers.

Well, if they're sure it's safe. She watches her kids go to sleep nearby and thinks about how this has been a really, really insane week, but she seems to have gotten through it in one piece, and so has Maitimo and so have Zana and Connor, so how terrible can any of this have been, really.

She looks over maps and talks to people and double-checks that all of the unresponsives have enough food, and eventually she sleeps.

When she wakes up, people are in the final stages of preparing a slightly larger group to go and explore Tirion. They point out that she's one of only three humans who has ever actually been there, and she is sort-of-voluntold to add herself to the group. This beats sitting around in the forest with nothing in particular to do, so she doesn't protest it.

Zana thinks that going into the city is an excellent way to spend today. Also that Maitimo should come, Maitimo can show her whatever all the good things about the city are.

"I can!!! I know all of the good things in the city and you can meet my grandpa who is the king."

Zana kind of thinks that kings are extremely suspicious and probably evil, BUT they are maybe in a fairy tale world now and the rules are a little different in fairy tales. She decides to wait and see.

"That sounds OK."

Bounce bounce. Who all is coming into the city? Have any of them remembered their names?

Karen, the woman who knows about a dozen languages, and six other people are going to Tirion. None of the ones from hell claim to have remembered their names.

Awwww well okay.

Lórien produces a smooth paved road to Tirion.

That's kind of weird but OK.

Zana doesn't think this is weird. This is pretty much how fairy tales work, and Tirion is OBVIOUSLY a fairy tale city.

They pass through fields full of crops. The road winds up a hill. At the top of the hill is Tirion. It's golden and shining.

Yep, that pretty much checks out. 

"What should we do first?"

"We could go to the gardens? Or the forums? Or the shops? Or the palace? What does everyone want to see?"

Three of the adult humans are together enough to have opinions. All of those vote for the shops first.

The streets are not very crowded at this hour. There are still some vendors at the corners. They're singing. This shop has glassware; this one has pottery; this one has dresses; this one has cutlery; this one has scarves; this one has shoes.

Some of that sounds useful. She mostly wants to look at prices, if they're posted, to get a sense of the relative costs of things. It'd be good to stop living off of other people's charity as soon as possible. She's super unclear on how she's going to make money, of course; she's not an artist or a tradesperson and she's pretty sure literally none of the jobs that she's worked so far have been invented yet. 

"Hey Maitimo? Do people, like, hire other people to do things, here, or is all of the exchange just goods?"

No prices are posted. 

"You can ask people to do things for you? What sort of things do you have in mind?"

"Um, like, does anybody need anything done? Or - I assume I can't actually do anything that nobody else can, but maybe there are easy things that some people are too busy to do and would pay someone for? Cleaning? Harvesting... whatever needs to be harvested? Stuff in that vein?"

"We don't do the thing here where you have to work to get money and have money to get things."

"So the shops are all just - people giving stuff away?"

"Yeah."

Well that's - annoying, actually, a human settlement in the forest is inevitably going to be a huge strain on everyone else, and this way they have no way of measuring how much of a strain they are and no way of telling when they've stopped being a strain and no particular incentive to stop, other than security and stability concerns. 

The other humans do not appear to share her feelings about this. They would like clothes and shoes and pottery and probably lunch, if they can find someone giving away food.

All of these are available, from three or four different competing shops. It is not properly lunchtime but there are people distributing food anyway. 

The humans have been on pretty restricted food access for a long, long, time, and the novelty of being able to eat whenever they want has not yet worn off.

Karen is still pretty concerned about the effects of the humans having no particular incentive to ever do anything, partly because there have got to be reasons to do things and they're probably just being obscured by, like, high social trust or whatever. 

"Are people going to get, like, resentful? If the humans keep taking their stuff and not providing anything of value back to the people of Tirion?"

" - I think probably eventually? But not for a long time, you were in a terrible place and now you are all unwell and you will need some time to recover and also you rescued me. It would be absurd and jealous to expect things from you now."