"She might, if he's a new species that's been living in the drydark all this time! And it might be just for a few days, if we're trying to get him home."

"He said he left on purpose."

"Then you should definitely talk to the Magistrate; that could be a diplomatic nightmare."

Sigh.

"Is Siki working late again?"

"Yeah, he said he'll sleep at the watchmaker's, but he's hoping to finish the job tomorrow."

He frowns slightly and listens closely to the conversation, brows furrowed. He is not following it, which is not really a surprise but is not fun.

"I don't think [gods] are humans. I think they are - illusion? You can't meet a [god]. There aren't any. Is new magic very very - [wow! bright!]- liking it?"

"Oh, just a story, just a thing to talk about? People sometimes say the sun is a great catfolk hero - a catfolk with a very big fire - who left to watch over us all, or all catfolk at least. It's not true. The sun was there before catfolk existed."

"...yes, that's what new magic is like. Time to sleep! Tomorrow will be a busy day! Do you need the pot?"

Here, he can have his own nest of blankets in the huddlebed!

Suspicious!

...He will use the pot, and then take off his little hide boots, and grab that random rock he saw earlier, and then curl up in the weird bed and think.

He can't just assume everything is going to be fine now. It's all weird and - it sort of makes sense that if everyone can do fire, they build things that do cool things with fire, but - he has no way of getting more food or learning to talk around here other than Calsa and Merta, and they are not his parents, they're strangers. He has to remember that and be on the lookout for... Something.

What magic does he have? He has 3 1 red, 2 0 blue, 1 green, 2 white, and 2 black. (The burnt points continue to be ??ITCHY??. It's annoying, verging on uncomfortable. Maybe he'll get used to it?) He knows how to make sparks and do a powerful swing with an axe or blade, as far as red goes. He knows how to break sticks or strip bark off of wood with blue. He knows how to magnify scent for a bit with green. He knows how to do illusion-sparks with white, he's not counting the translation at all even though translation is also a white thing because he's going to have to think about it more and figure out how you're actually supposed to do it instead of just asking white 'how do I say things'. And he knows how to stick the sparks or a bright light onto a rock for later, if he has the red or white to spend on it.

He does still have a bit of red, despite the dramatic burn that brought him here. Which is what he does, careful carefully. It takes a while, of patient even breathing and feeling the way the ink spills into the rock, like a gooey cage or basket. He can do this much at last. There. A rock that will make a little burst of fire, if it hits something hard enough. It goes in his pocket.

It was morning when he left, and it was night when he got here. But it was still a long day, kind of. Zzzzzzz.....

It's good for kids to play with rocks.

Merta and Calsa curl up in the other end of the huddlebed, trying not to touch Nico.

Footsteps and conversation drift though the open doorway, and the occasional shriek of the water pillar. No wind, no birdsong.

He has a nightmare about running away from something through dark woods and someone's yelling at him and he lost a rabbit from one of the snares and can't find it and he fell into the river and-

He doesn't scream or cry when he wakes up. He caaaarefully quietly goes outside and looks up at the stars and around at the dimly or not-at-all lit city for a while.

Calsa's fires are gone, so it's colder outside the huddlebed and colder still outside the house.

The streets are dimly-lit as before. A few houses have groups of small flames by their doorways.

A white catfolk pulling a cart nods at him in passing.

Distant voices sporadically echo.

"Chill!"

    "...open my eyes and he jumps back..."

        "A toast!" Something explodes.

  "Agreed!"

      "... I like sprinting to the pumps actually..."

Enough stars get through the mild light pollution to tell that they haven't moved much since he arrived.

...He should have realized this sooner but the stars are different from the ones at home, aren't they? He wasn't paying attention, before. But just how far he's gone... He won't be able to tell what direction north is anymore.

This realization, and the increasing cold, shakes him enough to go back inside and try to go back to sleep.

Yep, different stars!

When he wakes, Calsa and Merta are grooming each other and talking quietly.

"If he's a sort of hybrid, I wonder if he's a hybrid of a whisshopper, among other things. In other words, there's not five new species, or nine counting the ones he hasn't seen, there's only one, that somehow makes hybrids."

"There are no whisshoppers in Kef. Obviously his species is older than this town, but using it as an estimate of what species are around in the drydark... Can we make any predictions to test this theory?"

"I would imagine the five 'colors' include catfolk and werewolf, just because we're so common... Maybe drake?"

"Or something aquatic. Who knows how many uncontacted species there are in the aquifers!"

"Yeah. Wow. And we're just on the edge of the drydark here, on a planetary scale."

"There aren't any animals here bigger than insects, that we didn't bring ourselves... Maybe the aquifers have some kind of volcanic energy source?"

"Or maybe it's just bugs. Like whisshoppers... Humans, ew. A frogold's mouth fits all -"

"That's racist."

"Not all humans!"