"We're still getting used to the concept of recorded music, but we do have some!"

"If we didn't have castes I would've tried to be a singer - it's a green thing, there's not zero exceptions but it's never red, nobody'd want to listen to me -"

"Now is an excellent time to try to be a singer in Aluvanna!"

"- how do I go about that -"

"Good question! I have no idea but I'm not sure anyone else does either so at least there's nobody getting out ahead of you! I mean, there are preexisting ways to be a singer, but they're all from before we had commnets, so now the situation is that audiences who want art and artists who want audiences are both still figuring out how to find each other and nobody's got a good solution yet. You could be our first celebrity!"

"Wouldn't that be something. I only know music from my planet though."

"So it'll all be new and exciting!"

Giggle.

"This is going to be fun," Ashras says happily. "I have the next few hours free, I could go find you some recording equipment!"

"If it'll have better audio quality than my pocket everything!"

"That's the idea, at least! And if it doesn't we will have learned valuable information about how the technology compares. And it'll still be easier to get it on the local commnet without messing around with data conversions."

"Thank you!"

"You're welcome!" He opens a portal. "See you in a bit - I apologize in advance for the confusion if you run into one of my brothers while I'm out -" and he's off, closing his portal behind him.

...she goes and practices songs.

When Ashras returns about half an hour later, he has several boxes and two brothers to help carry them.

"I found recording equipment and my mother found infant formula! And these are my brothers, Inlaith and Elarron."

"Hello," says Inlaith. It's not at all difficult to tell him apart from his brothers; they may be physically identical, but he moves completely differently.

"Hi," says Elarron. "I hear you're going to be a famous singer."

He speaks Tapap much more hesitantly than either of his brothers, and with a worse accent. His smile is somewhere between Ashras's radiant cheer and Inlaith's quiet solemnity.

"We'll see if people like my singing, I guess. Katin does but she's a baby. Thanks for finding stuff!"

"Your singing is great and you're great," says Ashras. "And no problem, it was fun. Let's see if we can get this stuff figured out."

Peka gamely attempts to fathom the recording equipment.

Ashras helps! He is so helpful!

Inlaith leaves them to it.

Elarron sticks around to help unpack everything, but then also leaves.

"Where'd you find this?"

"Oh, the palace is in a constant state of having more imported ruikni technology than they know what to do with, I dug through the pile for things with likely-looking labels and asked Rokarai if I could have them - she's the King's granddaughter, she's allowed to give away his stuff."