The network will drop her off on the outskirts of a plaza, paved with a colorful mosaic, depicting patterned borders surrounding broom-riding witches and cornucopias. There's planters, some of which have plants growing taller than they would in full Earth gravity, and a colorfully illuminated fountain. A lot of people are heading in via rift and going to some destination or another. There's vendors of foods ranging from 'AUTHENTIC Alfheimr Winter Rolls' to 'Anthousa's Hot Dogs', as well as vendors of other products. Most of the signage is in both some form of Greek, English, and a script Rebecca may recognize as Elven, often with some other languages. The widest array of prominently displayed languages on signage seems to be at the Visitor Information booth.

She doesn't have much of an itinerary so she wafts herself on the wind over to the Visitor Information booth. "Hello! I'm a tourist! What's can't-miss attractions up here? Can you recommend a hotel?"

Wow, she's striking. Still, doesn't really change what needs to be said.

"Hello and welcome to Chasmapolis on Lunabella! If you're staying in Chasmapolis proper, I have a guide to accommodations." She'll hand over a brochure and gets out another one and a pen.

"You sound American. If you are, you definitely won't want to miss the lunar landing site tour." She marks the second brochure. "It's on the near-Earth side, of course, so you'll have to sign a Covenant to stay in-bounds for the tour and there's fees for that and such, but I suspect you'll find it worthwhile. And you should try steakmelon. But really, tourists come here for a lot of reasons, I'd like to know what your interests are."

"I like music and flying and Watchery stuff."

"Well, I wouldn't advise mentioning that last part too loudly, the Watchers aren't very popular around here. The Phigaleia Arboretum is primarily intended to be viewed from above. Right now they're focused on a nighttime exhibit with a lot of glowing art, but you can visit during their day phase too, the art will just look less dramatic. Lady Chloe's running a wind park, if you like very unnatural winds. The Myrine Hall has a lot of orchestral performances, I have a schedule for them. There's a stage in the west plaza and usually someone performs there, generally for free to build mana. And I believe that 'Forty Turtles' is going to do a concert in Nikasepolis. They're a modern group on a tour visiting, but it might still interest you."

"Why aren't the Watchers very popular around here?"

"Well, attitudes vary, entire theses have been written. I can to summarize. Lunabella is about witches building somewhere nice to live and getting away from forces that would make it more complicated. Many witches feel that beings from distant realms with unclear intentions, and people whose aims are unpredictable due to being agents of those beings, make things more complicated. The Watchers are also somewhat interventionist on Earth compared to the average witch group, and any intervention on Earth poses a stability risk, even if they claim to try to minimize those."

"I guess those are pretty okay reasons as they go. The aboretum sounds lovely, what time zone is it in?"

"Oh, it's on Coordinated Universal Time, a lot of the visitor attractions with day-night cycles are."

"Convenient. I mostly like vocal music, if that changes your recommendations?"

"Oh, in that case I'll recommend traditional theater, it has choirs. It's pretty much entirely in Lunabellan Greek, but some of the theaters will loan out devices displaying subtitles."

"Great - which ones -?"

The doll will go over some theater options. Apparently the most acclaimed theater is in another city, but not hard to travel to. If there's any classic Greek plays Rebecca likes, some of them might be showing somewhere, the local theater recently did a version of Ajax set in the Plane of Fire.

"I've kind of always wanted to see Lysistrata but honestly I'm not too picky about musical theater. Are tickets expensive?"

"Prices vary, but it shouldn't be too hard to get cheap seats somewhere. They give me individual theater brochures, those should have guidance, I'll give you some. Lysistrata … hmm. There's a showing, but it's not near here, it's also in Nikasepolis at the Azure Theater."

"How does... tourism... differ in different parts, I was told this was a great place to be a tourist and totally safe and everything but I don't know as much about the rest."

"Well, English speakers are rarer in most places than they are in Chasmapolis, we get the highest throughput of travelers due to the laxest wards against portals. People operating information booths or libraries anywhere are likely to speak it, hotels will probably have translators, most people will probably know someone who speaks it, but if you want to buy cheap food outside Chasmapolis you're probably not going to be buying from a fluent English speaker. Additionally, regarding safety: If someone tries to attack you in a city, the city will protect you. If you are in some matron's domain as a guest and someone tries to attack you, the matron will protect you. If you are outside of any domain and you're attacked, the Lunabellan government will not necessarily defend you, though there are various defense services you could buy. If you enter a domain that isn't a city without an invitation and don't announce yourself, that's trespassing and it's illegal. Crime is generally low, and if you don't have enemies you should be fine to go flying outside domains, but if you, say, have a bounty on your head, I would recommend against it."

"The landing tour thing, that's not in a domain, right?"

"It is, actually, just not a very modified domain compared to the base environment. If it wasn't in a domain it'd be less convenient to do tours."

"Ohh, okay. Thank you so much!" And she hops off (whee!) to read her brochures. ...she takes out her gloves, because she doesn't care for this paper, and then she reads her brochures.

Well, one of them is an English-language map of Chasmapolis with portals and various tourism-relevant sites such as hotels labeled. The portal to Chelopolis is highlighted, with a note saying that Chelopolis is where the moon landing tour starts.

Another one is more of a booklet, and full of hotel listings. There's also several for local theaters, mentioning lots of showtimes in UTC for plays Rebecca hasn't heard of. There doesn't seem to be an obvious pattern to when businesses in Chasmapolis are and aren't closed. The hotels rent per hour, day, or week, but there aren't standardized check-in and check-out times.

What differentiates the hotels?

Proximity to city center, room size, associated services, price, occasionally theming. If she wants somewhere cheap near the city center, it might be sharing a building with some other businesses and not have a ground floor, though there'll be an elevator if she can't fly to their main balcony.

At the extremely cheap end, she could sleep in a shared bed or a bunk in a shared room. At the extremely expensive end, someone with a higher budget than she has could stay in what seems to essentially be a luxury apartment, with a servant who can conjure and prepare food. More realistically, she can get a bathroom-bedroom combination that promises comfortable darkness for sleep and that someone on staff can conjure basic foodstuffs. If she wants electrical outlets much less HexVPN, a television, a laundry room, the option to leave her room and return to it by balcony, a gym, or accommodations for special dietary or mana-charging needs, the brochure can help her find somewhere in her price range with those properties.

She doesn't need somebody else's Hex VPN or for that matter somebody else's electricity! She is magical! She'll go with a low-end private dark room. She intends to hit the restaurants so she doesn't care much if they provide breakfast.

Sure, she can get a decent and cheap room on the outskirts of town. The room is less "constantly dark" and more "visibly has a lot of capacity to be darkened", which combined with the lack of unified daily scheduling suggests the 'sun' might not set in Chasmapolis.

The hotel does still provide breakfast, but less in the sense of having a dining room, and more in the sense that the concierge can conjure foods she's personally eaten before and will do so for guests.

She will try that at least once. But only after she goes for a flight around the city!

By broomstick or by wing? There's a lot of the former and some of the latter.

Broomstick!

Even if she's just doing regular flying, she's getting a lot of attention. Is she restraining herself to regular flying? Not everyone is.

Maybe she's showing off a little. If she manages to really impress someone she'll get mana off it, after all.

A pale witch eating a vividly red apple while in flight seems to be pretty impressed, but not giving Rebecca charge.

She is getting a solid number of admiring glances.

Well, the apple girl is probably an empusa like the girl in her music theory class, and they don't breathe, which is a real shame for Rebecca. Alas. Maybe the amphitheater where people perform for mana will work out for her, but if not she has a stash for her ~*~moon vacation~*~.

She alights on the ground. Where's a tasty looking place to get dinner?

Steakmelon gyro cart? 60-flavor tamale stand? Waffles?

Alternately, she could go to a restaurant.

She's feeling street food right now! She was told to try steakmelon and will do that, though only after reading the first twenty flavors on the tamales.

Beans, turkey, rabbit, fish, steakmelon, frog, gopher, tomato, squash, mild pepper, turkey egg, chicken egg, duck egg, mild cheese, spicy cheese, honey, pitaya, raspberry, strawberry, and apple.

Oh no, they have steakmelon too... maybe she'll get one of the sweet ones after steakmelon gyro.

She can get a steakmelon gyro for for some local currency. If she'd like to pay with a Kiss she can get her gyro with more other food than she wants to eat, or some coupons for free meals from the cart in the future.

She went to the currency exchange and does not want to pay with a Kiss for either of those things but it's neat that you can! Kind of means that basically anyone can pay for three squares a day with less than twenty minutes of work tops, wow.

Steakmelon gyro, om nom!

Well, any witch can, and you do have to get the mana, but still. Almost any Lunabellan witch (including the one at the counter) can conjure food faster than that, which may be relevant. The steakmelon will be carved off of a rotisserie, for show, but the bread and toppings get conjured on the spot.

It's tasty. Almost entirely like steak, but with a slight hint of watermelon.

Yummy. She gets a honey tamale for dessert.

The honey tastes vaguely of jasmine, which is tasty but probably not particularly exotic.

Well, she isn't used to it being a food taste! It's interesting.

She's going to stroll along, taking in the sights, intermittently looking at her brochures and notes and map to plan herself an itinerary that is efficient and balanced.

The sights include more food stands, a violinist, a mothergift tailoring shop, a garden store with a 10% off sale on blood apple trees, a library, a small but prominent shop offering matron-client matchmaking, and baths.

She's gonna stop at the violinist's and dance for a little bit because she is on the mooooooon. She smells the flowers and touches some of the fabrics.

What's a matron-client match, is there literature?

Not outside this shop, but she could go in if she wanted to.

Sure! Does it have posters inside?

There is a photograph of a smiling household that's clearly led by a paisley-robed woman, and another photograph of … another smiling household, but with less robe and more collar, led by an erinyes.

There's also a green reptilian woman in some armor-ish outfit sitting at a counter, who greets Rebecca in a language she can't parse.

"Hey, sorry, I just have English and a little bit of Spanish."

"Hello and welcome! No need to apologize. Are you looking for a matron?"

"Probably not, but I want to know what one is!"

"Oh! A matron is the head of a Lunabellan household. If you want to become a Lunabellan citizen, and you can't create and defend your own personal domain, you'll want to become a client of a matron. A matron must protect her clients, and typically also provides them with food, shelter, and various opportunities for development. In return, a client provides assistance to her matron, helps to maintain her matron's good name through upstanding conduct, and often has other obligations. I matchmake for both indentures and non-indentures. Typically, an indenture gains assistance with immortality, expensive training, or other significantly valuable aid which improves her long-term prospects, and cannot subsequently leave her household without acquiring debt she is bound to pay off. A non-indenture, on the other hand, can leave at almost any time."

"This is the moon slavery thing, isn't it."

"Yes."

"But you make it sound more like being, I don't know, somebody's au pair or something?"

"Also yes. The typical new client is a Neutral witch getting an indenture which will require labor from her, typically on threat of geas or pain, and burden her with debt she's similarly compelled to pay if she leaves. Calling this system slavery is thus basically reasonable. However, Lunabella tries to promote humane arrangements within that system. Additionally, clients with less burdensome agreements aren't rare. Even matrons have their own matrons, all the way up to the King."

"I heard about that part but I don't think a constitution of laws can really, like, boss you around."

"It's a Covenant, it actually can force him to take actions."

"I guess... and people come to you to find owners they like the sound of?"

"Basically! They tell me about their skills, themselves, what they want in a matron, and I set them up with interviews."

"What do people want in a 'matron' besides, like, not being awful to them?"

"Quiet household. Household that's a good place to practice guitar. Lots of parties and social introductions for getting properly established in Lunabellan society. Training in an art from a mistress of it." A glance towards the second poster. "Some specific kinds of awfulness, actually. A hands-off attitude with few social expectations. It varies."

"How many layers deep is it, like, there's the king, how many people does he directly own and how many steps down from there?"

"You know, I'm not sure? The king has a few thousand, which is a lot, but he's in a lot of places at once so it works for him. My matron is Clothildis, and her matron is Marpessa, and Marpessa's matron is the King, but I don't know how typical I am."

"What about like, your friends, do you know how many layers they are? If you matched me with someone right now - don't, I go to Arcadia and I don't wanna, but if you did, how many layers'd that be?"

"Varying between 2 to 4*, I'd say? I don't think being closer to the king matters much. He's in a lot of places, if someone has a good reason to try to get his attention she can generally manage sooner or later."

* Number is guesstimated and may be subject to change.

"Is that a wild magic? The being in lot of places."

"Probably? I've never heard of anyone else with it."

"Yeah, I'd remember if I got that option... How long do people usually belong to a particular person?"

"For an immortality, we're generally looking at a few centuries, though in this modern era the king has been pushing for ease of swapping households in the event of compatibility issues. For cases that aren't indentures, it's generally a few agreements for a year and a day, then probably something indefinite with notice-requiring exit clauses on both sides."

"What happens if someone's contract just... expires, are they like, not a citizen anymore then or something?"

"Yes, but she could still stay in the cities like you're doing now unless the cities didn't want her, and if she wanted to build herself a domain out on the lunar surface probably nobody would stop her."

"So it's not actually true that everyone on Lunabella is a slave."

"You should know it can't be true. Here you are right now with no Covenants."

"I mean, like, people who live here, I'm just a tourist."

"See, the thing is, living here without citizenship is sort of like being just a tourist, just for longer. You'll have a hard time doing business and people will be pretty willing to kick you out if there's problems."

"Oh... huh. Is there even a separate citizenship thing that is a thing of its own besides being in a covenant?"

"Not really. Even given the price of hiring and training specialists in it, Covenants magic is really useful."

"Huh.

"Thank you for answering my questions."

Out into the street again!

It continues to be a sunny day in Chasmapolis.

She is going to go find a nice place to sit outside and hop on Hex VPN to figure out how to schedule all her things against each other - when can she go see the flag, what performances are on when -

People's websites are mostly pretty old-looking. It's as if they haven't heard the good news of CSS-based rounded rectangles. (Forty Turtles is an exception.)

The main constraint on the lunar landing site tour is actually the required Covenant, she'll need to book an appointment for that at a government office. (She can book her appointment online. The Lunabellan government site looks ugly, but it works.) After that, she can technically stop by the site whenever, but if she wants a guided tour there's a more limited range of start times.

It's not possible to fit every single interesting performance into one schedule, especially if she wants to sleep. (If she didn't want to sleep, she might be able to come close, Lunabella doesn't seem to have much consensus on when things should and shouldn't be closed.)

She does unfortunately still need sleep, she did not get the no-sleep perk option. She will narrow things down as ruthlessly as she has to.

How does she feel about doing flying quickly in crowded environments? There's a tempting schedule here which only works if she can make it nearly halfway across some cities within minutes.

She's... probably not going to crash into anyone if she gets enough altitude! And if she gets into a problem situation like that she can turn into a little bird and then fit through the little foot-wide portals she can make. Yeah. She's got this.

Alright! In that case, she can make it to a solid chunk of everything which looked shiny to her, but not all of it.

She'll come back some other time, probably.

Should she be zooming to anything RIGHT NOW?

There's a local play that may or may not be doing last-minute discount tickets depending on how many regular sales they've had. She should check that and then, if it isn't doing last-minute tickets, go to the Arboretum.

Broom! ZOOM!

"Whoa!"

"Nice speed!"

And the play's sold out.

Tragic. Arboretum then. At a slightly more sedate pace.

Would she like glowsticks for herself or her broom before she heads in? A bio-luminescent garland? Some glow wire or slowly twinkling lights for a minor extra fee?

(Also, she should not throw around bright light unless there's an emergency.)

She would love a bioluminescent garland and agrees not to throw around bright light.

The leaves of her garland give off a yellowish glow, which is much more visible once she enters the nighttime of the arboretum proper.

There are layers of trees, the lower layers typically illuminated from below and the upper layers with string lights or bioluminescence or witchflame. Dim red witchlights form a ground trail, an aerial trail, and a 'main exit' sign. Illuminated witches on broomsticks fill the air like a full rainbow of fireflies.

The designer of this domain's sky seems to have taken the view that more is better. It's vivid in the way that false-color astronomy pictures are, and the Earth is visible in it, even though it really shouldn't be.

It's SO PRETTY. Is photography allowed?

As long as you don't use flash.

She will take amateur flashless photographs of the trees.

A moth flies near her, but not in a way that interferes with this.

Huh. Regular moth or some kind of magical moth?

She doesn't recognize the species immediately, but there are a lot of moth species and there's no obvious magic happening.

It's cute.

She winds her way through the whole arboretum and then sees herself out. What's next?

What's next is that she heads to another city by portal, picks up some snacks if she's hungry, and goes to see her first Lunabellan theater show. (She doesn't need to present a ticket, the clerk has Identify and a list of names.)

Yaaaay!

Is it theater-seating-style or can people hover on their brooms?

It's a semicircular set of tiered benches, mostly, but there are a few people on brooms way in the back.

Do they have to be in the way back? Is there a sign about it?

There might be, but it's not in English.

She will take a seat as good as she can get then.

She's entitled to a decent-ish seat, if not the fancy box seating.

As long as nobody tall is in front of her.

The seating here is designed with assumptions that someone who trips on the stairs will not demand particularly expensive compensation and that theater guests will sometimes be over 3 meters tall. The view is fine.

yaaaaaay ~*~

More attendees file in.

An artificial hush falls over the theater. Rebecca could focus past it to hear the sounds of her neighbors, but that's probably not what she's here for.

It super is not. It's nice that she won't be distracted if somebody opens a Snickers.

She won’t even be distracted by sounds from her own food.

The play begins. It is not one of the ones with convenient English subtitle options, but she can get some sense of what’s going on via visuals and tone and such. She also knows from the website that the play is about a dramatic falling-out between two Hespatian families.

The singing is very good.

Eeeeeeeee!

Some of the special effects seem only feasible with magic. Other special-effects seem weirdly low-tech, which is presumably stylistic.

A fair number of witches are conjuring snacks during the play.

Yeah, she's heard moon people can do that. She can't but she has some snacks in her hat; she pulls out a Snickers.

And indeed, her neighbors are not distracted.

It may be a bit weird for Rebecca to be watching a play in Greek in an 'open-air' semicircular theater in which characters have firearms and are almost entirely played by women, but hopefully it's a good kind of weird.

It's a great kind of weird. Mostly for musical reasons and not for firearms reasons.

Eventually a lot of the characters have died! This is not actually the end of the play. The living characters go after their slain enemies' resurrection methods with varying degrees of success, the Lilin has some kind of interaction with a demon, and then she and some other characters who previously did not appear execute a successful raid on everyone plausibly involved in instigating the mess.

Now it is the end of the play.

Rebecca's not sure she likes it being shown in the media that summoning demons works out fine and advances your goals but the music is really good and she claps.

Oh, it's not implied to be a happy ending for most of the main characters including the more sympathetic-seeming ones, but Hespatia's work with Hell sure seems to work for Hespatia as an organization, so depicting Hespatia and Hell as teaming up on damage control made sense at least to the playwright.

Yeah, the Hespatians are fucky.

What is next on her whirlwind tour of the moooooooon?

She's got another show to see in around 45min. In the meantime, she could swing by this fountain, or this arts and crafts gallery/market, or go to the open-performance stage and try to get some mana that way.

She has mana saved up but could always use more and is feeling inspired. She will go to the open-performance stage and see if it's occupied.

Sort of? This cellist is packing up her instrument.

Is there an obvious queue or can she just alight on the stage and start a set?

No obvious queue right now.

And if she lands on the stage and smiles at the cellist and turns toward the audience?

There's not exactly a big crowd (yet?) but nobody seems to object.

Then she is going to sing. She has some compositions of her own, and will also do Memory from Cats because it seems appropriate.

This will get her more of an audience than the cellist had at the end of her set, some mana, and some Sending messages.

Does she want to join anyone's choir or a capella group or other organization which could use a skilled singer? Would she like to go on a date with someone?

[I'm a tourist but if you meet seldom enough that I could fit it in around Arcadia classes I'd consider it!] and [I only like boys, are you a boy?]

These people cannot meet Rebecca's standards, but someone will leave a business card in case she's interested after she finishes school.

Sure, that's very kind of them! She aways the card in her sleeve and yields the stage to the next person. She didn't do a forty-five minute set so she can see what they come up with.

The next person is going to an elementalism-assisted fire show.

Ooooh, pretty.

Perhaps it will be even prettier now that she's started coloring the fire.

Yeah, that's a very fun sorcery trick. Sometimes Rebecca is wistful about not having gone sorceress.

It might not be a sorcery trick, there does seem to be some kind of powder involved.

Also pretty cool!

And now is a good time to head for her Covenant appointment.

Zoom!

Zoom! Government building! Hall full of people signing forms at desks! Signage saying in multiple languages that she must either sign her Covenants or leave them at the office or face prosecution!

Elf writing on fancy paper in purple ink with a quill! Telekinetic force handing Rebecca two forms with the exact same text the website said they would have, and a pen!

She skims it again just to be safe but if it all looks right she will sign!

It all looks right, and it's short enough to thoroughly check at speed.

After she signs, one copy of the form is whisked away, but she has the other copy stating she's now permitted to use Lunabellan portals to near-Earth regions of the moon.

She will make sure to be right on time for her tour.

She could go to the tour now, but her original agenda called for her to look in on a free a capella concert in this park. It's just that appointment slots for covenants are hard to get.

Good thing she wrote it all down. A capella concert! Is it one of the ones that invited her to join them?

Nope.

Mighty lively music scene on the moon, huh.

Lunabellans tend to have more free time than Earthlings, there's more Lunabellans than Americans, and there's a solid intercity portal network such that Rebecca can go almost anywhere public. There is effectively a lively everything scene.

She can see why people would decide to live here, yeah.

Park!

Park!

This does seem to be the kind of concert in which you can seat yourself on a broom. For one thing, it lets you stay out of the way of the people who are playing soccer.

She finds a nice spot in the air away from the soccer game to hover in.

There is not a convenient external-noise-silencing effect like the theater had, but it's still nice to listen to.

At one point a soccer ball heads towards the concertgoers, but someone redirects it before it gets there.

They're a talented bunch. Rebecca takes occasional notes on chord progressions she likes.

Someone near her is going to ask a question in Greek.

"English?"

As a counteroffer, how about Hawthorne Latin?

"...Español?"

Unfortunately(?), no.

"...Google Translate?" she suggests, pulling out her phone.

After glancing at the logo, the witch looks somewhat offended, frowns, and shakes her head.

...Okay. Phone away and she will give up on learning what this witch had to say.

Well, the witch might have had one thing to say originally, but now she's rummaging for a magazine, flipping to a page with a color photograph of an adorable red-headed girl in a dressy skirt suit frowning and standing next to a very large and impassive cyborg man in a cowboy outfit, and holding it out. It's mostly in Greek, but there are some English quotes.

And those quotes say?

"I was created by Alphazon at their Mars base, probably to use me as a weapon."

"I think they took out some of my memories because there are gaps in it. The earliest memory I can recall is Dee teaching me how to read, but I didn't know him by that name at the time. My earliest memory is also my earliest remembered interaction with Alphazon."

"When I was at Alphazon, they would simply give me tasks to do, and I would do them, and would spend the whole time in my room otherwise."

"I knew of non-witch humans before, but did not know about the fact that they must not be allowed to learn about magic."

The names 'Google', 'Alphabet', 'Amazon', and 'HexVPN' are also present in the article, though not in English sentences.

Whoa, concerning. She will nod and make a concerned face.

No more frowning. Does she want to keep the magazine?

No thanks? She can't read it especially not without Google Translate!

That's fair. The witch will take it back and wave awkwardly and go back to looking at the singers.

Singing!!!

The singing continues.

The team with blue ribbons wins the soccer game and tosses a player in the air about it.

The concert seems to be running over schedule and if Rebecca stays here she might miss the next show she was planning on going to, how does she feel about that?

Oh dear. Well what is the next show.

There was this vocal jazz cabaret that sounded interesting, but it's not like she already bought tickets.

She'll stick to this one, she does really like their sound.

Also, she can observe people setting up in the park's gazebo for some kind of party, which is definitely a major plus and why she came here.

Ooh. She's not invited to the party, of course, but she can absorb some party vibes.

She sure can. There are colorful streamers and some candle arrangements and letter balloons of which only the number "100" is recognizable. Someone's assembling a castle from conjured pieces of cake.

Maybe it is somebody's hundredth birthday.

Since the cabaret is a cabaret maybe she can get in late, once the a capella wraps up.

She's going to be squished in at the back, but it's technically doable.

That's okay. She is content with her choices. As long as she's not literally squeezed, she needs personal space or she's going to spend the entire time distracted for sensory shock reasons; maybe she can turn into a bird and sit on a rafter?

Turning into a bird and sitting on a rafter may be wise.

She does this. She can hear fine when she is a cute lil bird.

People turning into birds is not particularly surprising. She doesn't get strong reactions, but will get a whispered compliment on her plumage.

Chirp.

Quiet giggle.

But mostly, Rebecca can hear singing, even if her view of the band is terrible. This time it's in English! Lots of classic pieces she's already heard.

They're doing neat jazzy stuff with it!

They sure are.

Eventually, the group exits the stage for a non-musical group.

This may be a good time for Rebecca to start heading home and figure out whether she wants to do anything else before bed.

She is going to hit up a nice restaurant near her hotel and then wind down for the day, yep.

Does she want the kind of restaurant that will put her with a bunch of other solo visitors, or the kind where she can get a table for one?

Also, would she also like to hit up a bathhouse? She doesn't have a full bath attached to her hotel room, so if she wants to bathe there's less advantage to doing it at the hotel than there could be.

Is there a shower in the hotel room? She's not super comfy with a public bath situation even if it is sort of aesthetic.

No, but there are individual private shower stalls she could access, like at a dorm or a hostel. (There are also bathhouses which seem to offer some private baths.)

She will take an individual private shower stall.

The ones at places which are not her hotel are not obviously better than the ones which are at her hotel, so she doesn't have any reason to add a bathhouse to the agenda.

Once she is all clean and dry and dinnered she will crash for the night.

She'll want to close the shutters first, the Chasmapolis 'sun' is just as bright as it was earlier.

Yes, yes.

And she can sleep. The bed is plenty comfortable, cheap hotel or no.

Cozy <3

Up bright and early to scare up some breakfast - can she get something in the French toast vein? - and proceed with her itinerary.

She can get literal French toast, though if she's going to eat on the fly she might prefer French toast sticks with embedded chocolate chips and no syrup.

Sounds good.

Off she brooms.

Her schedule calls for more theater.

Theater!!! Is this one in English.

She can get a device with live subtitles, which is kind of like it being in English?

It is kind of like that. Yay!

This piece is a comedy about two witches in love with each other who both think the other is straight.

Watchers are super chill about this so she is going to appreciate this as a comedic love story and try not to be anxious about it.

Is she not even going to be anxious when one of the leads gets a mangled rumor that her beloved is courting another man and looks into sabotaging him?

It's normal that there's bad behavior in shows, the thing that would previously have alarmed her would be approving treatment of lesbianism. The rumor thing is just, like Shakespearean, no problem.

It does seem pretty likely that the playwright here approved of lesbianism, yes. The show ends with the two dating each other, which the narrative tone seems to consider a happy ending.

Which is exactly the thing she's glad the Watchers have more of a direct line on than she does.

Next!

She could pick another time slot if she wanted, but her original plan was to do the lunar landing site tour now!

She is raring to go. After a snack. Space fruit! And now lunar landing.

Lunar landing!

The experience is a lot like touring a historic site on Earth in some ways, save for how this site is mainly notable for not being on Earth – her paperwork gets checked, there's glass walkways around everything interesting, et cetera. The tour narration is mostly but not entirely stuff she could have heard before, though she probably hasn't heard about Lunabella's push to get conspicuously artificial things off of the near side of the moon, or Lunabella-ORC backup plans for rescuing astronauts who were dying on the lunar surface.

Objects in the domain are, technically, fascimiles of the true objects. Given this, there's some stuff she can poke.

They don't get to see the real thing? Figures. She will poke the things as a consolation prize.

It's not that this is a bunch of assembled replicas which might be missing details, for what it's worth? Dominion magic naturally replicates the inanimate objects in base reality when a bubble is formed.

Huh, so they're like, shadows cast from reality? Neat.

Sure, you could put it that way.

Poke poke. Selfies.

She could also pay someone to take a fancier photo of her if she wants, but this option seems to mainly be targeting people who didn't bring their own cameras.

Selfies will do her. She sends them to her family.

In that case, she can save her money for more show tickets.

Theaterrrrrr <3

Speaking of show tickets, after this tour she's scheduled to see has a more modern style of musical, with solos from the leads and dance numbers and everything. (And subtitles, this time from a large display near the stage.)

Glorious.

And now she has an unscheduled block. Does she want to check out the open mic stage again, or spend more time in the arboretum, or grab some food, or do something else? There's a lot of options out there.

She is going to get food. What's near this random location?

Well, the very nearest thing is meat on skewers with a fancy cheese sauce. (There's also vegetables and tofu and seitan and such on skewers, but the meat seems to be the main product.)

She's not a vegetarian. She will eat meat on skewers with a fancy cheese sauce.

(Even if she were a vegetarian, she might be fine with conjured meat. It's more for people who like tofu.)

The cheese sauce is pretty weird compared to other stuff she's had. Possibly it's not cow's milk?

Or it's just a weird kind of cheese, there are like five billion kinds of cheese.

Yup. The moon is not made of cheese but there sure is a lot of cheese to be found there.

Are they doing it to be funny, she wonders. She gets a cheese pastry for dessert and brooms to the open mic.

It's not like things really skew towards cheese in general, though she could if she looked find someone selling greenish cheese crescents.

There's a pretty drum-centric performance at the stage.

Neat, is it like a jam session anyone can improvise on top of or do they have a planned set?

Probably the second one?

Valid. She bounces along to the music in midair.

Aaaaaaand she can get a little bit of charge!

Huh. She's no great shakes as a dancer but maybe people are just checking her out or something.

Perhaps. She is quite an eye catcher, after all.

It's true!

Who's after the drums people?

This time Rebecca has gotten lucky and there is another singer.

Yaaaay!

She seems to be taking audience suggestions with at least some consideration.

Rebecca thinks her voice would work really well for Whenever, Wherever, if she knows it.

Unfortunately, she does not.

Oh well. It's clear that Rebecca needs to catch up on the musical tradition on the moon.

There are probably lecture series and blog posts and books and video essays somewhere.

Yup. But not for her vacation. For her vacation she is going to do, uh, whatever she put on her itinerary next?

Forty Turtles concert, if she was planning to go to that.

Forty Turtles here she comes!

This is in a nighttime area! There's fancy lights, and a booth selling memorabilia which skews less towards clothing than it would on Earth, and it sounds like some recorded music is already playing. It's not as loud as she might have expected, at least from out here.

The organizers are trying pretty hard to not make attendees wait in line, but there will be some waiting.

She will admire the fancy lights while she sits on her broom in the queue. She'll decide whether to get swag after she hears the music.

And soon enough she can enter!

It's quieter than an Earth concert crowd would be – instead of turning up the speakers and making everyone who values their hearing wear earplugs, they can quiet the crowd, though some people are wearing earplugs anyway. More people are wearing band shirts or holding signs. The lights are flashier inside than out.

She might want to be a bird to get to her seat without brushing against too many people.

That does seem like the way to go. Flutter flutter.

She can take her seat, and wait, and eventually the concert will start!

40 Turtles is a pop band. She has heard bands like them before. Admittedly, those bands didn't have their last concert at a fairy's castle, and they don't make the same sorts of references to magic in their lyrics, but the experience is not incredibly novel.

Luckily, 40 Turtles is not a bad pop band.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a solid pop band playing culturally relevant pop music. Rebecca herself is planning to go in more of a singer-songwriter-solo-act direction but this isn't not her genre at all. Is there... any explanation why they are called 40 Turtles.

There's several conflicting explanations, including a claim that one of the band members is a warlock and her patron told her to make it happen, but it's plausible that the true story amounts to "people in the band liked turtles".

Cute. She'll buy an album on her way out when they're through.

Sure, there's a range of media formats.

She'll get a CD so she can let her sister borrow it.

Next!

This play seems sort of similar to Antigone, but with dwarves. It's hard to tell, though, because it's not in English. People seem sad and there's some disagreements about burials.

Dwarves are the ones who reincarnate so frankly that makes more sense than Antigone. Does she get a subtitles thing?

Not this time. She could look for a translation later, maybe?

She's mostly here for the songs anyway.

Well, the chorus sure can react to the plot in song, that's what they're there for.

Greek choruses. How appropriate.

There are shows aside from very old-fashioned Lunabellan theater (and its derivatives) and modern musicals, but Rebecca doesn't seem to be attending any of those! Funny how that is.

The trip goes basically according to Rebecca's itinerary. The biggest surprise is a last-minute cancellation of something she has tickets to, but she gets a refund. Eventually, the week ends and Arcadia is right where she left it.