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Lucien can mostly make a living off of doing divining for certain niche medical studies, but he can't do specific enough conditionals to get his grander ideas off the ground yet. Still, when portals start showing up he's well positioned to suggest to a few people that diviners like him could be useful for quickly figuring out what conditions on the other worlds are actually like.
Still, they're taking a chance on Lucien by approving his application to join the expedition, so he definitely really shouldn't be late for his first day of work. He also probably shouldn't be running along a poorly maintained trail in Bolivia, but between that and the possibility of being late he knows which he prefers.
Well, which he prefers right up until he's tripped on a branch and sent tumbling towards the portal.
"I can escort you places, and I will do this if you have a plan that might work for getting you somewhere worth being, which 'haul a ladder to the cave where I found you' might qualify as. I am not trying to personally keep you as a slave because I do not suck and also separately am not stupid enough."
"Okay... thank you?"
Suddenly it is way more salient how cute she is, which really isn't the correct reaction to any of this.
"You're welcome. The notebook is definitely saleable, though I'm not sure I can get it to go for enough of a markup that it's not worth me just buying it off you, I go through lots of paper. Bottle will probably sell. The wrapper on the - food thing - is definitely suspicious, someone might get curious..."
"...yes, it's bad? I mean, if you want to skip out of here and tell random Chaotic Evil strangers that you're from another planet that's your lookout but I would expect the results to qualify as bad."
"-I am um. Not used to operating in societies were many people can be described as chaotic or evil."
"I was hoping once I was through the portal to return with science textbooks to advance this world's medicine and transporation and things. Are people chaotic and evil in a way that would make this difficult."
"There's probably a fine place for it up on the surface, you'd just have a time getting there."
"No. Some monsters are people but not all of them, it means the general category of wandering hazards that might attack if you went up to Taldor from down here."
Wow this place isn't very good.
"I... can probably avoid needing to go much of anywhere by figuring out telepathy, I guess."
"Well, if you make it home bring more food with you when you come back, you're going to be dreadfully expensive to feed."
"Oh. I can um. Pay you back. In paper or other things from my world - we're a lot richer than here."
"I meant that once I get to my world I can get more paper and pay you back for the food."