"If I just give you a heap of little plastic dudes can you sort them by clothing or something?"

"Yeah."

Little bag of little dudes.

He sorts them. The ones in red armor and the ones in yellow armor go together in a pile, and the ones in assorted rags (with labels including "prisner", "renosirp", and "prisc r") go together in a pile, and the miscellaneous others go together in a pile.

Meanwhile Rit takes some of the medical supplies to deliver to another hideout, and someone takes the kid somewhere more suitable for a kid, and the hideout ends up empty except for Cam and Torn and Kor.

Once the models are all sorted out, Torn frowns at the pile of prisoners. "This is fewer than I was expecting, in better shape than I was expecting, and that's Samos."

"Who's Samos?"

He picks out the model of the Shadow in prison clothes and a new hairstyle. "See? It's weird for him to have a lookalike but I just talked to him yesterday... I should call him."

"...huh." Is this the same person, Cam would like to know by means of more plastic dudes.

Yes.

"It's not a lookalike, it's the same guy. I don't remember if I explained how to write me but I'll check -" Letters to Cam?

There are three. The first:

I have a new wishlist for you. Or you could call it an old one.

My daughter Keira's biological father and any published works of his. A restored Lost Precursor Coast swamp habitat, to the extent possible, which should include green swamp grass, Asher's swamp grass, common swamp grass, cattails, lurker bats, southern gray dragonflies, thornwalls, mangroves, black algae, swamp fleas, three species of green algae without distinguishing names, swamp flies, and unfortunately some extinct species that give birth to live young. A copy of Loran's sculpture titled Beauty and Ferocity of Nature. My notes that were lost to water damage on the third day of the third month of the 548th year as the sages reckon years.

The sages' reckoning hasn't been used for the calendar since before Mar.

The second:

if you feel like it, not that i would want to PRESUME to tell you how to use your time, you might CONSIDER getting me OUT OF HERE

The third contains strategically interesting information about the fortress prison and mockery of some of the guards.

...Cam hands over the third letter and starts trying to figure out how old this guy is and who his daughter is and what species he is.

Torn reads the letter and looks steadily more baffled, while waiting to see if Samos will pick up his communicator.

Samos exists in two places right now - the one with the fungal updo is taking a bath - and has existed in two places for about two years, before which he existed in one place for several decades. Before that, there were centuries of him not existing. But before that there's about a decade of him, just one of him, roughly contemporary with stories of Gol Acheron. He didn't exist at all before the fall of the continent-wide civilization.

He's the local sort of "human", just an unusual shade of it. His (adopted) daughter has callused hands and blue-and-green hair and looks an awful lot like one of the people who cowrote one of Mar's books.

"- oh, I see, he time traveled. How interesting."

He gives up on trying get through to fungal-updo-Samos. "What? How? Can we do that?"

"Precursors had it but I didn't think there was any to be had nearby! Do you know where the one who isn't currently in jail is?"

"Not sure. I would've guessed he was having breakfast but he'd pick up if he were."

"In the bath. I just mean like the address."

He can point it out on the city map hanging on the wall.

"I will go pay him a visit unless you have reason to believe that's unwise."

"Can't think of any. If you're slow he might head over to the forest before you get there."

"If I ride around on a full sized version of this will that create more problems than it solves?" Cam asks, displaying a tiny motorcycle.

"Yeah, lots. You can - you can't conjure the fuel, though - you can borrow the green zoomer parked in they alley if you stay in your lane, stay in the high hover zone, and don't run into anything."

"I don't know how to drive one."

"They come with a tutorial but that won't give you much practice, will it. Still probably safer than trying to drive on the ground."

"You could zoom there? Take this with you." He hands over a little drone.