"Yep, that's why an e-copy is cheaper, it doesn't require storing and packing and filing work."

"And I can buy more books for it for that price later?"

"The price may change without notice, for example if our tax burden changes, a subsidy begins to apply, or any input to the process changes in cost, but I don't expect it to get more expensive for the foreseeable future."

He'll get an e-reader and all of the laws that apply to all of the relevant places and go home to read them, then. Shouldn't take too long, right? Right?

The places actually have a lot of laws, way more than Har. Many of the laws are just definitions, and many of them only apply if you have certain magical abilities or a restraining order against you or are driving a delivery truck or something.

He diligently takes notes on unlikely conditions that would cause more laws to apply to him, and narrows down the set that actually probably will apply to him if he visits Icefalls, and reads that set.

There are so many laws and some of them are so weirdly specific. Why did it need to be illegal to commit battery with a weapon and illegal to commit battery with a vehicle and illegal to commit battery in a sexual way and illegal to commit battery by genetically engineering a pathogen? Is it legal to commit battery with a formerly frozen and thawed dead fish between midnight and noon?

Eventually, he goes back to ask about bus tickets and foreign currency.

He can get a bus pass good for the next twelve days anywhere in Vanda Nossëo for sixty rings, or he can just get a ticket that will get him to the specific destinations of his choice and back home again over any period of time for twenty-eight.

He'll get the cheaper one. And he'd like to trade 288 rings for a currency that's accepted in the wider multiverse and specifically Icefalls.

Here's some of that at today's rate.

And he books himself a flight to the new island and tries to figure out how to take the bus to Icefalls.

They're trying real hard to make that clear. He can get someone to write out the whole route for him if he wants, with little map drawings of the stations.

They're so convenient. And only a really reasonable amount of utterly terrifying and possibly dishonest.

He goes to Icefalls.

Icefalls, Everhome is built around a lovely waterfall; the oldest architecture, mostly houses, is rustic and has been supplemented and joined since its assembly by modern additions. The station's exit spits him onto a set of broad curved avenues all going parallel from the base of the falls to an imposing stone building. There are signs in six languages, and kids playing some elaborate sport with a lot of running and brightly colored flags on a big lawn between a pair of the avenues, and another pair of avenues contains an open-air bazaar, and the next has an art installation with lots of huge squares of fabric propped up to billow colorfully in the wind, forming a bit of a maze all together. There are taller buildings, ones that go all the way from the bottom of the falls to the top and have bridges from their roofs out onto the higher portion of the city around the top of the falls, made almost entirely of glass windowpanes. Somebody's going over the waterfall in a weird boat and splashing down with a whoop. Somebody else is paragliding off the cliff, a bit farther away. There are too many buildings for him to see very far, but a hill comes up over to his left and it's got a rice terrace on it.

It seems nice, much nicer than anywhere he's ever been, and some of that is that he's not particularly well-off and has been saving up as much as he can but... he's always thought a human-majority society would be better for humans and he was right to think so.

He doesn't know these people and he doesn't know how to know these people.

He wanders the bazaar a bit, because at least it's familiar.

Cheese on a stick! Toys! Jewelry! Fireworks! Shirts! Sherbet! Fake fuzzy cat ears on headbands! Shoes! Weird juice blends! Facepainting! Comic books! Perfume! Preserved butterflies in paperweights! Art glass! Deep fried goosemeat! First aid booth! Sidewalk chalk!

...Humans can eat things he's never seen before. Cool.

He would like to get his face painted in an authentic human style! How much is it?

There's a price sheet over here with the patterns! He can get a butterfly across his whole face or look like a deer or get imitation warpaint or do tiger stripes or abstract swirls in his favorite color. It's not that expensive but the complicated ones are moreso. (Most people he sees with painted faces are children but nobody's going to stop him.)

Possibly he should figure out if this is a signal of something - but if it were an important signal to always get right this person would do house calls, right? He's definitely not blending in, anyway, and definitely not trying to.

On the gripping hand, a butterfly! He'll take that one! He asks the painter how they came to do these patterns as opposed to some other patterns.

"I learned to do this one off a website, and kept doing it for my daughter, and she got bored of it," says the painter, beginning the butterfly, "and so I looked up some more to do, and then she grew out of it and I kind of missed it, so I rented a mall stall, and here we are!"

"Cool! Do people usually grow out of it?"

"Mostly kiddos like it, but you're not the first adult I've had today. Lady wanted the deer look."

"Huh, I can imagine wanting that. By the way, I noticed people around here ask each other questions like this and I didn't notice them paying but money's weird here, I just want to check - I can pay if I got that wrong."

"- I'm not going to charge you to make conversation. Though you might need to stop talking when I'm painting your cheeks."

"Right, I can do that." He shuts up.

Paint paint paint paint. "There you go!" She's got a mirror.