"You could hike up to Sunrise Point some time in the evening and watch the sunset - or in the morning and watch the sunrise, but then it's just big and bright and overwhelming, whereas the sunset's miles away and straight across from you."

"If you haven't seen the woods yet you totally should."

"There's a famous mural up near the temple entrance that's been around for centuries. And an art gallery near the college."

"The outdoor theater's hosting a concert soon."

"The maze! One of the little villages has a maze, and they can move the walls around so it's new every month."

"Honestly, just go see the temple entrance, there's usually something happening up there - sometimes they're releasing extra butterflies or something to make up for a shortfall - even if there isn't anything in particular there's a bunch of shops and stuff nearby and the view from up there is cool."

Cool. She plans herself an itinerary, starting at the art gallery and heading toward the temple entrance to see the mural and whatnot and then moseying to Sunrise Point for the sunset.

The art gallery is small but eclectic, host to paintings in any style they can get them in, hand-carved sculptures and incredibly precise conjured sculptures, and a collection of three-dimensional jewel mosaics as interesting to touch as they are to see.

The temple neighborhood spills down the mountainside, something on every ledge along the way; the restaurant she has a coupon for is there, next to someone selling clothing, and above them are fountains spilling forth from geometric sculptures, then a cluster of what might be houses all made of lapis lazuli, then a shop selling housewares, and then what turns out to be only the first of the murals, tucked away so it's impossible to stand in the middle of the road blocking traffic and see it. The first one is math - a collection of proofs without words, and things that don't quite rise to the level of rigor needed to be proofs but hint strongly enough at ideas to help people rederive them later. It might have been kept around just for that, just for being something their ancestors wanted badly enough to save for them, but it was made to be beautiful, too, elegant linework and a split complementary color palette, looking a bit like what you might get if you asked Stephanie Pui-Mun Law to produce an abstract expressionist painting of cyborg fallen leaves.

Up a ways there's a cityscape at night, tall skyscrapers with lit windows beneath a crescent moon like a cheshire cat's grin. Parts of it are almost photorealistic and other parts dreamy and vague; on a closer inspection it has dozens of easter eggs, hidden meanings in the arrangement of light and dark in the windows and the shadows on the moon.

Past that - well, it's a regular busy neighborhood. There's a grocer haggling with a young mage over bulk nuts and a mage selling huge rolls of an experimental new fabric and a woman reminding a pair of children not to play on the safety railings. There are no butterflies being released at the moment, but a mage who needed a small amount of ice and conjured far too much is giving away snow cones. The sky looks steadily stranger the closer she gets.

Tarinda has dinner at the restaurant, and takes a snowcone, and admires all the art.

What is strange about the sky?

The sky doesn't quite cast or reflect light the way it would if it were a giant TV screen or a painting; it looks... right, to the point of being uncanny, at least in its hue and brightness and relative resistance to having those altered. But it rises almost vertically from the mountaintop, and while clouds are remarkably forgiving about scale standing within a few feet of the sky and seeing the size of the tiniest cloud wisps is outside the scope of what still looks about right. There's not a good spot in the temple district to stand and touch it.

In the restaurant door is a bead curtain whose beads are alternating rubies and lapis lazuli; past it there's live lap-harp music and an assortment of low tables and silk cushions, a menu sitting atop every clean unclaimed table (and in fact serving to mark which tables are clean). The best seats, by the round south-facing windows that look out on the fields stretching out toward the ponds (and then the ponds, and then the woods; there's no curvature in the way and the college and its surroundings are just out of line of sight), are already taken, but there's one unclaimed by a tapestry of a fantasy setting from a recent book series. The menu is probably shorter than what they have on Mars, but it's a far cry from Sam's snacks - she could have squidfruit battered and fried or glazed, or squid-of-the-woods battered and fried; she could have lemon green beans or glazed carrots or a salad of flowers and tomatoes; she could have apple pie or a chocolate rose.

She will try the squidfruit! She has never had it before!

It could pass for chicken, maybe the breast, though it's too tough and gamey to pass for farmed chicken and the skin, not being edible, has therefore been removed.

It is an interesting culinary experience. ...oh, does she have enough money for this, she forgot to check.

The coupon'll cover it.

Great. She thanks the proprietor and moves on with her journey bouncily.

The hike to Sunrise Point is a gentle one. A few other people are already on the way up by the time Tarinda gets there, a couple of couples and a family with kids.

Atop the mountain, the sky is right there, looming over them and slowly darkening. One of the others visiting sits with their back against it. It's almost aggressively textureless, smooth but not slick, slightly cool and getting cooler. There's a clear view all the way to the sunset; the sun itself isn't that big, but the warm sunset colors stretching out along the western base of the sky reach almost all the way to the northern- and southernmost points.

Much less blazingly bright than the sun, as darkness falls, the full moon rises. To some extent such a good view is wasted on this moon; it was painted from memory by someone who had always paid attention to its phases and to its brightness, but never really spent time examining enlarged pictures or noticing the exact shape of the dark spots. This moon is loosely painted, mottled with dark spots that look vaguely similar to those of Earth's moon, standing out starkly against the cloudless eastern sky. It looks big enough to swallow Tarinda; it's smaller than any moon in Tarinda's solar system.

What does the sky feel like, if she pokes it?

A little bit like wood that's been very finely polished, but with no noticeable grain, so actually not very like it. It has no give to it at all. The moon is a bit cooler than the rest; when it's just starting to rise it has an unpleasant feel to it that doesn't seem to have anything to do with texture, more like a shock or pins and needles, but that fades quickly and then there's nothing but the slight temperature difference to distinguish it to the touch.

Cooool.

When she's done poking it she just watches the fake astronomy for a while. Then down she goes.

She never worked out where she's sleeping, and she should find a good safe place to do it so the magic people can back her up during a period of Page-insensibility, but it's not a disaster if she has to camp. She'll wander through town and see if anyone is interested in her enough for her to parlay it into a couch.

There's someone who has spare blankets and pillows and floor space and would like to hear about Martian philosophy, a shift worker not using her bed right now who says she wants to make sure Tarinda feels welcome in Sathend, and someone who'd be delighted for her to share his bed in both senses.

The Martian philosophy thing seems the most straightforward! The second one would be ideal if she were home but she is in a weird place and there might be weird hidden expectations associated with a general offer of welcome. Tarinda can copy Page's chereme instructions through a conversation about the Mars-original theory of aesthetic axiology, which Tarinda herself had never heard of before.

This philosopher is thrilled and will ask followup questions until midnight or until Tarinda wants to stop, whichever comes first.

The pillows are more comfortable than Sam's and there's enough spare bedding to make a reasonably sized nest of. Her host offers drinks, if she wants.

Drinks and a nest are both enthusiastically accepted.

Her host sleeps in, but if she hangs out long enough in the morning she will eventually get offered a breakfast burrito.

The newspaper delivered in the morning has an article on an upcoming referendum on whether to deliberately make contact with Sing.

Is there some kind of meeting she should consider attending or something?

The article promises that non-duplicate non-harassing questions sent to the legislature will be forwarded to Tarinda if relevant, and the answers published on one of the northern cliff faces as well as summarized in the news.

Okay. Where does she need to be to receive non-duplicate non-harassing questions, then.

It doesn't say but it does say where the questions are collected, so if worse comes to worse she could stop by and ask. It seems like they might just be counting on their ability to find one unique-looking person making no effort to hide.

Yes but she's kind of in a hurry.

She'll take her breakfast burrito and trot off to the listed address.

Then she will find people sorting letters on the pavement in the middle of a cute little garden. Most of the letters don't yet have anything to do with Tarinda, except in the sense that whatever the answer to, say, Violet the random farmer's question about planar expansion would have been, it's going to be different if they contact Mars. There's a handful she can get a head start on now, though, and if she wants to take the answers over to the caretaker of the relevant cliff face herself one of the letter sorters can point her in the right direction.