And here's the cart. "Hello, Paulo!"

   "Back with the human kid, I see."

"He's not actually human! He's a kaleid. I don't know exactly what his magic is. I would like to buy a burger from you, paying you three money-of-Kef."

    "Yep, that's the price."

"I wasn't expecting it to be different, I'm just trying to help him learn the language!"

    "Hah, okay. Hi kid. This here is the best burger cart in all of Kef, you know? Almost tastes like real meat, for only three!"

"How is Basilio?"

    "Pa is fine. Can't shut up about the fancy spices he wants to try importing from Archer's Tabard. How's your little mouseling, Skio was it?

"Siki. He's really busy with his apprenticeship, to a watchmaker but around here that means he makes navigators as much as anything."

"I'd like to get to the courthouse early."

"Alright. Bye Paulo!

Oh yeah, I told Nico you would show him how a water pump works."

Merta finds a rock in a corner and holds it in her hands for a minute while she walks, leading the way past the ramp and along the side of the thick wall.

Is Nico okay with eating while he walks?

The rock slowly deforms for another minute, and then she holds out the pieces for Nico to see. There's a part like a snail and a part like a swirly star. "As this part spins, water comes in the hole in the middle and goes around and goes out."

He is used to walking and eating, and walking and talking, and walking and working. And walking in general. Woodsmen do a lot of walking, and woodsmen's sons follow them all day long.

But: That's not how money works! And he doesn't know how to say what he wants to say. He's tempted to burn the one white that's come back so far on translation, but resists. Saving your magic for when it's most useful is a point belabored to him early and often.

"...There are so many people. So many people say 'Magistrate, Faris take my food so I have some of her money! Magistrate, Suki gave me all his money before he left! Magistrate, I say Faris gave me money and Faris say I not know things I said before much so I have the money.' Money is golden metal or white metal or blue metal."

He does seem interested in the pump model, and will grab it and play with it a bit if permitted. It makes sense, sort of? At least as much as the firespinner does? And it's definitely simpler than a spigot pump connected to something else. "Catfolk are good at spinning things..."

He can play with the pump model as much as he likes.

"Elves can learn from each other's memories, and elves have been around a long time collecting memories, so they know a lot now about how people say things and do things. The Magistrate is an elph - Magistrates are almost always elves in the Allheart Alliance - so if you try to lie and say 'Faris took my food' and Faris says that's wrong, the Magistrate will look at you and look at Faris and know that Faris is telling the truth and you're lying."

"Is there something you want to spin?"

"...White magic can say 'you're lying' too. Big white magic. But many people lying lying lying. So metal is money."

To Calsa: "-I not know. Don't know. There was a thing near home I like. Spinning and bzzzzz-" He holds his hands together and then pulls them apart. "One thing, one one thing. I like the fire spinner, I like the pump."

"A cutting tool? You use it to cut things onto pieces? What kind of things?"

"Rich people - people with a lot of money - and people who go a lot of different places, use metal for money. Or spices or perfumes - things you put on food or on yourself to improve the smell, so you like it more."

If he's part elph, could that explain the translation? Maybe he remembers a language that went on to become both his language and Sotalese. But it sounded like he was saying that white magic is different from elph magic... maybe the translation works on reading thoughts? Not like an undine though, she certainly wasn't thinking about 'green' or 'white' before he said those words. Good thing they haven't lied to him about anything, but it's still kind of uncomfortable to imagine.

Okay, that makes sense, it's more like favors. He nods, accepting it.

"[Logs]! They're, um. Um." He frowns thoughtfully and looks around for any signs of wood. "...Why is it still dark?"

No wood is nearby. The wall looms on one side, scattered houses on the other. Maybe some of the plants in the distant fields have woody bits?

"We haven't walked far enough to see the sun. We would have to walk for, um..."

"About a hundred times as long as it's been since we got out of bed." She counts her fingers. "Ten, and a hundred is ten tens, like if each of my fingers were two hands."

Calsa holds up her hands touching each of Merta's fingers in succession.

"You'd have to sleep three times, if you were walking all the time you were awake. And that just gets you to the storms, where the sun's light is in the sky. To see the sun, you'd have to walk that much again."

She points at the wall. "An equartier can go there and back here twice before sleeping, but they'd be pretty tired. They usually only do it once."

That........ Doesn't make any sense? The sun comes up and down every day.

"...I'm lost."

...Then again, he ran away really really hard.

He kind of misses home now. A little bit. Just a teensy bit. And just mom.

No! He left and he's not going back! He can run away again if he has to.

He noms the remains of the food thoughtfully. "One... Two, three, four, five... [It's going to be cold all the time...] What kind of things do you make Merta? I like making things."

If he's from deep in the drydark, they probably have tales of the distant lands where the sun shines. And that's true! Just, the world is bigger than it seems when you have to actually walk every step of the way.

Up ahead, a distant steady rumbling approaches.

"I made the house and the tables and the huddlebed and the sand table and the sand in it, and bowls and slates... When Siki was small I made him balls and tops and dice and pick-up-sticks." She mimes each of these. "In the past I made molds - you make metal hot so it's like water and put it in a hole in a rock and then it gets cold and hard and you take the rock away and have a metal thing. I made a little bit of the equartier path." She holds up two fingers to show thin horizonal layers of the wall.

"Now I only make slates, to write things down. People talk to me and I draw what they say and then I or other people, especially the Magistrate, can look at the drawings and know what the people said.

What would you like to make?"

"Ooh, ooh [Mom] told me how to [write]! We use, black uhhhhh, black water on white [paper] and white sand not sand on black rock. I saw a [book] that said how magic once!"

"White [paper] is thin or thick? Stiff or flexible?" with mime "Sand-not-sand... You put a thing like water on a black rock, like black water - ink - but not black, and then put white sand on top. When the water is dry there is still a thing that holds the white sand to the rock?

Is a book made of [paper] or rock?

What kind of magic?"