"If you aren't worried about it I don't imagine it's in my interests to convince you to be, as no clean Amentans look to be dropping out of the sky," he sighs.

"If this is a mistake I can have the housekeeper wash everything anyway. Possibly except my books but I don't let arbitrary people touch my books anyway. You're welcome to come in and touch inanimate objects that aren't in my library or my bedroom or behind a lock of any kind and aren't the personal possessions of my household staff or of any guests of mine. I don't normally add conditions that explicitly but that's not anything that isn't generally understood to apply to most people, I'm just being explicit because you come from a very different context."

"That's understandable." He gets up, a bit stiffly.

She gathers up her letter and writing supplies and, carefully avoiding actually touching him, holds the door open. "Anyway, I didn't catch your name. I'm Tema Miara, second part of that is a hereditary surname."

"I'm Nelen Suta, second part of that is a job name."

She shows him inside. The building is airy and seems like it probably gets a lot of its light from the sun, though today is too overcast for that to work well, and there don't seem to be any electric lights. She has some fancy silver candlesticks.

Her housekeeper is lurking near the stairs down, obviously waiting to see the mysterious alien and not even really pretending to be productive.

Nelen smiles at the housekeeper - toothily, in case that helps - and waves a little.

"Nice hair," the housekeeper says, waving back.

"Tyela, this is Nelen, who is apparently an alien. Nelen, this is Tyela, who works for me."

"It's nice to meet you, Tyela."

"You too," Tyela says.

Tema heads down the stairs, gesturing for Nelen to follow, and points out various doors that lead to various rooms on the way to the kitchen.

Nelen follows, tentatively but keeping up with her.

The cook can be found exhaustedly flopped on a couch doing something that involves herbs and flower petals. He has matches out but hasn't lit any yet, and puts them away in his pocket when he sees Tema and Nelen. He has substantially darker skin than Tema and Tyela.

"Chanai, this is Nelen, who is apparently an alien who appeared out of nowhere. Nelen, Chanai. So I need help figuring out what aliens can eat and I am going to throw a party tomorrow so I'm leaving Nelen here with you while I go talk to people and you need to cook for a crowd of science types here to find out if Nelen is really an alien and ask him about plumbing. Yes, I know it's on short notice, apparently his alien magic thing is going to give out soon."

Chanai blinks and smiles and rises, pocketing an amethyst as he does so. "Pleased to meet you, Nelen, would you like to try one berry and see if it gives you a stomachache? I just got a basket of them."

"I wonder if maybe I should try smelling things and see if any of them smell - foody? Before I actually taste anything."

"Makes sense to me. Come on, the kitchen's this way."

The kitchen is in fact that way and contains a bowl of fruits and some eggs and flour and several jars of pickles in various states of pickling and an icebox which Chanai would rather not open any more often than absolutely necessary.

Nelen sniffs a fruit. "- it smells nice?" he says. "Not familiar, but nice."

"Can't disagree with you there. Of course, so do some poisons."

"Well. Starving would... also kill me. Is this a kind of fruit you just bite into or does it need to be opened?"

Chanai can provide all necessary fruit instructions.

Nelen samples the fruit, finds it pleasant to taste, and finishes it on the theory that while a serious poison test takes longer the mainline options here are "everything here is inedible to Amentans" and "he can eat like a local".

The latter hypothesis is not immediately falsified.

"If you want to talk about this world or your world or get oriented more while we see if you get sick I have some time."

"Yes, please," Nelen says. "How do people here live - maybe, uh, what's a typical day for a normal person like here?"

"Well, a typical person probably wakes in the morning - humans spend most of each night unconscious for health reasons - and eats and then goes about their work. They might eat again in the middle of the day and again in the evening. Their work is, um, statistically it's farming or weaving but someone in each household will also need to buy and prepare food and clean the house and so on. Normal people visit the market themselves or have someone in their family do it. Of course, Tema has servants instead. Normal people do small magics when they need them, as they can afford the materials - you caught me in the middle of setting up a sleep spell, though I was using some of Tema's imported materials to see how differently they worked and most people don't use imported southern herbs just to see what changes. Sleep is the most common thing for a normal person to use magic for, but doctors tend to know how to numb people. It's normal for people who work in groups to tell stories or sing while they do. If there are very young children in the household, someone has to take care of them; when they get slightly older someone has to be around and ideally show them how to do useful things. A typical day is almost consumed by work but there are lots of holidays."

"Okay. Most of that is familiar, I guess," says Nelen. "What does a sleep spell do?"

"The target is unable to wake for a while and doesn't automatically wake afterward - it's certainly useful for people who want to keep prisoners unconscious for hours but it's much cheaper to just give yourself some help if you find yourself lying awake all night."

"So it's for insomnia? All right. What kind of holidays?"