Hmmmm... does the library have podcasts on itself?

That takes some sorting... But yes! They seem to have been produced by locals, and some are actually recordings of radio programs. There's news and exploration reports and reviews of different library areas and reviews of works authored by library inhabitants...

News is always good. She finds something fairly recent and puts that on, making a querying noise at September about it once it's played enough to be clear what it is.

She looks over. "Hm?"

She has to pause it to type. "Is the news okay, or do you want something else?"

She shrugs. "News is fine."

News it is, then. Walk walk listen, does the news have anything interesting to say?

Not a lot in the first segment - though there's some possibly interesting hints as to how local cities and politics work. There's talk of trade, and scouting, and recent useful discoveries among the numerous books, and one mention of a doctor who was pulled through recently and has, after recovering from her disorientation, agreed to not only practice but teach medicine, and they'll be establishing admissions criteria to the first of the classes soon...

How about less news. How about that. What if... music. Music's pretty safe.

The music seems to lean really heavily toward 'soothing,' though of course there's every genre of music imaginable and then some. But locally produced music especially involves a lot of stringed instruments, woodwinds, and soothing, crooning voices.

She pokes at the offerings until she finds some peppy pop music from outside, and leaves the phone playing that while they walk. She seems distant, in contrast to it.

September glances at Rescue a lot, brow furrowed, but doesn't prod.

She catches September's eye after the third or fourth glance and shrugs, unhappily. "La'er."

She nods. "Okay."

They can keep moving, then; Denice leaves the music on until they stop for lunch.

She's still distant, after she's materialized them a pair of meals, but types anyway. "I'm probably not going to stop being weird about weird things." "You don't have to stay with me if you don't want to deal with it."

"I don't mind! I'm weird, and I'm used to weird." She frowns a bit. "I guess I'm mostly used to - other humans being the normal ones, while I'm the weird girl who likes dreaming and climbing trees and mechanics too much, and who doesn't have any human friends... But all my friends are - a wyvern who swears his dad was a library and who knows all the words from A through L, and a Marid who can jump around in time and whose shadow stole my first kiss once, and my own shadow who's the queen of Fairyland Below where everything's a shadow who once tried to steal all the magic from Fairyland, and reindeer people who live underground, and a lamp who got smart after turning a hundred and rescued me from the Island of Lost Things, and the Green Wind who's always traveling and who stole me away from my family so I could go to Fairyland, and his leopard, and a lady who herds magic bicycles... I met my future daughter once while she was time-traveling, though we didn't really talk... And others, too, Fairyland is - everyone there's weird."

"You're - very normal, actually, compared to everyone I know." Thoughtful frown. "Just - sometimes you seem upset or like something's hurting you, and I want to help."

She doesn't respond when September finishes talking, but spends several seconds just staring off at nothing, and then begins to type, spending much longer on it than her eventual result would suggest.

"I don't think it's bad to be scared of things that hurt people." "Even if they don't hurt most people."

"Yeah. Different things hurt different people. And even if it's not something that'll hurt you, it's okay to be scared of that if you're not really sure yet, or to be scared of it existing because it might hurt other people. Or - want it avoidable and talked about, since some things that hurt some people help other people. Most everyone from Fairyland Above would be hurt by Fairyland Below, but - I don't really like being in Fairyland Below a lot, but that doesn't make it bad if the shadows like it - and my shadow's started being a good queen so the shadows like it a lot now..."

"Oh and also there was that one time I had to explain to a Marid that I can't breathe underwater, and lots of shadows can't go out in sunlight - so my shadow's trying to make some parts of Fairyland Below good for us both so we can hang out, but that's kinda slow, and like sometimes there's other stuff that's harder to explain to people or more complicated, like the Marquess was forced out of Fairyland and trapped on Earth which was horrible for her, so she pushed her way back into Fairyland, but she had to hurt a bunch of people to stay, so she had to be stopped, but she didn't like that and was really hurt so instead me and her panther agreed she can be in an enchanted sleep until we figure out how to fix it - probably that wasn't the best solution but I hadn't actually grown my heart all the way yet... The Prince of All Fairylands might be able to do something but he's kinda useless, even if he did end the shadow wars... Mostly just by waking up though, he'd been dead and that was causing some instability, but apparently if you die as a baby and wake up as an adult then having royal blood doesn't make you automatically a good ruler, just acceptable to the magic. Probably he'll be more useful when he's not actually a year old."

Okay, sure, this can happen. Denice eats her lunch.

September does run out of ramble about different peoples in Fairyland eventually.

And after lunch they can get moving again, or at least Denice seems to think so - she doesn't say anything, just puts the music on again and sets off.

She's keeping a little more of an ear out for interesting landmarks, now.

September's scanning the titles they pass, picking a few out to carry with them for their next stop.

Landmarks aren't super densely packed, but they come nearer what sounds oddly like a forest or park after an hour.

Dusk changes course to go see it; after a few minutes she remembers to fill September in about the change.