Less cranky. She'll make a face like this, she sends a mental image, if she's not comfy, she won't cry unless something's really wrong. She likes to gnaw on things and she has eight teeth.

Yep, he can handle that. He can even find her a chew toy when there's a quieter minute in which to do so.

And then Beka will be very busy acting out several versions of each scene.

She is pretty good at this and has acting experience and also depending on the director's life choices might be able to read their mind for notes!

The director's mind is not readable. It's common knowledge among people whose minds Beka can read that the director wishes she could have actors reading her mind but unfortunately she has secrets to keep.

Then Beka will have to get her notes by reading other people listening to the director since she will not be able to understand her directly. She will still try her best even though she's pretty sure she will not be beaten up for wrecking a hallucination if she flubs a line here.

It does not even cross anyone's mind that beating would be a possible response to flubbing a line.

They take a long break of several hours in the middle of the day and pick up again in the evening. They'll want her back again tomorrow and every day for the next month or so.

Fun! She collects her baby during the break and again when they cut for the day.

Once she speaks the local language fairly well, someone approaches her about the possibility of doing an interview for their news program.

"What's a news program?"

"...You know, an illusion of interesting things you've scried, with people who understand the big picture explaining them and why they're important? Like, what a storm that's coming looks like and someone talking about how much of it they expect the hurricane prevention teams to be able to take care of and when to expect what's left of it to hit the coast."

"I don't know how to change the weather."

"Yes, that's the sort of thing people are interested in hearing about you. Among other things. It's not every day we get immigrants with a thirteenth type of magic."

"Oh. Will you pay me?" She's getting the hang of this "money" thing.

They'll definitely do that.

Then sure, she will go on the program!

They have a lot of questions. Some of them she's answered before, but maybe now people will stop asking the same things as often.

They want to know about her magic, especially lots of details about osanwe. They want to know anything she can tell them about how she got here and her plans now that she's here. They want to know if there's anything she likes about the empire, or especially about Anavel Sani. They want to know if there's anything she misses from her home. They want to know about the species that live there and what sort of sun her planet has (...and if it doesn't, then they'd like to know if she happens to know how there came to be life there). They want to hear what she thinks of the local languages and how she learned Ilan so fast. They're interested to know whether she's noticed the atmosphere or gravity being different, and whether she's noticed any way physics is different here.

They spend more time questioning her than the length of the segment but that's what editing is for.

She can tell them about magic songs and about osanwë! There is a way to keep your thoughts private selectively but it's sort of complicated and you have to practice a lot and nobody could confirm you had it right but her. She is planning to raise her baby, who back home was stolen from her! She likes the idea of money, that's real neat, and how things are sometimes pretty, and her acting job. She misses her family, all sixteen foster siblings and two foster parents of it. There are orcs like her baby and Elves like her birth parents and just the one orf, herself, at this time, and Dwarves also exist she guesses but she doesn't know much about them. Her planet has no sun, she's pretty sure, but she only has this secondhand because she has never seen its sky; reportedly the Elf gods' continent has glowing trees but the regular continents just have stars. She thinks it might be faster to learn languages when you can read minds maybe, it doesn't seem too fast to her. The air smells different but that's probably because they have things like plants and bodies of water around. She thinks gravity and physics are about the same.

Truly a fascinating planet.

"Do you have a mail label for unsolicited messages? Most people who are interested in scrying those look for their full names but I suppose you wouldn't."

"I don't have a mail thing. I don't really know much about how to hire people to do scrying stuff and all that yet? But yeah where I'm from you have to earn a name and I didn't do that."

"What an interesting custom. How did you talk about specific people?"

"We'd keep track of what nicknames everybody had for everybody else, for people we were close to, like I called one of my sisters Teeth but if my brother called her Jaws I knew who he was talking about. Otherwise it'd be like 'my tattoo guy' or 'the lady with the big scar on her eye'."

They have a couple more questions and afterward they pay her for her time and let her know how she can get her own copy of this month's episodes of South Coast News And Weather.

"Thanks!" She will go ahead and get her copy mostly for novelty value.

It's the same sort of enchanted metal thing as the language lessons. It responds to voice commands to turn it on and off or skip forward or back. There's a lot more there than her interview. An imperial minister just gave a speech about the fisheries tax, and here it is in the original Hari and in Ilan; a band is releasing a new album about the history of the warring states period (the brief sample is technically well done - maybe not impressive next to some of the best elves, but fine - but the tastes it's meant to cater to only partly overlap with elvish or human tastes); the weather mages are doing what they can to stop an incoming hurricane but people should prepare for high winds and heavy rain anyway.

She likes her job but it doesn't take literally all her time.

One day she goes and sits outside in a park and sings to her baby.