"No, that's fine, that's why I asked instead of being like 'so this is next on the itinerary' - what kind of warm drinks do you go for?"

". . . Silver tea?"

"Never heard of it." He will rummage in her kitchen for a cup rather than saddle her with surplus dishes.

"It's just plain hot water?  I'm aware that sounds kind of pathetic right now but I do actually like it."

"I did not myself grow up in a culture where drinking hot water was commonplace but I have heard of people doing it!" When he comes up with a cup he hands it to her full of steaming water.

"Thanks.  It's not very usual here either, really."  She carefully sits up inside the crystal array and then steps out of it, removing a few key stones and setting them aside before making her way to the couch and starting in on her 'tea'.

"You all better? I don't know how helpful the crystals tend to be."

"They would have patched me up fine eventually but yours was faster and also fine.  . . . Better than fine, actually; I, uh, asked for the good stuff.  Probably you should take them or something so I'm not.  You know."

"...so that you aren't caught in possession of valuable crystals or so that you don't enjoy whatever recreational side effects they come with?" says Cam, gathering up the rocks into a bag and handing them to Felicity.

"The first one, and I wouldn't really call it recreational; it's just health ben - doooon't!  Do that??  That's really dangerous; I'll describe you a case - if you put them all in a bag together that risks making some sort of array - "

"- oh, okay, whoops." He holds very still till a case is described.

Ellie gingerly removes the rocks that made it into the bag, sets them carefully askew from each other, consults a catalog off a bookshelf, names a model of case, and starts tucking crystals into foam indentations.

"Sorry. I don't know why I assumed magical crystals were typically safe to handle."

"I guess there's a reason there are multiple units in elementary school about how most people should pretty much just leave them alone; it makes sense that someone not exposed to that wouldn't know.  Just be careful going forward."

"Will do." Case, properly packed, gets handed off to Felicity.

Ellie returns to the couch and sips awkwardly at her water.

". . . Oh, they also confiscated the - device? - you gave me.  I don't know if that's.  Important."

"I mean, I can replace it - did they take Mr. Mistoffelees's too -"

"No, they didn't come here, I just tried to use it while they were investigating."

"Gotcha. Do you want a version with, like, a panic button?"

". . . . . . Not that I'm implying that you would suggest things that wouldn't help anything, but I just don't see, uh.  How it would help anything."

"It's entirely possible it wouldn't help anything, I don't know how things work around here! It'd be a way to get a notification to me sooner but there'd still be travel time."

"Yeah, um, the order of operations here is that, I tried to sell the bracelets, the person I tried to sell them to turned me in, I tried to contact you via device to see if you'd vouch for me, the device was also extremely suspicious so they confiscated it, I got put in a holding cell and asked for some paper while they investigated, wrote the first start of the letter to you, realized that was a bad idea, started on a second one in the right order, got convicted of not being legibly unsuspicious, served my very light sentence, went home, started on a third letter and then you got here?  So it seems like that was already about as fast as you could have gotten here and a panic button wouldn't have given you any more useful information or anything."

"Is 'not being legibly unsuspicious' a real crime?"

"Sometimes?  Like, I think it's fair that - the thing that happened here is really unlikely, right?  You can't blame the law for not being able to predict that there would be someone with magic powers who can make extremely valuable objects out of literally nothing at all!!  So - if you have somebody that you know works with crystals, and is crafty, even if you can't point to where exactly something might've come from, it - makes sense to just go 'the most likely thing by far is that you stole them, even if you found some really clever way to hide it' and whip them and mark their record and let them get on with their day instead of, what, keep them locked up for even longer while you looked for concrete evidence about - what in any other circumstance would really clearly have been something I very obviously did?  And obviously it's way less than whatever I would have gotten if they actually had proof."

"Well, that's fucked up, but I guess before demon forensics were popular on my planet our criminal justice situation was also fucked up."