The food improved Hailey's mood too, honestly. As did the company. She just really appreciates when touching people is entirely a matter of choice and not practicality.

Their new room is on the fourth floor, a bit of a climb but not too bad.

"Wow, if the place goes up this high I can see why the free dinners are packed."

She nods in agreement. "Really." And in they go. Hailey sets the backpack and satchel down, and then flops into the chair, if there is one.

Chair: check! All the same amenities as the last room

"I think tomorrow I'm gonna see what the orphanage is like," he says. "If I can just work there all day and pay for food and beds for both of us that way, that might be better than this place even though this place is great. How did you manage for lunch? I realized while I was waiting for you that I shoulda given you some gems to get lunch with in case we couldn't find each other."

"Turns out that the head of maintenance, Ross, has a husband who bakes really nice bread. Apparently that's freely available every day for lunch, as long as I give them notice that I'll be working the day before."

She pulls out the leftover two thirds of a loaf and then nods. "The orphanage sounds like a plausible idea. I don't know if that'll work, but it would be awfully convenient if that was an option."

"Oh, nice! Can I take that with me tomorrow in case the orphanage plan goes wrong somehow?"

She nods and smiles, passing it to him. "Definitely. Saved it for you."

"Thanks!" He squirrels it away in his armour. "Appreciate it."

She smiles softly at Torok, then tilts her head and sighs gently. "I wonder if I'll ever find magic to reconstruct the gaps in our exomemories. Maybe Hazel would have an idea, or maybe one of the weird powers we sometimes get at dawn would help. It'd be nice if there was some magical guarantee of... correctness, and not just our best attempt at filling in the blanks based on our intuitions."

"... I'm not sure what it would mean, for that kind of thing to be correct? Like... Is there a world out there where you were, before you were with Sable? Is the you that was there still in it, making memories? I didn't think so, from how you were talking about it, but maybe I'm wrong?"

She shrugs. "No clue. Our mental model of it — entirely without evidence or data backing it up — is of worlds that operate in parallel, but where the timelines line up would be an open question even if our model is right. None of those questions have answers with our currently available data, much as I wish they did."

She sighs softly. Thinking about this always leaves her in a sort of gloomy mood.

"...if it was me, I'd say that... the kind of correctness that matters is the kind where it's the right life for you as a person? Even if it's not a life that happened outside your head. It's still yours, that way, it's still you. But I don't know if that makes any sense."

She nods softly. "Yeah. That makes sense. And before we came here, that was the plan. Just write the story, figure it all out how it makes sense to us. We just can't help but want to cheat with magic if there's a chance for that, and it doesn't seem like it would fuck anything up."

She sighs. "Might switch Sable in soon. She'll enjoy snuggling you tonight, and I don't wanna keep dwelling on crap I don't have time to do anything about. Just gonna make me sad."

"'S fair. I'd offer you a hug, but..." He shrugs.

She smiles a little. "Thanks. 'Preciate it in the spirit it's meant, and Sable can accept one on my behalf if you'd like."

She reaches out and gives his hand one more squeeze.

And then Sable's there, squeezing his hand, smiling softly and sighing. "You're good to us, y'know that?"

As soon as he sees the change, he relaxes the slight tension of being prepared to pull away at any moment, and instead pulls Sable into a hug.

"I try. ...doesn't really feel like that much, from the inside. But—I'm glad I'm doing good enough at it for you to notice."

She hugs Torok tightly. "You are," she murmurs in his ear. "You really are."

"Well, good." Gentle squeeze. If he'd thought about this he'd have taken the armor off first. "Here's hoping I get even better at it."

Another squeeze, then she flops onto the bed and smiles up at him. "I have no doubt of that. Oh, if you're planning on exploring the city any more tomorrow, finding a cheap source of colorful fabrics or cords would be delightful, as would getting a look at a bookstore to see if they have any sign of a printing press. But no rush if you don't have time for it."

"I could take a peek into that big library and see if any of the books are printed," he suggests. "In between checking out the orphanage. And yeah, I can look for colourful stuff, too."

"That'd be great. Oh, I don't think you were there when I explained what we want those for. Since not everyone can tell us apart as well as you can, we're hoping to get something we can tie around our wrist and swap out to indicate who's fronting. Back on Earth we have colorful cord we can braid into bracelets, but our bracelet supplies didn't make the journey with us."

"Makes sense. I'll see what I can find. What colours?"

"Purple, orange, pink, green, and red."

"Hmm, so you're purple, right, and Ruby's red? Is Neo pink?" he guesses. "I think it'll be easier to remember with the people attached."