"No! For fuck's sake, man - what does the thing do, do you think the galaxy is your favorite sister now or something -"

"I don't think so. Will I be able to leave soon?"

"I'm taking you with me to the university to let them sort you out." He tucks the horn into its case. Makes sure the necklace is wrapped up properly. "This way. Probably I should be cleaning up all the stuff you knocked over but that's not my job."

"Okay."

Out of the dead lady's house they go. "So the horn. You ever heard of it before?"

"No." He manages to choke out. 

At least the wind chimes sound sort of nice, though he's increasingly confused about where they are located.

They seem to be following the guy! "The benefit is that you can hear where artifacts are. That's why I was in the old lady's house, so now her heirs can sort through her stuff and know none of it that I left behind is magic and it's safe. Drawback is the thing where you've got to tell your favorite person all your secrets. The term of art for your favorite person, if you've touched the horn and it matters who that is, is your 'keeper'."

Maybe the guy has a speaker or his species makes these noises or something.

"... oh. That. Oh."

"What happens if you can't."

"Then you feel like shit forever, I fucking guess? Pick a new favorite person as fast as you can."

"-how." he asks, his voice breaking.

"God, I don't know, I took this job because my wife was on board with it and if anything happens to her my brother'll pick up where she left off and only make a little bit of fun of me for having to tell him all about my erstwhile sex life. Make friends while you think you're the worst person in the universe for not being able to tell the galaxy you used to wet the bed or whatever."

... oh, he needs to tell his mom about his masturbation habits, doesn't he.

"Mm."

"I recommend not fucking teleporting into dead people's houses next time. What does your teleportation artifact even do? Is it the drawback, that it sends you places uncontrollably?"

"I don't know."

"How'd you wind up touching a mystery artifact before you had an uncontrollable teleportation problem?"

"Could we not talk right now."

"Sheesh, fine, suit yourself."

Lucien will curl up and wait to get to a new place where he can ask about where he is and then if he's not nearby... figure out whether without the mind control he'd consider helping this civilization achieve warp travel to be a remotely reasonable choice.

Teno drives them to the university and pulls up out front of the artifacts building.

There's a guy standing out front yelling, "FUCK. FUCKSHITFUCK. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK," and looking kind of bored otherwise. He reads minds!

Lucien would probably be interested in whatever strange cultural thing is going on here, were it not for how irrelevant it seems to him fixing his mistakes and getting word to his mom about all the secrets he's kept from her.

Teno parks. He and the yelling guy have a brief, swearing-punctuated conversation and then Teno beckons Lucien in.

The sooner he gets this over with, the sooner he can figure out just how far away he's stranded himself.

As Lucien disembarks from the car, a young woman at the next building over trips and falls over on the sidewalk with a yelp.

Change of plans, Lucien is sprinting over to the woman who fell.

"Are you okay??" Is there blood? Bone? Something twisted?

"Oh, uh, I think I'll be fine, thanks." She's sitting up on her own. "Do I know you?"