"Borrowed from who?" asks Rynaeri after another silence.

"Hagan over there. He isn't going to come mug me for it, I'll just sell spells in my spare time for a while and pay him back. And if I didn't he still probably wouldn't mug me, I think he's probably more the leave wild animals in your bed type."

"Fy is very tame."

"It would be the gentlest occurrence of a snake in one's bed ever. She could carry a little invoice in her coils."

"Huh," says Rynaeri, looking between them.

"I like surfacers but if you want to go back down there's an aperture into Shazeun not far off and they don't seem like they're bristling right now, I can establish you there. Or if you like the surface but not Osirion specifically you might like Absalom. I think Absalom would be your speed, now that I think of it. Once you're a little less overwhelmed. I stopped there for a bit on my way here and I actually liked it a lot myself but I kept wanting to go after the Starstone very prematurely and it was right there and I decided I'd better wait till I was closer to ready to make it my primary port of call."

"What's it like?"

Belmarniss can occupy most of the remaining time before it's time to resurrect Chal in talking about what Absalom is like.

The priestess comes back in. Sets up her sketchpad again. "I think you inevitably fail the first time," she says as she works. "Hmmm, no, not quite inevitably, but going about it like that, you will."

"Why's that?"

"If you try it as soon as you're ready, you'll be unready. Even once I've said that, I think. This is not the reason I believe this, but ...you must have noticed that 'wanted the Starstone all their life, worked for it, reached the Starstone' is not a story among those of the ascended gods, and it is not because it is unheard of among mortals."

"Huh. That's, uh, potentially useful advice - do you have a guess when I should -"

"It seems like it would be easier to fix things as a god, so it is inefficient to try to fix them as a mortal. Right? I think this is a mistake you are making."

And then there's another drow body. 

She is going to come back later and see if she does consultations or something but. "Dad -"

He is figuring out how to breathe. It seems to be complicated. Belmarniss drapes him in a cloak.

She leaves.

Chal takes much longer to say anything.

When he looks up he doesn't recognize Belmarniss; he squints at her, figures out how to turn his head, looks at his wife.

"It's Niss," says Rynaeri. "Sovi's at home. We'll get her when we're ready."

Chal looks at Belmarniss for a bit. Then he looks at Hagan. Belmarniss says, "He's my adventuring companion. - I'm a sorcerer like Mom and a wizard on top of that."

Chal considers this. Spends a few minutes working out the process of adjusting his cloak.

About an hour later Belmarniss convinces him into the rest of his clothes and he winds up sitting on the floor with his head in Rynaeri's lap, still quiet. When the sun is low outside, Rynaeri casts a Floating Disk and piles her husband onto it and they follow Belmarniss out.

Belmarniss asks the receptionist on the way if Nefreti does consultations or if the cryptic advice must be had only incidentally in passing.

"Uh, we can put in a request but she usually declines them. What about, she's more likely to accept if it's about original magic research."

"It's about some things she said incidentally in passing about me and my, uh, adventuring career - and how many of me there are whatever that means - has she got a glossary - but I have some original magic research projects cooking if that will get me the opportunity to encounter more incidentals, there's a spell downstairs for letting allies through spell resistance that I'm wondering if it can be adapted to various other purposes."

"I'll put in a request. You'll have to make a substantial donation even if she accepts, so you know."

"How substantial?"

"Probably around another thousand."

"Well. Not this month I guess. If she does wanna tell me anything about... how many of me there are or whatever... I can usually be reached at the Onyx."

And she catches up to her parents.

He will shadow until she has them settled in, just in case.

"I was expecting this to be a weird day but I did not see the way it was weird coming."

"Nefreti? I hadn't met her before but everyone says Nethys drives his clerics a bit crazy, eventually."

"She knew about my brother. Though I guess I could be reading into it."

"Yeah. She might have, but also - fake two-bit psychics with a ball that can't scry sometimes do a damned good job, just mumbling under their breath and seeing what you react to."

"Or it could've been a lucky guess just 'cause we're drow, in retrospect. Though there being only one dead one is a lowball."

"Tried writing it down. So you could read it back over when you were less distracted. I probably fucked it up, but."