"Yes, please! I don't know anything about serums and I don't have a job..."

"Oh, lots of people don't have jobs, and one bottle of the serum to try isn't going to be very pricey, if it were terribly expensive people would summon demons and copy it."

"Okay. You'd know better than I would."

"That's what I'm here for." Tingle tingle tingle as the hair goes on about a square centimeter at a time.

At least it doesn't hurt. And soon she will not look plausibly Sesati and it would be tremendously rude to comment on her coincidental resemblance to some dead slave...

The re-hairing process takes a while, but there's music playing overhead, and the angel keeps up a mostly one sided conversation and puts on videos for Fere to watch about how to do a French twist and a chignon. They will require a few hair objects but the angel, at the end of the re-hairing, produces some of them by magic and hands them over, complimentary. "There you go. Do you have a bracelet - great, here we go -" She taps her own bracelet against Fere's. "- hm, do you have it locked? Squeeze the buttons on both sides so I can do the transaction please -" And when this is done she collects her money.

Fere finds herself smiling. It's uncomplicatedly nice and not totally overwhelming and the angel is so respectful. She's not sure what the angel would think if she explained everything. She doesn't, anyway.

"Thanks. I'll tell people about you."

"Ooh, give them my name, it's Sofia, I get a bonus if people are booking with me specifically."

"I will, Sofia, nice meeting you."

She heads back. She strategizes.

...The last time she found herself strategizing it turned out Artorian had a really cool and totally unbelievable plan. So. Maybe worth having a conversation with him or Keoni in private where they can be open about stuff.

She swings by the restaurant on the way home.

There's a different band playing now, and different dancers. Keoni and her assistants are doing something with sweet potatoes and singing along to the music.

Fere knows some ways to subtly tip slaves off that she wants to talk when they have time, without visibly interrupting anything anyone's doing.

But she has no idea what Keoni's doing and when it's safe to distract her and even if she did there's no reason Keoni would recognize any signal specifically designed to not be obvious.

She should go watch from the balcony and definitely not stay here where she'll be tempted to get more food that costs money instead of the food she already has that costs stories. That would for sure be the sensible course of action. Anyway she stays and investigates how she would go about ordering if hypothetically she were going to do that.

Apparently people walk in and talk to the robots; the ones with bracelets like hers are using those to pay, the others are presumably doing something else. Drones depart the area periodically but it's not obvious from the balcony how to summon one.

She should hang out on the balcony and watch. That is definitely the thing she should do.

The thing she does is talk to a robot.

"Welcome to Keoni's Neverending Luau!" says the robot. "How many will be joining you today?"

"...I don't... know? I can't think of anyone who would come here and want to eat with me? I have no idea if any of your other customers would decide I was great company?"

The robot doesn't seem to understand this. "You can sit wherever you'd like, since there is not a special event today!" it says.

Fere freezes up and neither sits somewhere nor leaves.

"The bathroom is just past those potted plants," says the robot, pointing, and then it greets someone else.

She takes a while to unfreeze, and then she flees to the balcony to watch and see if she can tell when Keoni's done at work.

Yup, Keoni closes the restaurant and heads out of it into her home after it's been dark a couple hours. (Fere can see the proceedings by the torches and other light sources that are abundant in the restaurant.)

Can Fere intercept her on her way out?

If she's very quick, yes!

She's pretty quick. Unlike interacting with robots, starting conversations about the strategic advisability of various acts of resistance against Sesat is not new, even if every single specific detail of the situation is bizarre.

"- Hello?" says Keoni, utterly failing to recognize her.

"Oh, good, that's reaction I'm hoping to get back on my planet. It's Fere. I, um, wanted to know if there was a time when you'd have time to talk?"