"Nah, don't worry about it, I was just curious. A piña colada is a cocktail with pineapple juice and coconut cream and rum and a lot of shaved ice," which she has technically never had because she's too young to drink, but it's good without the rum at any rate. 

She's so lost as to what any of those things are - she'd say except for the ice, but she's never heard of a kind with hair.

Arueshalae, meanwhile, is listening as carefully as she can without being obvious about it to everything. Elysium is very different from what she imagined, but - most of the differences are good ones, and it makes sense that there are ways to be good and make other people happy that wouldn't even occur to a demon like her.

"Ooh! Azariel, I know what I want to do after this - do you know where we can find a coconut tree?"

"Yes, though I'm less sure about the pineapple. We might need to go on a bit of an adventure."

Brenda could potentially Dressing Room a pineapple hat, but her friendship instincts are telling her not to ruin their excuse for an adventure. "Have fun! Azariel, mind if I copy you too?"

"I can't think of anything, so go for it!"

And now Brenda can swap back and forth between having human legs and a snake tail! Her snake tail is purple and Dressing Room automatically adjusts her clothes to match and puts a tasteful stretchy headband with trailing ribbons on it.

"Ooooh, this is really neat!" she says, clumsily attempting to slither. "Also what's your once a day divination spell? I can't tell what it does other than affect myself somehow."

“Divination… either talking with animals or talking with plants, I think, though if it’s copying spells it could be identify or read magic or something?”

"Woah, you can understand animals? And plants? How does that work?" She bounces up and down in excitement, which turns out to still work with a snake tail.

"Lots of animals can already understand people, and communicate back to an extent; the magic helps you turn your words into something that they'll be able to comprehend, and understand what they're trying to communicate back. It doesn't make them any smarter than they were, so some animals are still pretty hard to get through to. Talking with plants is a lot harder, though, and takes a more complicated magic - if I didn't have it from being a Lillend it would be a stronger spell than I could cast. With plant creatures, it's just a trickier bit of speaking with animals, but for normal vegetation... the experience of being a plant is really different from being an outsider or a mortal. They have very different senses and relationships with time, so you can't ask them for directions or anything, but you can ask them what the weather has been like or if there's been woodpeckers or stuff like that."

"That's such a logical way for it to be! I guess if it's Speak With Plants I can try it out now and if it's Speak With Animals I'm probably going to have to wait for tomorrow anyway. Unless you don't mind introducing me to some animals later, Ember?"

"Some of my friends get nervous around people they don't know, but I can ask who'd want to talk with you."

"Thanks! We should be getting on with things," she adds to Azariel, "but it was lovely meeting you both. Have fun!"

"So, I've been thinking, and for scouting the other side it'll be better for surprise later if nobody notices the Gate. So I'm thinking I'll open it with the far end way up in the air, go through invisible and flying and come right back." 

Wenduag thinks back to how the gate looked when they crossed through, and assesses it against the sky.

”If you opened it up facing away from them, that might work, but some demons have really good senses. Is there a way to make it invisible too?”

“Not exactly, but you could do something pretty similar with the right illusion magic. Demons have true seeing and good willpower, of course, but the former is pretty short range and willpower only lets you see through an illusion if you interact it, so if I was quick enough to put it up right as you finished the gate they probably couldn’t see anything even in theory unless one of them happened to be right next to it. You’d still need nondetection or mind blank for see invisibility, though.”

"I don't have Mind Blank but I can do a communal Nondetection." Because Alpina is the best and coolest.

"Then unless I mess up the illusion, I don't think that leaves any vulnerabilities."

"I don't know for sure that the very strongest demons don't have anything, but that kind of stealth would have been more than enough for anyone I dealt with."

"Sounds good. Nenio, do you think you can illusion a return Gate from the Elysium side, or do I need to do all my scouting and come back before the first one closes?" 

"I wouldn't be able to see you casting, so it would be hard to get the timing exactly right and there might be a second or two where it's not covered. If I went across with you, though, it would work just fine."

"Can you fly? I don't think I can carry you in axiomite form, it's too insubstantial."

"It's a third circle wizard spell! I'd have to rederive it since I don't have it in my spellbook, but I have levitate so it's probably not too hard."

"How long do you think that will take, and will it be faster if I help?"