They hesitate for several seconds, making a face. "...Universally righteous."

That's not much of an answer but it's not incomprehensible; if gods and mortals can wind up with different ideas about what parts of good are most important then obviously angels can too, and it'd be jarring to expect one to agree with you and find out they don't. Especially for a lawful person. "I suppose that's understandable. So, it sounds like you've been here for a while?"

"I died in the seventies! So not that long as they think of it here, but yeah."

"I have no idea what seventies you mean."

"The 1970s. AD."

"I guess that's confirmation that I'm from a different plane than yours, if we needed it. I've been to elf cities that counted years from something that long ago but none that I know of is so big that anyone would expect me to recognize it offhand."

"Elf cities. You have elves?" They're practically vibrating with excitement.

"We have something like a hundred species of people. But elves are one of the common ones, yes - elves and dwarves and humans and gnomes and - you're missing a word again - does 'halflings' sound sensible?"

"Not really. Sounds insulting." Someone into the right kind of fantasy might have heard the word at some point but as far as this person knows it's just an awkward calque from whatever their native language is. "Tell me about them?"

"They're nomadic and a bit clannish - they travel in groups of fifty or a hundred, a few families from a few different clans usually, and they carry trade goods or breed animals or do crafts that work with the lifestyle. They're little, too, hence the name - they come up to about human waist height. And there are some other cultural differences, but they and humans are the most similar to each other of the common species, they're a little more adventurous but otherwise about the same as us in personality."

"Weird. That's not what I was expecting from aliens. It... almost reminds me of Elfquest, I guess. Tell me more?"

"About halflings? What do you want to know?"

"About any of them. I don't know. Can any of them fly?"

"None of those can. There are a couple of kinds of birdfolk, though. And pixies, and dragons."

They're too overwhelmingly interested to ask questions and just going to stare at him hoping he'll say more.

He can tell stories. He's met dragons - was sort of helping raise one, in fact - and pixies, and earth elementals, and lived under a lake with water-element-touched gnomes for a season once, and met cave gnomes who considered the sky a myth, and done a hundred other things besides.

They're so into this.

When they reach the city they're visibly disappointed but they have things to do. They offer Raafi a scrap of paper with their email address on it.

"I suppose I can figure out what to do with this. See you around."

So where... is he? Other than 'a very, very big city'?

The city doesn't have walls, but it does have gates, which serve primarily as places to funnel immigrants through and make sure they've been offered city maps and translation magic. The bus stops at one of those.

He has his own translation necklace already - it's odd how his gear came with him, come to think of it - but he'll take a map, sure.

Do any of his fellow passengers look like they could particularly use a buddy?

The one who was looking dazed earlier is looking less dazed now but still seems totally at a loss for where to go from here. Some of the others aren't all right but at least they look like they're doing things.

He heads over to the dazed-looking one, unfolding his map as he goes. "Hey, want to help me figure out what to do next?" He turns it so they can see too, and starts looking it over. "I think we're..... here, about? Since we came from the southeast? And there's got to be some kind of hotel or something we can stay in, if this is heaven; do you see anything likely?"

She looks; it makes the map, which magically zooms in to whatever area someone is trying to look closely at, behave oddly to have them both watching it.

"...Oh, that symbol looks like it could mean a hotel... Hey, try looking at that spot over there, I want to see if it compresses the space between there and there or if it turns sideways so they both fit on the page..."

He does. "It's pretty impressive either way, I've never heard of a map doing that before."

"Me neither." She sounds as if she thinks there's something odd about that comment, but she doesn't follow up on that. "Oh, look here, see it says 'information'. We could go ask if they can tell us how to get on the dead people version of the internet and then ask zombie google for hotel reviews."