"I only get so much magic a day, I can't do that for everything. How does taking the subway work?"

"It's just a train that runs underground. You find the aboveground stations and you take the stairs down and get on the right train for your destination and, uh, some routes and some times of day you'll have to pay for a ticket first."

"I can probably figure it out from that. What times of day are free, and how do I know which train is the right one?"

They can explain that.

He thanks them and sees them out, spends some time settling in, and decides to have a wander around the building - there's probably an amazing view from the top floors, if he can get up there.

He can. If he pokes around a little he can even get up onto the roof.

There are a number of similarly tall buildings nearby, but there's also a park right in the middle of things, and some construction work not far off, and then there's no more city in that direction, just the low rolling hills and some roads leading off in different directions.

Oh wow it's incredible. He finds himself reciting a prayer without even pausing to decide to.

He's maybe going to hang around up here for a while, transfixed by the view.

After a few minutes someone else, who might be up here for the same reason, says hi.

He has to take a second to shake himself back to reality. "-oh. Hi there."

"Haven't seen you around before. Have you been finding everything okay?"

This person has dark circles under their eyes and very short, slightly uneven hair. They look from Raafi to the view below, and back again, as if at every moment they want to be looking at something other than whatever they're looking at.

"More or less. I just got in an hour ago, I haven't had much time to look around yet. - name's Raafi."

"I'm Sam. Probably."

"Probably?" he asks, curiously.

"Hard to say what really counts as a name, especially when I might have another one and have forgotten it."

"That sounds like a story."

"Arguably. Just went by a lot of things for a while. I didn't come straight here, is the thing, and some places they like to keep switching things up, new names every few years."

"Huh. I've been places where people will take a new name when something important happens, but I don't think I've heard of one where people do as a matter of course. Or at least not that often, anyway."

"Oh? What sorts of places were those?"

"Ones in the world I'm from - I'm from a new one, they'd never heard of it before at the information booth. Mostly not human places, though I wouldn't be surprised if some humans somewhere do it like that. Mostly gnomes that I saw, though, and I think halflings once or twice."

The person looks uneasy about this for reasons they don't volunteer. "...What are gnomes and halflings like?"

"Gnomes are very curious and mostly artists and inventor types; halflings are known as freespirited wanderers, and that's pretty accurate - I think people take them a little less seriously than they ought to, sometimes, though. And both of them are very short species." He gestures indicatively at about waist height.

Nod. "How'd they happen?"

"Their gods made them. Which probably sounds more alarming here than it actually is, we do have gods and those two in particular are perfectly nice."

"I'm glad some of them are."

"It is a little alarming here, from what I've heard so far. Though you're doing all right in some ways, we don't have anything like this." He gestures at the building at his feet.