Sable grins sharply and bows sweepingly. "Then lead on, Princess. I look forward to it."

"Charmer. Alright, then, follow me. Train station's on the third floor like always."

And off she goes towards the elevator, trusting Sable to follow along.

She follows cheerfully, borrowing stability from the new place and the new connection. "It's nice to standardize that kind of thing. Our old world didn't have nearly enough mass transit in most places, let alone this kind of convenience."

"The hex system's relatively new. New in I think my grandmother's generation. There used to be a lot more urban sprawl but then they did a test city and the sky-scraper-with-park design worked well so they did a major refurbishment. Lot of chaos in the short term, people shouting about being moved around and up into the towers, but I'd say it was worth the expense in the long term. The clans got on board in the end once there was an expert consensus; they usually do. Some of the holdouts got paid to leave, some of 'em stuck around and got built around. It's a little patchworky in some places with personal plots of land. But the bones are solid."

An eyebrow raises at that. "Impressive. It would've been hell getting a community on Earth to agree to anything like that. Sounds like y'all pay better attention to experts than Earth does."

"Something like that." Songbird nods. "Many of the complexs' uppermost floors are owned by clan compounds in the modern day. Usually the middle floors are the ones people dislike — too high up to climb stairs to easily, not high enough to be a status symbol. Many governmental housing units are in those awkward areas."

"The lowest floors, near the stations and the foot traffic, are more controversial — some people find them great, because you can just take a short staircase up and down from the shops and parks, which is great for some people's anxieties; but some people find the noise and busyness wearing. It's very individual."

"Definitely the kind of thing that could end up really divisive and opinionated, yeah," she nods. "I'm not sure which I'd pick, when I can eventually afford something other than government housing. How'd you get into guiding new arrivals?"

"Well, I have two of the most common Enras — communication and helping others. The first one usually cashes out to careers in writing, but there are much, much better authors than me here so I ended up taking a more average job. Government service is reliable work and I have an unusually clear psychiatric record so the post is suitable for me. I'm not sure if I mentioned it already, but the local kind of humans are almost all what you'd call schizoid spectrum on your planet. We have advantages — due to sharding we're extremely flexible and adapatable, and I think the average intelligence is noticeably higher as well — but the drawback is that we're significantly more emotionally fragile. Any serious stress can cause breakdowns and even psychosis in our kind of human. So you could say we're... overall a lot higher variance." 

Sable tilts her head, smiling thoughtfully. "You hadn't mentioned it, no. It's fascinating, though, just thinking about the differences, and how y'all's higher proportion of plurality can add flexibility. A world where plurality is common. Just... wow." She shakes her head for a moment

"Y'all may be fragile, but you sure seem vivid," she finishes, offering a hand for a brief squeeze. "I think I like the results."

"On behalf of my world, thanks." 

Songbird steps off the elevator and into the train station, and settles in to wait at the platform. 

"I guess I get to say those kinds of things since I'm sort of a mini ambassador. Ambassador to the Pirates."

"You are! Wow, we get our very own ambassador! And such a cute one, too!" She grins warmly.

Songbird laughs. "You do. Like I said, you're just such charmers." 

And the train pulls up. 

She grins. "And you've hardly even met the rest of us yet. Whatever did we do to get such a delightful welcome?"

The doors open, and songbird steps aboard the train. Leaning against a pole aboard, she shrugs and smiles. "Who knows. Maybe a goddess, if any of them actually exist."

A sudden giggle slips out. "I like to think I'd remember if I did a goddess," she jokes.

Songbird laughs. "You might be surprised! Some of them can be awfully sneaky. Had any unusual dreams? Get caught in a rainstorm?" 

Sable hums, smiling. "We don't usually remember our dreams. Almost never. Definitely been caught in a few rainstorms, though. Actually did some cross-country running training in the outer edges of a weak hurricane once, even."

"Who knows, maybe you've been blessed by the weather or something. I joke, of course." 

Sable just nods and giggles, and looks out admiringly at the city passing outside the windows. "I love cities. And trains. Fascinating feats of human and societal engineering."

"They really are, aren't they? So much to see and discover in each one."

"And they reveal so much of how a society thinks about its populace, too. Like y'all have more mass transit than most cities in the country I came from."