If that's how you'd prefer to travel! I can show you to wherever you'd like to go, if you'd rather arrive directly.

I could fly places, but you said you would accompany me and I wouldn't be able to carry you while flying - not comfortably - so it must be walking, she reasons. The two places I know to visit are the gardens and a train station, and the gardens are more pleasing. I will follow you, if that place will receive me now?

I'll text ahead so they'll be all ready. They're open. And he leads her out.

She follows after running a claw gently through some chest-feathers that got a bit tangled while she arranged her stuff. (Seeker's ship is gone by now, heading back to Tapa's neutral island.)

Industrial areas are uninteresting. Presumably the city gets more interesting, if even more built-up and busy, a bit closer to the nice garden?

Yup. They can go go over the bridge that gets them past the train tracks, and past some grocery warehouses and consumer goods warehouses, and past the last of the big cranes that hauls shipping containers onto and off of trains and trucks, and then they are in a low rent purple neighborhood. It has convenience stores and a passenger rail station and a hairdresser's and a glasses store and a liquor store and a nail salon and a pocket everything repair shop.

She slows down at the hairdresser, and actually stops in front of the nail salon.

...You can paint your fingernails! Another way I could decorate myself! Your paints must be very fine to make something like that work. To think I was content merely making sure all my claws were the same length!

Would you like to see if they'll paint your claws?

Yes. Very much yes. I would be even more orderly and perfect, it would be excellent. I would gladly pay a few Shiny Things for it, except I expect the artists will want money and not polished silver and clear quartz and preserved flowers.

We'll comp them and if you want to settle up later when you have money that will be fine. He addresses the salon purples, who are really excited! Bloom won't fit in the door, but they can bring out a bunch of stuff.

This is very exciting! She asks lots of questions about what the usual styles are! Probably there should be some amount of design for her and not just a flat color since she has a lot of surface area to work with, possibly swirls or shapes or a color gradient? What do these clearly artistic purples think? They'll probably have more locally fashionable ideas than her! ...Though a nod to symmetry and colors that at least loosely match her feathers should be maintained.

Her claws are the size of kitchen knives and about as sharp at their points, and are smooth, clean, and trim in a natural orangey-red color. They're not keratin, but turn out to take polish and paint fine.

They can do a gradient and then stuff on top of the gradient, such as sunset colors and then clouds?

That sounds beautiful. Excellent idea!

She's very good at holding the paws still, though her tail never stops swishing around excitedly.

They will happily gradient and then cloud all her claws! A crowd gathers to watch; a couple people take video of the whole thing.

(She thinks about getting her teeth painted as well, but one sniff of the paint puts an end to that notion.)

Is the crowd a problem? She asks Ruan Morlou. They're partially blocking the way, and that was a concern you mentioned about train stations.

It's possible here for people who want to go through to go around the block; train stations don't have detours like that.

I see. It's all your concern, now that I think of it. If it were a problem you would have done something on your own, yes? I apologize for doubting your responsibility.

She'll enjoy showing off her freshly painted claws and posing for the crowd a little bit, and thank the purples profusely and ask a few questions about maintenance, and after a while tell Ruan she wants to continue to the garden.

The purples advise her about what will chip or dissolve the paint, and how to take it off if it chips enough to be no longer decorative.

Ruan Morlou clears the way, shooing purples (and one orange and a yellow and a grey) aside as they proceed down the street.

It's a little nerve-wracking to be surrounded by crowds - of Tailless no less - but she doesn't let it get to her. She walks calmly behind him, head a couple feet higher than the average Amentan's.

The purple neighborhood abuts a commercial district full of restaurants and a plant nursery and a gym and bars and a hospital and a movie theater. They cross that street, and Ruan jukes a little right so they'll be going through an orange neighborhood instead of the adjacent grey one.

The bars merit a brief pause - alcohol affects the things she's looking for - the gym and plant nursery get her to slow down but not actually stop. And she has no knowledge of this city or ability to navigate it so does not question the chosen path.

Through the orange neighborhood they go. Brothel, massage parlor, advice nurse office, therapy practice, dermatologist, nursing home.

It's somehow amusing that Amentans sell sex, she comments upon understanding the brothel. I have seen something superficially similar and yet entirely different in purpose and significance among Draak.

Oh, what is it there?

It's reasonably common to offer pay to a prospective co-Creator in autumn if you want their traits in your children but don't impress them enough on your own for that. There is culture surrounding this that I'm not sure how to explain simply.

We have gamete donation but that's separate.