- an attractive young woman dressed in fancy robes made of some unfamiliar material, and surrounded by several glowing orbs of light, appears in a doctor's office in a skyscraper in Seattle.

For many possible doctor's offices, this would cause a lot of problems. But this particular receptionist has seen some shit over the last few years and is unruffled. "I think you're on the wrong floor," she says over the top of her computer monitor. 

Tongues. 

"I'm sorry, what?" she says politely. She is going to do a better job of appearing in unexpected locations from now on, a repeat of her arrival in Velgarth would just be embarrassing now that she is a grown up wizard with a tower and all. 

"Uh, cosplayers -" this woman isn't even dressed like a Star Trek alien, but she feels like appearing out of midair surrounded by orbs of light is the same genre - "are usually looking for Ramona Sterling, ninth floor, office 905? This is pediatrics, 805. - kids. We do medicine for kids."

She looks around. Indeed in the corner there is a harried woman trying to wrangle a toddler and a baby, who hasn't even looked up. 'cosplayers' translated approximately as 'people up to weird shit they're pretending is fine', which - fair enough. 

"My apologies," she says. "How do I get to 905?"

"The local convention is to press the 'up' button on that door behind you, which is the elevator, and then the '9' button, which takes you to the ninth floor. Though you can ...do something else... if you'd rather." She evidently didn't get here with the elevator. 

"Dimension Door requires line of effect." She walks over to the elevator and presses the button. 

"The other button, that's the down button. That's why it's the lower of the two on the panel, and has an arrow pointing down."

Other button. 

"Is that magic?" asks the toddler excitedly about the dancing lights.

"Yes. Study hard and you can do it too when you grow up."

And a minute later there is a knock on the door of suite 905. (There was a brief interlude with a mistaken knock on 902. Tongues doesn't actually do symbol interpretation.)

Ramona hears a knock, checks her calendar, sees that she has an hour or so right now. She is going to need to get her own receptionist - the rate of drop-ins has been increasing lately and she really doesn't want sessions getting interrupted with new, urgent problems. But that'll have to wait.

She opens the door.

"Hello, I'm Ramona Sterling. Can I help you?"

This is a cheerful well-equipped wizard with some Dancing Lights active. She's also doing the thing where her cloak flutters in a nonexistent breeze and where she casts a striking shadow despite none of the lights in the room being positioned for it, those are easy. 

"I'm not really sure but I'm hoping so! I plane shifted here and landed on another floor of this tower and they told me that, uh, cosplayers, typically intended to come to you. My translation isn't wholly adequate to determine if I'm a cosplayer but I am in any event not in need of child medicine so I figured I would get out of their way. I'm Carissa Sevar."

"I usually help people with relationship and sex problems. If you might have one of those, you are welcome to come into my office and close the door, which gives us some semblance of privacy. We can then chat for twenty or thirty minutes to see if you have the kind of problem I might be able to help with. If not, then you just leave, and that's the end of it. If you want my help, we make an agreement about payment and we arrange to meet again at a later time and explore the problem more."

"Would you like to come in?"

"I guess I probably have some relationship and sex problems," she says thoughtfully. "Considering. Sure, I'll come in."

Ramona nods, moves aside, and shows the probable-alien with all the confusing lighting and shadow into her office. She wonders what all that is about, but it's pleasant to look at so she decides not to call attention to it. She nods at the couch and takes a seat opposite in her Stressless chair.

"What should I call you, and what do you want to talk about?"

"I haven't actually picked a title because I'm kind of in hiding. I guess you can call me Carissa. I didn't have a specific agenda but I have a lot of problems I'm currently trying to solve with relationships and/or sex, and I have had some tutoring in this but I no longer have access to my tutor. Is this the kind of help with relationships and sex where we have a relationship and have sex or is it a different kind than that?"

"Thank you for asking instead of guessing and working from that assumption!"

"The way it usually works is that our only relationship is here, in this office, fully clothed, sitting on separate pieces of furniture, talking. You tell me what you're unhappy about, or would like to be happier about, with respect to your relationships with other people or your sex with other people. Or, with yourself. Or, with... whatever. Other than me. Um. And then I try to help you with those problems."

"I used to work only with locals. Lately I've started to work with a wider variety of... entities... and I will admit that my work is a little more... freeform... now. But let's start with what I described."

"Huh, okay. So the main thing I'm trying to accomplish with relationships and sex right now is getting Bastran, who is the Emperor of the Eastern Empire, to release Altarrin from his compulsions of service to the Empire so Altarrin can help me become immortal. This was going really well very briefly and then there was a - hiccup - and I don't think we're back to half as good as it was before the hiccup?"

"Wow, okay. I have... so many questions."

"So we've got a system with three... people?... in it? It helps me to know a little bit about the basic power structure. You said Bastran is an Emperor. I am guessing that makes him pretty important and powerful. You didn't give me a lot of clues about Altarrin, but if Altarrin could potentially make you immortal that sounds impressive too."

"We don't have time today for a huge amount of backstory, but could you say something about each of the three people involved including yourself, and how you relate to each other? Like, allies, enemies, lovers, mentor/mentee, rivals, whatever?"

"Uh, Altarrin mentored Bastran and sponsored him to become Emperor and Bastran really looks up to him and feels betrayed that he now wants to abandon the Empire to work with me, and Altarrin and I were pretending to be lovers while I was his prisoner but he actually didn't touch me and I had hurt feelings about that but he likes me now but we're being cautious of making Bastran jealous, because Bastran has the power to order either of us imprisoned or executed, and did have us held and interrogated for a couple weeks in Altarrin's case and a couple of months in mine and it was fairly unpleasant? And Bastran hates how having power over people changes how all of his relationships go so I'm trying pretty hard to just relate to him as a carefree lover who isn't scared of him at all and doesn't care if he's the Emperor and in fact he's really non-scary for an Emperor but I wouldn't in fact be dating him if he weren't an Emperor, you know? I picked him because he was the one person in the whole Empire who could protect me if Altarrin got bored."

Ramona grabs a clipboard and a pen and starts drawing a diagram with A, B, and C on it, and arrows pointing in both directions between every dyad. She has to write quickly to keep up with the torrent of words from Carissa.

A --> B: mentor, sponsored as Emperor, trying not to make jealous

B --> A: looks up to, feels betrayed by, has power to imprison or execute, did hold and interrogate for a few weeks

A <--> C: pretending to be lovers

A --> C: imprisoned her, didn't touch her, likes her now

C --> A: hurt he didn't touch her, sees him as a protector, but he might get bored

B --> C: has power to imprison or execute, did hold and interrogate for a few months, hates how power warps relationships

C --> B: trying not to make jealous, trying to relate to him as a carefree lover who isn't scared, sees him as a backup protector

Ramona shows the diagram to Carissa.

"You were talking pretty fast, so my handwriting is terrible, and I don't know if you can read my writing in any case. Did I get this right? Is there anything you want to add or edit?"

"That looks pretty much right? - oh, I don't know if it matters, but Bastran is gay and I'm a boy for him."