oh no that's so charming

When they disembark at the museum, Inaaya closes her eyes and looks blank for a moment.

Mordred feels something light hitting his back, like someone threw a pebble.

Blink blink.

"Rude," very quietly, but he's smiling.

"Your face was great."

The pebble floats into his field of view.

"And it's not like it's terribly useful for anything else, I can't lift things much heavier than this."

"Fair enough." Still smiling. Into the museum?

Into the museum!

Human pottery! Giant turtles! Dwarf elephants! Giant dormice! All sorts of bones of things that are the wrong size!

Inaaya is DELIGHTED by the bones. She reads all the plaques and tells Mordred her favorite facts.

Mordred, meanwhile, reads all the plaques and listens to Inaaya's favorite bone facts and does Not bounce even though he kind of wants to.

This plaque is WRONG. Inaaya knows this because she read up on this cave before coming to visit.

She should definitely explain at length how wrong the plaque is.

(In a different world they could have been uncomplicatedly friends. He is not going to think about that right now, he is instead going to keep talking about pottery.)

Does he have thoughts on pottery?

He does! His are less informed on the subject than Inaaya's but he has them.

Next they can go look at the parts of the cave that people are allowed to go in.

Mordred has never been in a cave non-professionally before, and even in Ethiopia there had been other things on everyone's mind than how cool the rocks are. (This part he does not express out loud.) It's a very cool cave; this part he does.

Inaaya is also very excited about caves! They're exciting!

"Say," she says, after they've explored the parts people are allowed into, "how do you feel about nonprofessional lawbreaking?"

"...broadly in favor."

"They don't guard this cave very well, there's a hole in the roof, and"-- she opens her bag-- "I brought rope."

oh no she's so good, and friend, and good.

"I would love to climb into a cave with you."

They go on a short hike; she finds the hole, drops the rope down, and easily clambers down.

"Here, I can help."

Even with help Mordred is not particularly good at climbing things but he manages alright and does not fall in an embarrassing fashion.

"That was really good!" she says, sincerely.

"It's really gorgeous in here. Illegal picnic lunch?"

"Illegal picnic lunch sounds lovely."

Well, Inaaya brought sandwiches.

"You seem... scientifically minded... and I was wondering if you had thoughts about"-- she gestures vaguely-- "the intersection of science and the occult."

"I know it's a big topic."

"It is that."

Pause, while he thinks about how to say something that means anything without revealing just how little he knows. "Mostly I've been... frustrated with how it seems sometimes like the occult makes itself difficult to learn about? And part of that is just that most people don't believe in it so there isn't as much research being done as in other fields and what there is is all secret, of course, but it -- still feels like there's something else there? That might not make much sense."

"What do you mean?"

"Like the thing where reading a book about, say, the Black Stone of Hungary will make people panic even if they don't understand it well enough to know what it's implying."