"Sure, thanks, mister. My name's Rabka."

"Hi, Rabka; I'm Aiu."  He pronounces it like 'I-you'.  "Did you want to wait for me to finish up here or are you pretty hungry."

"I'm pretty hungry but if you're in the middle of something I don't want to be too pushy, it's not like she can nurse when she's a teapot."

"It's not anything important; we can head out."  He goes off to set the embroidery somewhere; standing up, it's more obvious that he's not very tall and that he has - something - around his neck.  It's made of a dozen or two fabrics, all in gold and all wildly different textures, in an abstract irregular cone-ish inverted-pyramid-ish shape, and hangs at the middle of his chest.

"Neat, uh, necklace."

"Thanks!" he says, gesturing for her to follow him out.  "It's my charm.  - Do people not have those where you're from or do you just not have yours with you?"

"I've never seen anything like it."

"Do you have stuffed animals or security blankets for kids?  Magic ones."

"I'm sure some rich person has pulled a ragdoll out of a magic and lets their kid squeeze it to make it sing the Seven Etudes or something but I never saw one." She flicks her earring self-consciously.

"Oh.  Here we make ones for pretty much everyone.  They do physical protection, mostly, and sometimes more frivolous stuff like what you mentioned, and then when you grow up you swap it out for something a little more mature and personalized.  Most people's are made with the material from the ones they had as kids but mine isn't."

They approach the exit; there aren't any sturdy walls but there are broader cloth ones than the panels.  Aiu waves at the person behind the counter on the way out.

Despite the sunbeams streaming inside, once they pass the entry flap it's much darker.  In fact, they don't seem to be outside at all; it looks like they're in another tent.  This one is all solid fabric, in indigos and warm purples and lazy swirls of cozy yellow-orange.  There's enough light to walk by once their eyes adjust, coming from diffuse patterned lanterns hung here and there.

"Everything's so fabricky."

". . . . . Yep.  What are you used to instead?"

"Buildings made of... wood? Or rocks?"

"Have you figured out how to sew stone and wood somehow or do you just not have magic buildings?"

"We don't have magic buildings. Do you have a magic somewhere that's - um - domesticated, or -"

"You keep saying 'a magic' and normally I wouldn't risk someone thinking I was making fun of them by pointing out a phrasing quirk, but maybe you should explain what exactly you mean by that."

"...a magic is a place where whatever goes in it has magic happen to it? Like me and the baby, we went into a magic and now I have rainbow hair and she's a teapot."

"We don't have any of those.  Magic is something you do, or make, with a purpose in mind."

"That sounds so convenient."

"It definitely seems like it by comparison."

"And you think you could fix Cathei?"

"Yeah."

"Can you do it soon so I can still feed her?"

"How soon would that have to be?"

"I'm not sure how long it takes milk to stop. I was hungry enough to try drinking some myself but I'm not as good at that as Cathei is."