"It's great! You did a good job poking me!"

"Thank you! Now, I don't know how amaliens work, but an Amentan would want to leave that in - being gentle on the ear in the shower and sleeping and so on - all the time for about a week, to make sure the piercing heals pierced; and after that you can swap out other earrings if you want. If it starts to feel worse, especially if it feels hot or swollen, or it looks weird, you take out the earring right away and go to a doctor about it - might lose the piercing but better that than getting an infection."

"I don't think I can swap out the earring - would probably heal? I had a spike from a monster stuck in me one time for a while and when I pulled it out it healed up after a bit."

She holds her hands a couple of feet apart to indicate the length, and gestures to a spot on her abdomen to indicate where it was.

"Huh, do you think it would heal too fast for you to put a new earring in even if you did that right away?" asks Tish.

"Prolly would be fine but might heal tinnie tiny bit each time?

Meelia pokes the earing to see how it feels right now.

Well, it's a thin bit of metal stabbed through her ear.

"It's perfect!"

Meelia gets down from the chair and twirls around.

"I'm so glad you like it!" says Tish. "Anything else you want to do while we're in town?"

"Adventuring!"

She sets out very purposefully to explore the very busy city.

Tish laughs and follows her out and gives her spot advice on things like crossing streets that have motor traffic when they come to one of those and waiting in line if she wants a frozen dessert from this cart.

"I think I can probably run across the street and be okay."

"- you might be fine, since you can sleep off any injuries you got, but it'd really scare anyone who you ran in front of since they might not notice right away you're not an Amentan kid, and also it could damage their vehicles, so it's better to cross with everyone else."

"Oh I think I could dodge, would that still be scary for people?"

"Yes! Imagine you were trying to walk through a field with a bunch of little mice, like your mouse but not as tough, so they'd be badly hurt and maybe die if you stepped on them. And there's plenty of room for you to step, so you go real fast, because you're in a hurry - and then mice start running across where you're trying to run. Would that be scary?"

"Oh yeah, it would be! I probably wouldn't run there once I realized that."

"Right, but these vehicles do need to get where they're going, so instead we made a crossing for us - like we're mice, and there's a place where they pause to let mice go ahead of them. You could also solve it by making it impossible for people to get anywhere the trucks drive, but that would be harder to build, and most people don't mind having to wait at a crossing like this for a minute when they cross some streets."

"I don't think I mind the waiting it just feels silly to wait when it seems like it would be fun to go across while cars are zooming and less fun when they aren't. I guess that might not be true for amentans though cause you're more deli-cate."

She bounces, wanting to keep moving even while they're waiting.

And then the signal indicates they can go. "Thanks for waiting!" says Tish. "If you like running and dodging we could play paintball or something."

"Is that when you throw paint at each other? We do that at home sometimes and I'm really good at it!"

"It's like that but they have paint guns so you can make paint fly at other people really fast!"

"Oh wow! That does sound fun. Are you good at it?"

Meelia continues walking to explore the city while she chats. Also, Cheep runs off to see if he can find anything fun.

"I'm not good at it at all but I'd try it with you if you want."

Cheep can find trash cans and streetlights and bus stops and train stations and public bathrooms.

If he looks really far afield he might find other things too.

"I bet I'd be really good at it. I'm really fast at rea-cting to things."

None of those things looks different than other things Cheep's seen here, so he'll keep searching.

Cheep can find apartment buildings and office buildings and schools and stores! He can find purples and oranges and greys!

He can find a garbage alley and a red in it picking up some things that spilled out of a bag!

Cheep hasn't seen that color before when he's been here! He also hasn't seen garbage really, it smells sorta nice. He'll watch here for a bit to see more.