"Ah huh!"

"All right, time for a ten mile unchaperoned hike followed by spelunking, bring your potion of cure moderate reputational wounds."

Off they set.

"I'm not trying to marry any nice teenagers whose father or brother is a cleric. My reputational wounds can heal with bed rest."

"Oh, I was planning to steal it. My reputation is very important to me and there's this rumor going around that I'm a potion thief, can't have that."

"Oh no. I had no idea, or I'd have stocked up for you."

"I forgive the oversight," she says magnanimously. "You remembered the goggles?"

"Ah huh."

"I am optimistic that this will be fun. After the two hour hike."

"'m looking forward to it, or I'd have told you to take someone else. Try not to get me killed, though, it'll be very hard on the poor people who did it."

"I will try not to get you killed. Would that wreck your secret identity?"

"Probably. Might depend on the details, I guess. Maybe don't tell Fazil and Mahdi I died, if I did, just in case I can save it somehow."

"I'll sit on it for a bit."

"Probably if that happens they'll never let me out again, though."

"Well, if you die and then I don't hear from you I suppose I could try visiting?"

Snort. "I guess so."

"But how will I find the place? Would you say it's distinctive in any way? Are there landmarks? Will the locals be able to give me directions?"

"You just have to close your eyes and follow your heart through the streets of Sothis and you'll bump right into it. And then get tackled by a dozen men in uniform."

"I could turn surfacey first! Probably wouldn't help. It never helps."

"What, never?"

"I mean, it's possible that the times I've tried it, it has in fact averted some incidents, but I don't notice a statistical net improvement. Either elves are just as weird in any color, or surface elves aren't weird and people expect me to act like one and I don't know how, and especially don't know their friend so-and-so the surface elf even though they are sure everyone with pointy ears has met him."

"Knew a couple of elves growing up. Tutors. They seemed - not that weird. Maybe they were weird and I just had a weird baseline. Maybe people are just dicks."

"A tutor's pretty filtered. And would've adjusted to you rather than expecting you to meet them halfway. They were there to teach - the language? That all?"

"Nah. History, geopolitics, elf culture stuff."

"Ooh, elf culture, what's that like?"

"It was mostly specific to Kyonin and the Osirian expats from Kyonin. Learned about their gods and stuff, their government, their relations with their neighbors, problems they had with Osirian law..."