Sure. And I'll, uh, try not to look like trouble. She can follow wherever she's supposed to go at this point.

Veeka bribes the local manager and also the front desk clerk and gets Saira her temporary visa application form. Veeka starts filling it out for her, explaining what's on it rather quickly (spell's running out and it's expensive to keep renewing, she mentions)- It wants her name (Saira), her reason for being in Beseren (starting a business), to know if she has committed any crimes (no, she writes without asking), to know if she intends to pay her taxes (yes), to know if she has any relatives in Beseren (no), to know who is vouching for her entry into Beseren if anyone (Veeka is), the current date, and then her signature at the bottom saying she agrees that the government of the Beseren Federated States is legitimate and to obey all applicable laws, and pay her taxes in full and on time.

If her signature needs to be in the local language she can try clumsily to copy how Veeka wrote her name.

Where exactly do I go now and how long do I stay there?

You follow me to the loan place and wait while I get a loan and maybe buy some more mana off someone, this spell's expensive, then we get you a rowhouse room for the night - or maybe I should just invite you to sleep in my place, reduces the chance of you getting stuck on something and unable to explain yourself or ask for help, what do you think? Tomorrow I'm off, luckily, we can go down to the university to pay some poor magic student to shove some basic Rellan into your head, I'm pretty sure that's a thing. Or something that's better than what we're doing now at least. We could even try that tonight, actually, better to get it done as soon as possible I think?

She does NOT want anyone to shove anything into her head. But she doesn't seem to have much choice right now. She's so conscious of how she has absolutely no protection against anything right now.

Sure, that all sounds fine. You have a guest room or are you thinking it's worth me sleeping on your floor to stay out of trouble?

Well, there's a couch, which is better than the floor at least. And the clock doesn't stop. C'mon, after the loan place I have to go get yelled at for escorting you instead of coming back right away, so you'll be on your own in my place for a while.

Veeka heads out the front door of the immigration office, now that Saira has a temporary visa.

Yeah, a private room was probably too much to hope for. She's not sure if she wants to know if the couch is hidden at all, it's not like she can do anything with the information.

She'll just go ahead and follow Veeka wherever.

Seedy looking loan place with a grumpy middle aged teller and bars across the window! Paying someone for mana! Heading back to the police station for a minute so Veeka can explain things to her boss! Then back to Veeka's apartment, on the fourth floor of a brown building that doesn't stand out from the rest of the brown buildings (no elevator). There's a small combined kitchen-and-living-room with a couch and faded pictures of more Gnolls hanging on the wall, a tiny bathroom, and a tiny bedroom. There's an odd smell in the air, some kind of plant?

Veeka opens a large white plastic box full of frozen food in the kitchen and looks at it consideringly.

Think you eat the same kind of thing our brand of humans do?

Seems likely and if I don't I don't know how I'd find anything to eat here.

Veeka starts cooking. Dinner will be:

Sliced bread with a bit of butter spread on it, two fried "chicken" eggs each, some unfamiliar fruit of two different kinds (small sweet berries served cold, a long brown pod that gets grilled and then opens to reveal vaguely savory mush), and a steak, the majority of which goes to Veeka. She doesn't have any of the sweet fruit or bread, though.

Veeka probably hosts humans often. That... isn't weird, they're not a small minority here.

Bread is... an interesting experience, and one she wouldn't mind repeating sometimes.

...Saira is not sure what polite dinner guest behavior is but it probably starts with eating. And then, uh... maybe Veeka will give her a hint...

I think maybe I should hear more about what kinds of magic you can do, Veeka 'says', conspicuously refraining from 'talking' while also chewing on anything.

Making kids better, changing hair colors, curing some specific diseases... I don't know a lot about crops but you did mention plants...

She can go on at length about that.

The hair thing is probably the fastest to implement, it's - there's already a market for hair stuff, easier to find customers and easy to verify after a week or two.

I want to make you more comfortable with Beseren though, have you got any pressing questions? That's part of my 'job' with you honestly.

Way too many to know how to prioritize. What's the local magic like?

I'm guessing you mean wizardry, it's the big one. Technically there's species magic and then there's wizardry, which any intelligent being can do - it's easiest if you're in the elfanoid body pattern - The concept is more or less 'humans who look like caralendri' - you know, hands and eyes and a voice. So the way wizardry works is by defining limitations in the grammar of the magic language until you have something narrowly specified enough it does what you want. The more you narrow a magic spell the less mana it costs. There are both gestures and words for it, and there's a bunch of extra complexity on top of that, I'm a cop not a magic developer. Anyway, you can put magic into objects called spellframes. They remember the long complicated spell and cast it on their own, as long as they have the mana. So you can just buy a self-heating stove and feed it mana instead of fussing with coal or chanting heating spells yourself. The key thing to remember is that really specific magic is cheaper and easier and figuring out exactly how to do something without costing enough mana to buy a house is the big hurdle for new spells. That's why this translation spell only projects thoughts and does not also read thoughts. And even that is apparently really hard and it's supposedly incredibly impressive that some genius wizard got it down cheap enough for cops to use when necessary.