'I think good.'

"Good. Pinjai's going to be here just for a few minutes this evening, it's on her way home today, and she'll see where you are on the harp and refer you to someone who can give you real lessons."

Yayy!!  She wiggles.

In the meantime people are having hot tea in the living room while a movie plays with subtitles below.

Oh that's so great for learning spelling and pronunciation!!  Wow it's like the best possible thing for that.  This is so cool she'll absolutely stick around to watch.

It's a science fiction movie about meeting aliens who are embroiled in a war and having to figure out who to help and how much.

Woahhhh.  What are they using to decide that??

They're trying to figure out how the war started and which side has more palatable tactics and end goals.

What makes tactics palatable or not?

The characters have lots of arguments about that! They are concerned with things like bioweapons and perfidy and the use of concerning sci-fi techniques to extract intel from captives and stuff like that.

Okay cool at least nothing she knows her family to have definitely done.  Bioweapons are a real scary concept even though she's never been sick.

Ultimately a splinter faction from the first bunch of aliens succeeds at a bioweapon deployment against the second. The human protagonists are able to talk the first bunch into standing down from their more extreme demands and arresting the splinter actors in light of there being barely any survivors from the second bunch, and turn their attention to getting both species onto a postwar footing.

This movie definitely makes her feel the ways that humans are so much - bigger, than fish people.  Even though the aliens aren't really humans.

ESPECIALLY with the soundtrack, WOW.  It's so overwhelming that it gives her the hiccups again (which aren't completely silent but mostly are, and at least this time she knows she's not dying).

Pinjai comes by while they're going through the blooper highlights.

Cyllene is staggeringly good at her lap harp for someone who's had it only as long as she has, but given that there are an awful lot of things she's doing not quite in the right way.  She's on track to probably give herself a repetitive stress injury if she keeps going as she is.

Pinjai corrects her finger position, advises her on managing callusses, gives her the URL of a website to consult, and is on her way with the promise of a referral.

'Thank you!'  Wiggle wiggle.

If there's another movie on Cyllene will definitely stay to watch it but otherwise she'll go to her room and apply what she's been taught to her practice.

Nope, just the one. Nashi's staying up to read but most people are going to bed.

In that case practice it is (quietly), then sleeping, and - waking up shortly after dawn from a nightmare where she disintegrates and doesn't go anywhere and she's just dust floating in her uncle's cave and he doesn't even know it didn't work, but her father does and collects all the bits of her in a bag and leaves her alone in a pile in the dark in her room forever.

Well, just a dream.  She heads downstairs.

Meec is being difficult to get breakfast into, Shraun is wrapping a breakfast pastry in a napkin to bring with him on his way out the door, Sesh is trying to find her good hat and rejecting attempts to convince her to wear her bad hat.

Does any breakfast seem public the way dinner is?

There is a wokful of scrambled eggs on the stove that Paju is serving herself from.

So no, then.  She finds whoever looks the least busy and holds out her tablet: 'Do you know how I can know when my release from the house of truth is?'

"Oh, it'll be on their website..." Zian pulls it up on her computer. "Here it is! Wow, that's a lot of comments."

What do they say!