"Pretty well! I have heard about some weird taboos in other universes you might want to know about, though."

"What are they?"

She passes Griffie some notes from Bar. "Weird stuff about sex and hygiene. Also there was something about, uh, killing people for having certain genes, or something, I don't know, I didn't really get it but apparently some people have a taboo about some things I can do because of it."

"The sex stuff is a known phenomenon to me, in a lot of places in my world it's inappropriate for people with bodies like ours to walk around in public without clothes and in some places it's even illegal, along with bans on sex work, which are often poorly enforced because it's profitable enough to make people want to look the other way if they're getting their share of bribes, or restrictions of sex work and sex workers to specific areas of a city. And hygiene norms get weird in the absence of good information, if you don't know exactly what does and doesn't cause disease you get twitchy. Especially about people doing medicine. As for language … the spell for causing people to not be deaf or blind is usually called 'remove blindness/deafness' but I've never heard about that being a nicer phrasing, it's just what people say. Regarding the murder and associated taboos … so, remember when I explained how specifically framing a carnival employee for murder would cause more chaos than regular murders? At the time I explained that with human ethnicity but in practice there's a thing of getting mad at people who are vaguely similar to people you really don't like, and if someone was like 'we're murdering people to mess with genetics in this way' and then you mess with genetics that way then you seem similar to the murderers, and murderers are often unpopular."

"I guess that makes sense. Well, I have it on my sign that I'm not doing that but I probably can't avoid being vaguely similar to anyone whom anyone else might object to."

"Yeah. There are people who don't like me because I'm assembled-not-born and they heard scary stories about other people who were also assembled-not-born. Some people are just like that."

"Weird. Want to round up some more people for Seihra-Gara?"

"We could introduce your new employee and Bar could get Jim a loaner tablet, or if you've met anyone here you like I can go fetch them? I don't really have a bunch of gaming friends here to round up, I got along alright with this woman who last I saw her was planning spend her entire time here transcribing textbooks but she isn't the type to like distractions."

"Yeah, I was thinking them and Cinlirina. Maybe we could ask Bar if she can play. In case she wants to."

Bar isn't interested in playing, but the other people can be fetched.

It is weird that Ibrahim is being invited to do this, but given that he just straightforwardly can afford to, he will participate. The imagery is a bit overwhelming, he was never in a position to pay to see depictions of the world and the occasional diagram or brussel sprout or Griffie aren't really the same, but he can hide overwhelm from Saira no problem.

As long as his overwhelm is hidden from her she, obviously, doesn't have anything to say about it.

Most caralendri who like the game say it's a better game with more players, at least up to some optimal amount they don't agree on beyond which it gets worse again. Saira's never yet played it with too many although she's also never gone beyond five.

Ibrahim looks to Cinlirina for cues on how Saira feels about her minions playing games against her. As it turns out, though, nobody in this game, even Griffie, seems to be playing all that competitively, so he doesn't either.

And while Saira is thinking over a move, Griffie's voice whispers in Ibrahim's ear despite Griffie not being in the right position to do this nonmagically. "You seem overwhelmed, is Saira treating you alright? You can reply by subvocalizing. Cinlirina could probably scry this but likely won't think to."

Ibrahim barely avoids jumping, and eventually subvocalizes a reply. "Saira's fine. Safe work, good pay, mostly has wanted light work so far which is nice. I just … they say you cope better with the Scholomance if you don't constantly fantasize about the outside, and I couldn't really afford to pay to see someone's art collection. And this is … the plants blow in the wind."

"…you need to see the backyard. If you're nervous about security not extending there I can come with. Also this is probably no longer a Message discussion, I'll mention the backyard again after the game ends."

This is a really weird conversational format but Griffie doesn't seem to expect a reply, so he continues with the game and doesn't give one.

And Cinlirina wins the game of Seihra-Gara, though the extent that anybody really cares about who wins is rather low.

And Griffie awkwardly initiates a conversation while pretending to have derived information from a different path than ey in fact did and trying to steer towards a predetermined conclusion!

Internally, Ibrahim winces. He's a better liar than that. He takes the lead on steering the conversation, and soon enough, he and Griffie are heading into the backyard.

The backyard, currently, has a firepit warming a brick area, and beyond that a field of grass that looks a bit frosted at the edges, which in the distance gives way to a lake and an autumnal-looking forest. A portion of the forest has holes blasted through it, but is healing rapidly enough that someone closely watching the holes would be able to see them shrink. Someone seems to have left burnt marshmallows on skewers and empty packaging with graham cracker crumbs near the firepit.

It's an overwhelmingly beautiful and pleasant place with undefended human-digestible nutrition, which is obviously too good to be true, so it must be a trap, probably a psychic mal which means that he should– he goes to cast and he's barely got a trickle of mana, he's being attacked by a psychic mal and he's barely got a trickle of mana and he's going to die–

Griffie pokes Ibrahim with Guidance.

Ibrahim flinches at the touch, and then remembers that he is in the situation he is in and not a different worse situation, and sags.

Alright. Sometimes enclaves have parks and Milliways has a very large one and he is in it despite the fact that a few days ago it would have been around a coin toss that he'd ever see sunlight again. This one looks cloudy but feels like it has good solar simulation, it would help with … actually Bar is doing nutrition optimization on his food and probably adding a lot of Vitamin D. The park is remarkably cold compared to the Scholomance but not dangerously so though he should cast a ward buy some cheap insulation if he's going to be in it away from the firepit for too long. There is a weird plant person standing near him. He is wearing new clean underwear and socks and a recentlyish-washed shirt and pair of pants and was able to repair his shoes to fit better. He is not in the Scholomance, he is Out, which means that he is Not There.

…knowing that the marshmallows and crackers are real food does not make him want them less. Unfortunately, pouncing on discarded food in front of Griffie would probably be unstrategic and make him look desperate or insane, which would be bad. He is not going to eat the food even though it is edible and right there, he is getting adequate nutrition every day, he is not going to do this. Even though it's right there. He's staring at it, isn't he. He turns away from it, which fails to decrease its salience as much as he would hope.

Griffie has more of a model of what is going on in Ibrahim's head than he may expect, but ey is not going to comment on it, that seems like it would make the situation worse.

By the time Ibrahim is out of his head, Griffie is holding eir left hand to eir ear and very soft beeping noises are coming from the bluer of the two rings on it. Ey is trying to appear to be more focused on this than ey is, but is still at least by Ibrahim's standards a terrible liar.