"How about instead I give you more advice on not getting punched. Asking about families and close friends is incredibly forward. People might tell you about their relationships with each other, and it's not that hard to figure some of them out if you live in the same town long enough, but don't pry, prying is very rude. And I didn't play with toys much, as a kid, I'd spend a lot of my free time counting flower petals and leaves and stuff."

"Huh. Okay. What kinds of questions would go over better when people can't think of anything to say, here?"

"I'm not sure, maybe ask about their favorite game or their favorite song or what they think of sky's night."

"Sky's night?"

"It's a holiday where people hang out on the roof and watch the stars and have a big meal and sometimes invite strangers to celebrate with them - it's for celebrating whatever you didn't get a chance to during the year, and thinking about what you want to achieve."

"Oh, that sounds nice! As long as there's enough roof to sit on for everybody."

"The roof is the most common thing that everyone thinks of but you're not banned from celebrating in a courtyard or a field. But I have personally never had too little roof to celebrate on and I don't know anyone else who's ever mentioned that either."

Nod nod. "What kind of meat do you want?" she asks.

"I was thinking maybe the lamb but I don't know, what do you recommend?"

"Lamb's good! My favorite's the chicken, though, it's sort of like a kind of poultry from my home planet except I never liked that one and I like humanbiospheretypical chicken and now i can make all those recipes and they're good." She fills up a nice little net bag for him. "I'm allowed to give you quite a lot of this, the meat handouts are subsidized by all the animal lovers who don't want any animals to be eaten and are hoping to displace some butchery."

"You are trying to prevent animals from being eaten by giving me meat."

"Yeah, this meat wasn't animals. They grow it in vats. Or possibly have demons conjure it, I'm not actually sure about this batch but if it's important I can check the box."

"Will it nourish me like meat would?"

"Yeah, exactly like! There's nothing different about it apart from it never having been an animal or they'd have a much harder time convincing people to switch."

"And they want people to switch. Why's that?"

"Because they care about the animals? And don't want animals to be brought up by people who don't care about them and then killed."

"...Ah." He bets he knows what they think of slavery. He kind of wants to ask but isn't sure if it's a good idea. He hesitates and looks around some more to cover for thinking through whether he should say anything.

"Since these are made without animal involvement and vacuum-sealed, they will keep without needing to be kept cold or anything for up to a year - frankly they keep longer than that, but they're specifically rated for a year - and are safe to eat raw, but I recommend cooking them anyway," she says, handing him the bag.

"That's convenient. And I don't eat the... vacuum seal? Right?"

"Right, that you just get rid of."

"Pleasure doing business with you."

Elsewhere someone restrains and manhandles a person with facial tattoos who was trying to get into one of the magic shops.

The proprietor - this one just looks like a human, though he's not ethnically unremarkable for the area - steps out. "Is something wrong? I haven't barred that fellow from my shop."

"Apologies, sir, it's not a fellow," says a bystander who is not too busy engaging in a physical altercation with the fellow to answer.

"I haven't barred that entity from my shop," replies the proprietor.

"'s busy," the person trying to drag them away grunts.

"Our apologies, sir, it was our understanding that you had asked that slaves be kept away from you," says the bystander.