"Not really - it always makes something that's healthy for the species I'm casting for, and if I know what that means I can be a little more specific, but I need enough details to work with, and I don't know anything about what you eat yet. And even then I don't always get exactly what I was trying for."

"We eat spren, pretty much. With condiments and garnishes but mostly spren. Wild's better than domestic by a long shot."

"Huh. That sounds worth trying, at least; the spell's notoriously bad at making anything too unusual but it does wild game just fine. The catch is that it doesn't stay - it'll keep you full if you eat it, that part's fine, but the magic starts to give out after a day if you don't, and it's not really edible after that unless I refresh it."

"Well, if it makes a whole spren then we'd have to have the neighbors over, I guess."

"I can probably feed a decent portion of the neighborhood, if that's what you want to do. Unless your species eats a lot more than mine does, I guess. How big is a spren, and how many meals would you get out of it?"

"A spren's a bit smaller than Soramu and it can feed her and me and my co-mates and our daughter and four sons for about eight days. Used to be longer when Uamok was little."

He mutters to himself in another language, calculating. "Seems about the same, adjusting for size. And I can get enough food for forty-five people my size for a day out of one casting of that spell, or almost a hundred fifty meals if you eat three times a day like humans do."

"Usually only twice a day. They say in olden times people'd get by with just a meal every couple days."

"Well, if you want dinner for ninety the offer's open."

"I'll buy that for twenty," he laughs, shaking his head, "even if you disappear again it's fun to think about. Uun'll be driven spare trying to cook it all but he'll manage and it's good raw too - does it come pre-butchered?"

"It does. I can try for certain cuts if you'd like, too."

"There's always somebody whose favorite is weird glands but for a crowd that's not the way to bet, yeah."

"All right. We can work out the details when we get there."

Bav reaches into a pouch he has strapped to his mid-left leg and pulls out a rectangle of stiff, heavy paper in rose pink. He offers it to Raafi.

Who takes it, looks it over curiously, and tucks it into one of his belt pouches.

The station isn't much farther away. The payment system is a box you drop your money into and a pad of train station scrip that Bav peels a few pieces off for Raafi. "Those are one hoof each, so you don't have to make change any farther, and they say where you got it, so if the numbers don't add up between the box and the pad end of day they can figure out where you spent it and get a description. And it expires in a few days. So it's possible to walk off with a lot of change scrip but you'll get caught and can't save it, you'd do it if you were starving but not otherwise." Bav deposits some of his own family scrip into the box. There's nowhere to sit while they wait for the train.

"That's clever, I'll have to remember that." He seems a little distracted, though, looking around at the station and train tracks and so on.

The station itself is just a roof on stilts, with some fabric walls that look like they could be rolled down if rain threatened but are up right now. The train tracks are, after a few minutes, occupied by a two-car trainlet. Bav walks up to the second car, opens it, and steps in; the front car appears to have a female in it, while the back car has four men and two little boys and a litttle girl not yet much more than Bav's size.

Raafi follows, after enough of a pause to suggest he's not quite traveling with Bav, and peers in. "Mind if I come aboard?"

"What the fuck is that?" asks a male.

"It's a MONSTER," cries a little boy.

"I don't think it's a monster," Bav remarks, "for one thing it can talk."

"I don't think I'm a monster. Or not a scary one, anyway, no claws or anything. I'm a human, I got sent here in a magical accident." He steps inside and out of the doorway, staying right by the wall.

"I'VE got claws," says the little boy, displaying a footful, "so don't you get near me!"

"A magical accident," says one of the adult men skeptically.

"You have DOODADS," says the little girl, "I want that one." She points at the shiniest doodad on his person.

"That's my translation necklace!" he says of the jade pendant. "I can let you borrow it for a minute, but I need it back so I can talk to people."

"She won't give it back," says a person who is presumably supervising her.

"Will TOO," she says shiftily.

"You know, I probably have something better than that in my pocket." He rummages, and comes up with a little chunk of bright orange stone that changes color in an improbable way when he tilts it from side to side. "How about this? We call these fairy buttons, they're a tiny bit magical too."