Isabella sleeps a bit later, then stretches and sits up and disappears her sleeping bag. Her hair fixes itself by magic in a blink.

"Good morning! I was thinking of going to the school or the church to investigate local books today."

"Sounds like a plan if we have to wait around here anyway!"

"Taking local transit is probably a better idea than going by Crab Rail, even if the latter could leave today. Information gathering is never a waste of time anyway." 

"What, never?"

"Well, diminishing returns and emergencies aside."

"Misleading information, confirming things you already know, burning resources better spent on exploit rather than explore..."

"At that point I'm not sure it's time that's being wasted."

"Time's a resource! ...this is a silly argument though. I agree that we should look at books in town."

"I may have overgeneralized," she admits, giggling. "Let's see if Xander is awake and get breakfast, I don't want to get too separated." 

"Yeah." She knocks lightly on Xander's door.

"Mmmrgh go 'way."

"We can bring him something," Isabella suggests.

"Okay." 

Breakfast appears to be porridge. Lucy collects three bowls as Isabella pays. 

"I keep trying to come up with contingent plans and then realizing that I probably don't even have the hypothesis space to usefully do so," she sighs, setting their bowls down and Xander's aside. "I wouldn't have guessed about the Internet." 

"What kind of contingent plans?"

"If power is centralized in one group, how to approach them if they look approachable and how to veer around them if they don't, if it's not, how to weigh different factions against each other; how to react to possible laws and power structures." 

"Huh. Is that sort of maneuvering usually necessary in your London? Sounds like, uh, spy novel stuff to me."

"In London I do what I want and demand what I need and give people what they want for what I demand and heal everyone I can. But in London, everyone knows I'm powerful and generous, but very few know exactly how powerful; few who care what happen to them would piss me off on purpose. Here, I have no reputational protection and I can't be sure I'm one of the strongest things around."

"Okay, less spy novel more, uh... one of those modern fantasy urban fairy tale things. I mostly expect that staying in civilized areas and not doing anything blatantly stupid will keep us clear of... the need to be known to be strong? I don't know what things are blatantly stupid around here, because those things can vary, and it could be that dressing up and having wings could be in that category. - oh, also, the amount of fame you need for strangers to know who you are goes up in a larger population and there are multiple inhabited planets here, everybody's celebrity slots are probably full of hundreds of famous people from all over the system map."

"Well, that's fair, but--I mean, what you can do, lots of people can do it where you're from, right? It might be more dangerous to be the only one who can make stuff like that, if someone can kidnap you and coerce you..."

"If someone can kidnap me and coerce me then at any time I can turn into, like, a dragon or something, and then I'm not there, I'm a cryptid. Of course, people here won't know that, and if they catch Xander it's a different story. But so far this reads to me as a reasonably civilized little village."

"Well, yes, here, I'm more worried about in the city." 

"I guess we'll see what it's like. I don't have any reason to think my genre expectations are a much better guide than yours so if you think anything I'm considering is really dumb I'll listen."

"Likewise. Um--do you have any expectations about what going forwards is going to look like, in broad strokes?"

"Uh, sort of depends on what we're trying to do? Like, you and I have unique magical powers, if we want to sign on with some sort of large institution about it we probably can, and I'd lean that way if I see an institution I like the look of."