Kyeo is running his hand up and down Sarham's back, as though counting scars he can't feel, and then there is something, in the room, something enormous, and he sees his own face and Sarham's mirrored in an incoming oval and then -
- they aren't sitting on Kyeo's bed in Crane Mountain any more.
"Is it a coincidence that most of the songs you've demonstrated use the same scale?"
"Do you mean like, they're all in major keys, or did I happen to also sing them all in the exact same scale - most songs work fine if you sing them up or down a bit to get them in your range so I might have done that by accident -"
"Yeah, that's just the most popular. I probably know some minor songs..." He thinks about it for a bit and then hums one.
Colley notes the notes. "Any others? Scales, not individual songs. Or I mean also individual songs, obviously, but."
"Don't worry about it." She plays a sample of something in Phrygian. "Does that sound - ugly to you, or just weird, or not particularly notable?"
Kyeo will scare up some writing materials and write Much of our music is like Sarham's but some is pentatonic instead and then he will figure out and bonk some scales to demonstrate.
"Ooooh. Which of these chord progressions sounds most like what you're used to - " And she will keep on asking similar questions and transcribing songs until one of them gets hungry again.
Sarham gets hungry first - or at least announces it first, which might not mean anything since Kyeo isn't talking - and remarks that they should head home and fix dinner.
"Can you find your way back from here or would you prefer an escort?" She presses a much-folded piece of paper into Sarham's hand.
She nods. "If you'd come to my office tomorrow before returning here I'd appreciate that; of course one hopes nothing would come up on the scale of a morning versus an afternoon but I'd rather give the people I'm delegating your medical research to as long as possible to do their work."
"In that case I should probably run over to Kilsti's in the morning to talk about that arrangement of 'Heartbeat Search' they were editing," Colley notes to Zarian, and the two of them launch into a scheduling discussion for which the aliens have very little context.
Zarian meets them outside with bad news about the (non-)existence of actually-safe citreliac safety razors, but also with a prototype bicycle! It has solid rubber tires, one gear setting, a jerkily-overenthusiastic set of brakes, and a seat that's not too uncomfortable or too movement-restricting. It is substantially heavier than anything Sarham is used to.
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