Feume nips at his fingers without actually biting him.

Her English is rusty but, "Maybe not do that. He doesn't like strangers, and we're from a different world, he's not Active."

"O-oh. Ah. I- sorry. I'll- go." And indeed, he goes.

They are not bothered further.

Then Feume will graze happily and Walta will relax in the park, humming and clanging two wrenches to the tune of an old song, and other such things.

And then navigate back to that one house.

"Hi again! ...I did not ask your name and did not provide mine, sorry. My name's Flora.

"Master says you are welcome to stay with us! If you agree to help with groceries." She is somewhat uncomfortable saying the second sentence, and explains further -- "Master doesn't like doing them, I only go once a week or so, and the other apprentices are too young. It's a perpetual problem."

"I'm Walta. You mean... Shopping? May as well. And I saw what you meant about people doing lots of weird things, it seems fun."

"Yeah, shopping." She seems relieved and brightens at the return of her favorite topic. "Yeah, some weird things are quite fun. I, personally, don't enjoy most new things and just do all the weird stuff I've already tried and am comfortable with. Which doesn't really help with activating, but it's still fun."

"Shopping is fine." She relates the weird things she's tried so far. "Those sound on the right track?"

"Mostly! A few at the beginning were slightly off but then you got really into the spirit of things, it seems."

"This place is nice and relaxed and actually pretty fun I like it."

"I'm glad! 'This place', as in Moondust, or the park, or?"

"This world. Though I guess I haven't seen all that much of it, but it sounds like a nice place overall. Especially if you get interdimensional stuff regularly and send 'em back."

"Yes, it is pretty nice, and yes we do. I'm pretty sure there's like a forum for people from different worlds, even, that's how common it all is."

"You'd like milliways I think, have I told you about milliways? Do you need any shopping done now?"

"You said it's a bar, I think? ...Yeah, we need some stuff, we can go together and chat some more on the way and I can show you how things work and where to find everything." She retrieves a neat shopping list and a bag. "The shop that has everything we need is a long way away, we'll go by bus, is that okay?"

"Buses are fine. Milliways is... An interdimensional bar that borrows doors sometimes and shows you all sorts of interesting people to talk to. Doesn't like being used for profit much, like, that's not in the spirit of the place or something. You can meet dangerous or creepy types there too, but there's good security. You're safe in the main bar area. Security is guaranteed to be able to handle anyone there, by time squeezing nonsense. I plan to sign up for it eventually."

They get on a bus. Flora is visibly uncomfortable with being on a crowded bus and makes her way to the very back.

"Ooh, interesting. How does it borrow doors? What are some examples of interesting people? How does it 'not like' things, how is 'profit' defined? What's time squeezing?"

"Nobody knows how the doors work exactly, but sometimes you open one and it goes to milliways instead of wherever it's supposed to. Profit, well, you'd think with Bar able to buy and sell things to arbitrary places you could get some crazy arbitrage, but she only lets you do that a little bit and only if you really kinda need it. Doing things it doesn't like apparently makes you less likely to get doors again later, and less likely to find interesting or useful people, and generally not having as good a time of it. Milliways' time is all kinds of twisty, not sure where to start with that."

"Aha." She is acutely aware of various bus-related sensory experiences, so it occurs to her to ask, "Is it like a normal bar in terms of smells, or is there magic preventing it? And if you're having trouble explaining, just give me some examples of whatever. Like 'twisty', what qualifies as twisty?"

"Milliways is pretty clean, cleaner than most bars I'd guess? And doesn't really smell like anything except what other people are having, which is sometimes beer and other bar-smelling things yes. Time pauses in your world when you're in milliways, usually, unless you leave and don't intend to come back. If you leave the main room and hang out in the backyard for an hour you could come back and see the same person who was there before and it's only been a minute to them. Stuff like that."

"How does it know whether or not I intend to come back? And woah, that must be really weird. Okay."

Something occurs to her; she takes a pen and a small notepad and jots down a list of seemingly-nonsense words, then puts it all back.

"Milliways is best as an occasional interesting visit, I find. I've only gotten it three times ever so far, once every couple of months. What'chu writing?"

"Aha. Oh, uh, this is just me trying to construct -- or is it invent, might be invent or something -- an elixir. The words were a bunch of plant names I thought of that I haven't yet tried to include in my 'recipe'."

"Sounds like chemistry. Really weird metaphorical chemistry. Like old folk tales of witches... I'll stick to electricals and mechanical stuff, heh."

"It's really not chemistry! But I guess I can see how it would look like chemistry from an outside perspective. Oh, and the next stop is ours. We should start pushing to the front now --" she does so "-- just in case."

She's used to street trams which operate on much the same principles. "I should probably look at this routes and schedules if I'm going to be here for more than a few hours."