"It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you?"

"Huh? No, nobody's out to get me, I'm just being very careful."

"I didn't mean that literally, it's just a saying in my world."

"Oh, that's interesting. Let's try this. A fish in the boat is worth two in the sea?"

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

"Same meaning. Don't let a dog guard your food."

"Don't think I recognise that one."

"Because he'll probably eat it instead of guarding it."

"Oh, fox and henhouse for us."

"Don't poke the sleeping dragon."

"Let sleeping dogs lay, maybe."

Nils is perfectly willing to exchange idioms for a while.

So is Sadde! This is fun.

Eventually he breaks off to say, "I should get back to work. I'll call to schedule some time when you can see the new ship in a week or two."

"Okay! I'll see you then."

Onwards.

Nobody else calls him between then and arriving back at the World Tree.

He seeks an audience with the Tall Shadows again.

They are more than happy to welcome him back. Progress already!

They are going to visit this one spot he took pictures of and mark where the new 'house' should go. He can find them back here in a month or so and they will have plans for the rest of it, probably.

Their list of desired stuff is started but not finished, if he wants to get started on it.

Sure, let's get started.

What they have so far is fairly mundane, even expected, to start with. Furniture. Sundry house things and tools and consumer magic items.

Then it gets a little expensive... They are very particular about the mix of metals this set of tools with no obvious purpose must be made of, with a significant fraction being precious, and they require two dozen flawless rubies of identical size.

Then it gets weird. A bolt of spider silk that has bathed in the light of exactly thirteen different suns. Sticks of chalk mined from the border between two tiles. A large quantity of O-negative human blood, enough to feed a vampire for years, less than a week before it goes into stasis, healthy donors not required, and a magical stasis device to store it.

...The caginess and secrecy when they talk about this list changes from general caginess that they had before to the sort of straight-faced closed-mouthness that Fair Folk seem to have when talking about reproduction.

...right. Okay this is. Absolutely bizarre. At least he can generate the blood himself.

Do they want his crystal number to contact him with further requirements?

Further requirements will be on the order of housewares. Not urgent. The difficult and specific things are all covered. Come see them again in a month.

Okay. Bye bye!

Heading back to Suvak now, presumably?

(He gets a call from a newspaper. One of the features of the expensive comms package he bought is filtering for this - just tap face two of the crystal twice if you would like to indicate to them 'no comment'.)

Back to Suvak, yes, and what the heck does the paper want, he is curious.