"Nothing dramatic to top you," says Artorian, "mostly just taking people's grotesque stories - I had to sell this one man a kettle for his elaborate revenge fantasy about his ex-friend, we're supposed to err on the side of accepting borderline stuff -"

"Huh. I haven't heard any stories here so I've got no idea what a story you wouldn't call grotesque would be but it wouldn't shock me if it was something nobody in Sesat has ever thought of."

"Not much of a fiction person?" Keoni asks.

"...Uh, I... I work alone with dogs, there's nobody I'd be trading stories with then?"

"Well, sure, but you could read after work. Or put on an audiobook while you walk the dogs," Keoni says.

"Well, now I know audiobooks exist."

"Oh no, I'm sorry," laughs Keoni. "There's too many things, and no way to know which ones are important for any specific person..."

"There are a lot of things. D'you know, for a while I thought you were the fair folk."

"Not unreasonable! What changed your mind?" wonders Artorian.

"The news said people from other worlds were human sometimes and some of the - things - can be done by humans, and so I realized not everyone here was the fair folk and there wasn't any specific reason to think you were when, I mean, now I've seen the fair folk with my own eyes and besides the fact that you dress like them and have the same sort of magic stuff there's no way I'd mistake you for them anymore."

"- you've seen the fair folk? Who's the fair folk?" asks Keoni.

"...The big tall pretty ones with complicated hair? Are they not the fair folk either?"

"They're Elves. I'm not sure we have anything that maps precisely onto your fair folk stories," says Artorian.

"I don't dress like an Elf! An Elf wouldn't be caught dead in this dress!" laughs Keoni.

"Oh. Okay. ...Why wouldn't they wear that dress?"

"It doesn't have any embroidery, and it isn't generally fancy," says Keoni. "It's just a dress. Elves wear, like, robes, layers of them, with beads and tiny stitches, and a ton of jewelry."

So that's what's still fancy, when fabric is cheap and dye is cheap even in colors Fere's never seen before.

"Huh. For some reason I didn't think jewelry and beads would be harder than cloth."

"I mean, they're not, even for things a machine can't make nothing can get much more expensive than summoning a demon in Revelation for it costs unless you specifically value it being handmade, but it's high-maintenance," says Keoni. "If I wore an Elf robe I'd lose half the beads catching them on things and get sick of the earrings knocking into my neck and keep dipping the sleeves in barbecue sauce, and that last thing a prestidigitator can fix but not the others!"

"Huh. Okay."

"Elves just care a lot about being pretty," Keoni says. "And being in pretty places. There's a search filter on Revelation Bazaar for 'Elf approved' on things that they convinced some Elf to approve of, if you want your whole house to look ridiculously overdesigned. Or to clash, not everything Elves like is good together at the same time."

Fere nods slowly. It almost all fits together... "I don't get how that works with giving people basic income, wouldn't it be easy enough to get elf-approved things and figure out which ones are good together and not do things that'd get barbecue sauce on you if you weren't working?"

"Oh, sure, I have a friend who does that," says Artorian. "Lots of people spend a while not working and just coasting on basic. But if you do that long enough - how long's different for everybody - usually you get bored. Or you get really good at video games, some people do that and show no signs of intending to pick up a job. It's okay. We don't have to threaten people with poverty to get all the work done."

Fere scrunches up her face. "I mean, obviously, but how do you tell which people are better or more important than you?"

They blink at her. Artorian says, "well, some people have - more clearances than me, I suppose? And more impressive accomplishments? More, uh, magic powers so they can save worlds singlehandedly or whatever. I guess none of those people are playing video games all day, but I don't think that's very much on my video game playing cousin's mind when he picks up a copy of whatever's new in the Hollow Knight series, that this makes him worse than, uh, Loki or someone."

Fere stares, open-mouthed.

"...Okay so does nobody here have to call anyone else 'my lord' or do what they say?"

"Oh, probably some people do - I think Elves in particular still have kings and call them things like that -" says Artorian.

"Queen Lilioukalani's partisans call her Your Majesty?" says Keoni. "But that's like - she was illegally overthrown and then died, pre-contact, and she was brought back as the beloved queen people felt had been wrongly taken from them, and now they're observing the formalities as part of that, if she comes to my restaurant I don't have to call her that. And if she told me to - what would she even tell me to do - I don't know, stand on my head, if she told me to do that I could laugh at her and tell her to leave my restaurant and she'd have to do that."