that is also extremely legit. she didn't exactly want us hanging around the way she wants you hanging around, is it cool in ways other than being pretty?

She has a lot of art and stuff! And there are people who live here, or work here, and it's neat.

oh cool I didn't expect that!

it's a city! probably she wouldn't mind if you wanted to hang around the city part of the barrier.

if there's a whole city why don't more people know about it?

I think a lot of what is there is probably illegal.

ok that's so legit

you think so?

I'm a black girl who grew up in not the best neighborhood, I know about a lot of stuff that's illegal and not actually like bad

Yeah, that makes sense. I haven't been through all of the city, I've mostly been in the part where San Niang lives.

do you think the people living there will be bothered if I wanna go through the whole place and look at everything. It sounds really cool but, also, trying not to be insensitive and prying

I mean, don't go into their apartments.

well obviously! but if stuff's illegal I don't know how nervous ppl will be

I think not especially, since San Niang can spit people out.

ok cool. will she just not spit us out if rhonda teleports us in or do we have to talk to her, I bet she'd rather we don't have to talk to her

I don't know if Rhonda can get to the city part without having been there! But if you come by the RV I can show you where there's a regular entrance.

that makes sense!

The regular entrance, when they arrive, is in a seedy part of San Francisco exactly where you'd expect an entrance to some kind of crime den. Xie Lian opens the door and shows them down a long passageway with flower curtains hiding branches in all directions till they come out in a central market, which is loud and chaotic and colorful and crowded.

"Woooooooooooooooooooooow."

Most of the hubbub is not strictly speaking in words of any kind, since the occupants share no common languages. There are gestures and whoops and jabbered snatches of every tongue under the sun spoken with more concern for tone than content. Someone grabs Wei Ying's arm to emphatically show her a bottle of absinthe. Someone waves fossils in Lan Zhan's face. Someone offers Rhonda a durian, which smells terrible.

"Do you know what money gets used here," Wei Ying mutters to Xie Lian. 

"...um, I have no idea, people keep offering me things for free." She looks around. "Looks like - gold and barter and American dollars and - Norwegian krone and - I don't recognize half of these."

"Okay, neat--do you think they're trying to give you free stuff because you're Hua Cheng's friend--"

(Lan Zhan made the mistake of attempting to examine the fossils and is now Trapped by an encouraged vendor.)

"I guess that's probably why, now that you mention it!"

The fossil vendor has lots of stuff! Would Lan Zhan like a matched set of mammoth tusks? A narwhal horn? Perfect imprints of crinoid? A scoopful from the small ammonite bin? A nearly complete compsognathus skeleton?