Raafi settles into a bit of a routine over the next few days - classes, magic for the after-class crowd, magic for the restaurants, outings with Uamok and her mates. He goes back to the bank after another couple of finance classes, when he's confident he'll be able to handle scrip, and gets an account, into which he deposits a fairly astonishing amount of money for the time he's been in the world. And he does eventually find an atlas, and lets the head teacher know that he's taking a couple of days off to check out the Volcanic Atoll.

Uamok brings him along on a family hunting trip and shows him around the city and Zoi gets him an invitation to his aunt's farm.

The head teacher can hardly suggest that he not take a trip to the Volcanic Atoll so she doesn't, just wishes him a pleasant trip.

And so two days later when he's done his devotions, he casts a spell, turns into a cloud, and floats up into the sky, where he summons a powerful gust of wind to speed him along to his destination. It'll take most of the day to get there, but the views are amazing in the meantime.

He can watch alien geography roll by under him.

The Atoll has hot springs and hiking trails and swimming holes and exotic food (even a small amount of non-spren meat).

It's late when he gets in, but he does take a quick aerial survey of the sights before finding a hotel to land at and going in to ask about rooms.

They haven't heard of him here and he has to do the "what the heck is a hummun" thing again - actually, they pronounce it differently here, he gets to be a hoomin instead. With that managed, though, they'll sell him a room.

He's gotten pretty good at making people nests comfy, and in the morning he picks a hiking trail to do his devotions on and then checks out the hot springs, stashing his clothes under a bush once he's picked a nice-looking one.

The spring is full of people. They do not have any particular reaction to nudity. One does say, "Oh, hoomin are stripy!"

"Most of us aren't, actually. We do come in different colors, though. I'm on the light side, we come in all kinds of colors from lighter than me to a pretty dark brown, and some of us are more red or yellow. And spotted, some of us get spots when we're out in the sun."

"Ooh, do you get spots?" says the boy who commented on his stripes.

"What's that doodad?" says the boy's brother.

"I have a couple of spots. Not the kind from being in the sun, that mostly happens to humans with lighter skin than mine, I just get dark all over." He can show off a few moles, though.

"That's for decoration - one time before I got to this world I was trying to help some humans who were having a problem with some ogres, which are like humans but bigger and meaner, and the ogres thought I was a little kid and wouldn't talk to me, partly because I was small and partly because the ogres there all got decorations like this when they grew up and I didn't have one, so I got one and talked to them and got them to be nicer to the humans, and then when I was done I decided I liked it, so I kept it."

"Is it attached to you? How's that work?"

"It is! I don't know if this would work for people, but for humans, if you take a piece of metal and put it in us like that, so it goes through and comes out again, and leave it there for a while, we'll grow skin inside the hole where it is, and then when you take the metal out the hole will stay - we call them piercings. It hurts, and it's a little bit dangerous, we can get sick from it like any wound while the skin is growing, but it's not that uncommon - lots of human females have pierced ears to wear pretty things in, that's the most common kind."

The boys inspect his ears, assessing them as ornament-sites. "I don't think that would work for us," one says.

"You're not really shaped for it, no. And piercings other places can be trickier, I wouldn't want to try it since I'm not an expert. Maybe someone who does piercings will want to come over once we figure out how to let the different kinds of talking people come and go from my world, though."

"Sometimes people get painted," the boy says. "On special occasions, not all the time, it'd come off in the water and be too much bother."

"We do that too! Or a actually I think it'd be a dye, technically? It only sticks around for a few days but it doesn't come off in water. And for permanent markings we can do something called tattoos, where the color goes into the skin - that hurts to do, too, I've never had it done but I've seen it, they use needles to poke the color in."

"You must be so soft. Can I poke you? Not with my claws."

"Sure. I'm fuzzy on top, too." He runs his hand through his hair demonstratively and leans over to let the boys reach.

Little boys pet him and prod him.

He lets them until they hit a sensitive spot, and then eeps and wiggles away. "That tickles!"

"What's tickles?" one asks in fascination.

"-you know, I've never had to explain that before? Some parts of humans are really sensitive, so it doesn't hurt to be touched there, exactly, but it's too much, like hearing a sound that's way too loud, and we have an instinct to try to get away."

"Huh! But it doesn't hurt?"

"Nope! Some people like it, even. I think it's okay sometimes but I don't like being surprised by it - it's all right, though, you didn't know, I don't want any more but I'm not mad."