"- yes, of course."

"Meet you back here," he says, heading off in search of someone who looks unimportant and not too busy to talk.

There are people hanging out having lunch on park benches. There are kids in the playground over there, and parents watching them. There's somebody taking a break from the ring dance, catching her breath.

He wanders up to the person catching her breath. "Hey, are you busy? I have some weird questions I need to ask someone here but I can ask someone else."

"- uh, I'm not," gasp, "busy, but I can't, uh, talk in paragraphs, right now," pant pant.

He laughs. "I thought paragraphs could have any arbitrary length but I don't really know much about them. Anyway, do you think you're flourishing?"

"- do I think I'm," wheeze, "flourishing? I mean, yeah, I guess? What," breathe, "kinda question is that?"

"Well, it's the entire purpose of Vanda Nossëo's existence, isn't it?"

"I mean, yeah, that doesn't mean they have - pollsters bothering us all the time, checking -"

"Not a pollster, just an alien."

"Yeah, I figured, you look kind of unhealthy." She's recovered now, breathing-wise, and leans in various directions, stretching. "Yeah, I guess I'm flourishing."

"I'm glad. What lets you flourish here?"

"I have a really cushy job I do for two hours a day unless I feel like taking time off, and I get paid a lot for it, and I can go anywhere I want and do whatever I want, although in practice I spend a lot of time as a volunteer docent at the art museum."

"Wow. That does sound nice. Do you feel safe here?"

"Yeah, people in my building don't even lock their doors."

"Why is that?"

"Well, it's because the landlord doesn't want to install the kind that lock themselves, actually, but like, we don't need to and this way you don't have to remember to bring your keys when you leave, and it's not like anyone's going to go steal my shit, they all have their own shit."

He laughs. "Does that hold in general - people are too rich to steal, are there equivalents for other things?"

"Uh, I think there are sometimes still, like, rapes? But that's never going to be going into someone's apartment of a sudden, right, if you want to have sex with a random stranger you can pay somebody, it's people who think their value as human beings depends on getting their dates to put out and want to fudge their numbers, and it's not happening enough that I worry about it much when I go out, they know they'd get caught as soon as somebody made a report even if they don't have a conscience."

"I see. And you're basically not worried about coming to the attention of anyone who wouldn't need to worry about the law, there aren't many of those compared to all the people in all the worlds?"

"I don't think there are any really?"

"No? I suppose nothing I've heard would make me think a Bell would want to."

"I... guess... that if I went into... the Edda neighborhood?... then Loki could probably kill me and make it look like I had a heart attack... but my insurance would kick in to get me resurrected... and people don't have a lot of heart attacks so I don't think she's doing this on the regular even to people she's met. But if like I met the local Bell, he's named Kib, I don't think he could particularly."

"Huh. What would stop him?"

"- well, I think he'd get caught? Loki's not powerful just because of the spells, she's also got the Tesseract, I don't think the spells all by themselves would make it easy to get away with."