The shopkeeper frowns at the list for a while.

"What makes the fabric experimental?"

"The manufacturing method - I don't actually know much about it, it's a bit of a long story."

"Hm. Well, I don't usually deal in bolts of fabric or plants. Depending on how much you're asking for them I can imagine they could be worth it, though. The coins, I'd want to see for myself just how much gold and silver is in them, and the gems and pearls, likewise... I rarely have an easy time finding buyers for emeralds or rubies, gem prices just keep going down these days, but diamonds and pearls are easier... I really can't in good conscience not let you know I know where you can sell the cloak for more than I'd pay for it. But I'd take a look at it anyway. Hm. Hmm. I definitely want to at least see the cats and the pendant and the gems and precious metals, if you'll bring them in. And... how much space would the serving set take up?"

"The platter's like this," he gestures to show the size, "and the bowls are like this and like this." It's a reasonable to slightly oversized set, all told. "And the coins are like this-" he takes a linen bag out of his belt and retrieves a gold coin from it, then replaces it to pull another one from the same pouch - where there clearly wouldn't be room for both - to take a silver coin from, and hands them over. "They'll have different markings but should all be about as pure. I'll have a hard time hauling everything in today..." he looks thoughtful, "unless you have an open space in the back or something that I can use for a few minutes. It's related to my long story with the fabric, I'll tell you if you want."

"I'm always interested in long stories but I don't have an open space you can borrow just now."

"All right. Well, I can bring the gems and pendant and a reasonable amount of gold and silver, if those look good to you, that's easy enough, and one or two of the others."

"Bring the cats, I'm excited to see those."

"All right." He holds out his hand for the coins.

He can have his coins back.

And out he goes. He's back after twenty minutes, carefully carrying the stone cats - they're white marble with relatively faint blue-grey veins, probably all carved from the same piece, and quite realistic; one is sitting up, another loafing, and the third is curled on its side as if sleeping, with grey felt on the bottom to protect them and whatever they're set on. Raafi shifts to put them carefully on the counter, then fishes the pendant out of his belt - it's very light yellow indeed, and the dandelion seeds are nicely distributed inside and quite visible - followed by more linen bags with labels on the ribbons tying them closed marking them as diamonds, rubies, pearls, emeralds, and miscellaneous.

Most of these pieces would be worth a lot more, to the right buyer, than the pawnbroker is willing to pay for them. But finding the right buyer would take much longer than this.

"Well, to start with," he says, before getting into the gems, "what would you say to five silver each for these cats and half a silver for the pendant?"

"For this craftsmanship?"

Haggling ensues. Raafi is savvy, but not pushing all that hard.

He can be argued up. Especially on the statues, which he's kind of looking forward to displaying somewhere he can see them all day.

Of the gems, he's most interested in the diamonds and pearls. But even with those, he lowballs by a lot, relative to what Raafi's probably used to, and can't be argued up as much as for the statues or the pendant.

Raafi eventually gives up on selling the diamonds and rubies, opting to keep them. He does let the others go for what he fairly obviously thinks is too low a price.

"And my mysterious story is that I'm from another world," he says as he's gathering his payment and gems up and tucking it into his belt pouches. "I'm carrying fabric I don't know much about because it's a trade secret at home; I was meant to send anyone who was interested in it to talk to the craftsmen who made it. We have magic, too; none of those are," he nods at the things he's just sold, "but I need diamonds and rubies for some of the spells I can cast, and I've been carrying all this stuff around in magical storage."

"...Uh-huh. Well, welcome to our world. We have synthetic gems here. Although I think they have those on Earth, too, and gems are still cheaper here."

"Huh, thanks for the tip."

Next: library. Hopefully the funds he has now will be enough to cover it.

The nearest library is not quite back the way he came but almost. It's in a small stone building, and inside there are two computers, some bookshelves, and a cozy corner with beanbags. One of the beanbags is taken by someone reading about wolves. There's a self-checkout machine and a librarian at a desk.

He ogles the self-checkout machine a bit on his way over to the desk. "Hi! What's your fee schedule?"

"Aren't you a blast from the past? We haven't charged fees in generations. Unless you're overdue or destroy library property."

"Huh! All right. I am a little out of my element - I'm from a new world, and just got pulled here this morning; the woman at the information desk suggested I come here to read up on things while I'm waiting to hear about housing."

"Well, this is the place for it. You can read books here and after you get your housing situation straightened out you can sign up to borrow them. If there's anything else I can help you with just let me know."

"I will, thanks."

He claims the other beanbag and gets out the books - realistically speaking he's not going to read all the way through either one, but he'll start with the religion book and check the other to try to clear up any confusion as he goes.

This one informs him that Jesus exists, and that he says he is not older than humanity or omnipotent. According to this book, at least, Jesus definitely died and rescued more than a hundred thousand people from one of the hells. It's pretty clear there are other stories the reader is expected to have heard.

So one of the first things I wondered was how I got here without being a Christian. The answer is, we don't know. The best guess anyone has for who goes here is that it's somehow related to your personality. It might also be related to participation in rituals intended to cleanse or sanctify. There's been a lot of ink spilled on this topic and we're barely less in the dark about it than people on Earth.

Well, I figured I'd make the best of it. I wasn't as wronged by Christianity as some, and I figured, hey, at least Jesus is trying to do something about all the hells, and they're not his fault to begin with, so if I have to spend the rest of eternity singing his praises I can at least be a little genuine about it. You might be thinking the same thing. And if you're happy about that, don't let me stop you. But before you invest in harp lessons, you should know something very important: Christianity isn't true. Oh, sure, Jesus exists. He even really died for us. But lots of people have died for me who don't own my soul. If it wouldn't make any sense to say it about a firefighter, it probably doesn't make any sense to say it about Jesus.

If you look at the claims in the Nicene creed, they're mostly wrong. We don't know if there's one God. We don't have any reason to think Jesus is his son. We know Jesus isn't older than all worlds and that they weren't made through him. Arguably, "ascending" is exactly the wrong metaphor to use to describe how we get here.

(But if you were looking forward to the harps, nine of the gospel ensembles in town include harpists.)

The book goes on to explain that Jesus is a mostly hands-off ruler (most of the day-to-day governance is done by elected leaders who theoretically answer to him) who sometimes teaches part-time at one of the local universities (all his lectures and books are available online but if you enroll in his classes you can drop in during office hours to talk to him). What his mystery father is is unclear but it might be one of the demons from one of the hells. Also, he can pass on nifty magic powers which people sometimes get strongly enough to pass them on themselves. The waiting list for those is very long. Otherwise, he's pretty ignorable and probably not actually capable of reading anyone's mind even if he had unlimited attention which he does not seem to.

They explain that there are Christians here, but the denominations are divided up differently: there are several sects that think this isn't the real heaven and the local Jesus is an impostor; there's a sect descended from the Cathars but which believes in the physical incarnation of Jesus; there's a wildly popular adoptionist sect with what the author says is absolutely kooky theology (the details of which are not included); there are some of the sects from modern Earth; and, of course, there are a lot of Arians. But the author ended up joining a coven, of which there are actually several around (the book includes addresses for the websites for three of them). The city has a large Jewish population, largely Karaite but the author can also provide addresses for Orthodox and Reform synagogues (what they are or aren't reforming, the reader is assumed to know). There are several pages dedicated to interesting things about local Islamic theology, which has diverged considerably from Earth's sects; unfortunately, very little of it makes sense without some passing understanding of what they're building off of. Mohammad lives on this plane, although not in this city. But it gets weirder than that. There are Greek mystery cults and dozens of other pagan faiths - not revived or reconstructed, so, in some sense, more authentic than the Earth versions, but still very different from the historical versions from having spent so long changing and adapting to new circumstances. In some cases their gods turned out to be demons and in some of those cases they've schismed based on whether they believe their real gods are out there somewhere; in other cases they have no more evidence for their gods than they did back on Earth. There's been some very interesting drama from some of the older groups meeting their modern counterparts in the past few decades. When they even have modern counterparts, which some of them don't.

There are websites and physical addresses given for a lot of different faith communities. Many of them consider helping lost strangers part of their mission statement, and many others are at least interested in welcoming their co-religionists.

It's pretty clear that the evidence for any gods existing at all is extremely scant. No one here is a cleric, unless you count whatever is happening with the powers Jesus is distributing, which are definitely not the usual divine magic. The author practices magic, some sort of alien kind involving lots of ritual and results that are difficult to distinguish from random chance. That seems to be par for the course for local religions.

Also, this book isn't about the other afterlives but it's clear there are several where people are eternally tortured.

Raafi ends up skimming the parts about local religions until he's confident none of them have obvious magic, and skipping the rest of that section; on the other hand, he spends a while trying to find the passage in the other book that explains demons, and checking to see if the harps or any of the other references are things it's important to know about. By the time he's done it's lunchtime, and he asks the librarian to recommend a nearby park or something for him to sit in to eat.

The other book tries to avoid loaded terms like "demons" but describes powerful supernatural entities, usually but not always humanoid, usually but not always malevolent. It doesn't mention harps at all.

The nearest public park is a longish walk away, further than the pawn shop and in an entirely different direction, in another neighborhood built during a very different period in the history of architecture.