Bop. "Well, you're going full-time! And magic rocks aren't as scary as some of the things you can get screened for, it's not like they can usually drop a planet into the sun."

"Stars, I'd hope it takes more than a few weeks to learn to drop a planet into the sun. Okay, here's what I want to say, story time..."

She thinks for a bit and pitches her voice as if on stage.

"I am alive. I thank all those who have reached out to help pull me from beyond the pale of death, and the visitors from other stars who made it possible. This is a true miracle and a spark of hope that shines in the deepest night of grief! And yet, my return from the void is not a perfect, uncomplicated story. I return with a wounded soul, death having taken its ferryman's toll. To return from death is a perilous thing, in each new world more perilous yet. It is bittersweet, to remember the city from the sunrise temple to the childrens' chalk drawings in alleys, the people of all colors, but be unmoored from a true connection. I would not be worthy of you as I am now. Instead I now endeavor to learn what I must to petition for a wish from the empress of a great empire, and with it the spark of magic. To wish for a more full restoration, the healing of a soul-wound, and with it to light the way for the return of more of the waiting dead... Wait, my city, for I will return as soon as I can - within a moon, if all's well!"

Sai Ding catches her on video for this one.

"Oh, what a wonderful invention. That's great! It'd probably be a bit much to find some dramatic backdrop and better lighting and do a re-take, though..."

"I'm up for it if you want," laughs Sai Ding.

"Hmm, hmm. If you don't mind, do let's! I'm not sure what amazing sights you have to offer, perhaps you should pick."

"Do you want to do it in front of the imperial palace? It's stunning."

"I'm not sure a palace is quite the right tone. I was thinking some sort of market square, or a very distant view of a city, but those are just ideas. Perhaps if I start in front of a plainer wall and then move in view of it?"

"Shatul, where your class will be?"

"Perhaps, but first I want to see the palace if it's truly so grand."

"Alrighty." The witness has already excused himself; Sai Ding teleports them to the palace of the Empresses of Mîr. It's crystalline, like a monument of ice lit from inside its walls with auroral colors, three stories high at the low edges and thirty at the peak, roofline swooping jaggedly up from the one to the other. While she watches the colors shift gently and gradually from "aurora" to "sunrise". There are plenty of tourists there, gawking at it.

It's amazingly pretty and she spends a few minutes tracing out the lines in the design, where they lead the eye, but still more 'triumphant climax' material than 'the long voyage home', what she's trying to create. To Shatul?

Shatul is a bustling forest of skyscrapers; there are bridges between buildings, a playstructure in a park which is fully thirty stories high with nets strung up every fifty feet or so around the edges in case of falling children, and orcs - it's almost all orcs here - going about their business, shopping for clothes and selling fried cricket skewers and carrying their toddlers on their shoulders and busking with a drum set and playing some street-hockey-like game in a branching-off off cul-de-sac. It isn't hard to find a relatively featureless wall to record Samara against and have her step onto the thoroughfare from there.

Orcs don't look that strange. It's a live city, an enormous one to get lost in.

She does two takes of her little speech with slightly different tones, then kind of - sags.

"I'm sure the people are embracing computers, at least some of them. This will spread on its own. But I'm feeling rather tired now, I admit. Shall we go off to the school and get me out of your hair?"

"We can see if the dorm is open to your session yet, sure," says Sai Ding, looking up the address.

She observes the local fashion as they go.

Orcs vary in outfit tendencies from "schlub" to "sharp"; they tend monochrome, though sometimes this takes the form of twelve clashing shades of orange or an all-royal-purple ensemble rather than grayscale, and it's not a constant, with some orcs choosing bold patterns of green-yellow-coral or cyan-magenta-yellow. There is an apparent trend among the adolescents to wear clothes much too big for them that are practically falling off their bodies and then cinch them up with knots or attach them to other garments in the outfit with pins or otherwise improvise a fit. Small children appear to think it is cool to wear shoes that don't match. Some orcs just buy things that approximately fit them off the rack and wind up in sweatpants and polos, or sundresses and leggings; some orcs wear tailored suits with uncomfortable-looking shoes.

They're using colors totally differently, and not in a gender-coded way at all. Interesting! She probably shouldn't try to read any deep insights into this society based on a quick look at what they wear. She likes the monochrome looks, considers what clothes to get other than this seemingly distinctive robe, and patiently walks behind her helpful resurrection guide.

It's three blocks away from where they started, or Sai Ding would probably have teleported; as it is it's a brief walk and then they're at an eight-story building with a rock garden on top. (They can't see much of the rock garden but there is a sign, 'rooftop rock garden'.) Inside, Sai Ding asks the nearest orc if the dorm is open for early arrivals to Samara's session, and finds that it is, and gets Samara a room that will open to her fingerprint. It has a loft bed and a desk beneath with a chair, and heavy navy-blue curtains over the window, and an ensuite half-bath; the showers are in a shared facility across the hall and meals are taken in the basement cafeteria.

"Nice place, if a bit cramped. How should I learn how to use a computer properly?"

"Well, first you need to have one - do you want the kind that uses a brain implant or the kind that doesn't?"

"If I'm going to be a rock I'd better avoid relying on my brain, no? Then again I don't know the difference."

"Oh, magic rocks can use the implant kind no problem, though if you have to replace your body you'll have to replace the chip too."

"Any other important differences?"

"Most people with the option prefer the chip kind. It lets you control the computer with your thoughts."