"We got very very lucky. And maybe we'll get luckier still and you'll find people whose music and company you enjoy."

"Is 'company' a euphemism or is just socially hanging out with people also costly."

"You ask a lot of questions so with you it seems to be a pretty good way of accumulating debt, actually. Probably eventually you'll run out of questions."

"I dunno, hasn't happened yet and I'm a hundred and seventy two." Tailswish.

"A year like the time between two winters?"

"Yes. Though, like, in sidereal time."

"You are much older than me but I've had much more question-asking time."

"I'm not sure if it makes sense to conceptualize my age in something other than question-asking time unless you're specifically figuring out what history I've been around for, which would not be like your available set of history anyway."

"Probably not. Or how much you know about variance in the severity of winters."

"I don't usually live in a place that really has a climate, so."

"Ah. Are you familiar with how seasons work, in places that have them?"

"Yes, I've been to some."

"One winter a human came to a ring near a court I know, hoping we'd have food. I don't know where he thought we'd have gotten food."

"Humans who know you exist but not much about you might assume you have to eat."

"If we did then we'd starve every winter. Or maybe slow down every winter, I guess."

"Some of the food at your feast looked like it was weird sizes? That doesn't let you cheat enough?"

"It's pretty useful! But I think humans have to work pretty hard to preserve enough food for the winter and sped-up humans eat a thousand times as often as slowed-down humans and don't eat a thousandth as much, so even if we could grow and preserve everything while big and eat it while small I think we'd be out of luck."

"What happened to the human?"

"They told him they didn't have food. Then I guess he probably starved. But there wasn't - we don't have feasts for sunrises and sunsets in the winter."

"Well, if I'm still here then maybe you can."

"Kind of surprised you don't want to slow down and help the humans."

"I might. I am not doing it at this time because complicated reasons."

Nod.

"Where are you going to want the medicines?"

There's a place across from the storage rooms in this lower level which is cool and dry.