"Did you have more questions?"

He contemplates that for a while and then shrugs.

"Okay, if you need a while to think that's fine. Plenty of seats in the waiting area."

No, see, I don’t want to say no because what if I would have a question if I waited a century? But that seems like more deliberation than this calls for.

"Are... you ready, then?"

Plausibly

"Well, think about it as long as you need."

Well, that’s... really more care than he thought they wanted him to put into it.

He doesn’t really understand what it would even take to be sure. It doesn’t click like a mathematical proof.

He thinks for a while and then comes back with another note.

How am I supposed to know if I’ve thought about it enough?

"...I don't know, I just... only make people citizens if they want me to?"

That’s not very helpful.

He shrugs. He goes back to Tide. Apparently he will not be joining Vanda Nossëo today.

"Ashkon is ready for you at pier three."

He goes to pier three.

<Home again!> says Ashkon. <...do you want me to go talk to them for you?>

Imaginary shrug. That does seem like a good idea.

So Ashkon gets on the bus and back they go, soon enough that the same person is working. "Welcome back!"

He points at the bracelet. "Hi! My host got a bit tongue-tied. He does want to be a citizen," says Ashkon, "but ran into some mental blocks around being too committal about it. Can you take my assurance?"

"Uh, maybe, let me ask my boss." They type something.

This is definitely one of the interactions of all time. He’s not actually sure if he wants to be a citizen but it does seem plausible.

"He says we can take your assurance under a truth song."

"Great, start one up? - thanks. I am usually occupying this person and in that capacity believe he prefers and intends to become a Vanda Nossëo citizen."

"Cool, okay, let's get the forms filled out."

Ashkon fills out forms with his alien perfect executive function.

<Why do you know so much about me? I don’t even know these things.>

<I think it's the simultaneous inside and outside perspective?>

<Huh.>

Form form form form. Ashkon skips a bunch of questions that seem complicated; it's not like you get bonus points for giving them your religion or birthdate.

In short order Vanda Nossëo has a new citizen.

Number? Number? What is his number? He’s so excited for there to be an unambiguously non-name thing that unambiguously distinguishes him in such a broad context. Probably someday someone will ask his name and he’ll have something to tell them and be able to anticipate why they’ll hate it! And they can’t argue about it or take it away, not like if it were a name he went by. Even if someone else refuses to acknowledge it and hates it and assigns him a new number it’ll be a different number in a different system of numbers; he can have two numbers but he’ll still have just one ID number from Vanda Nossëo. And they’ll probably know he’s not asking them to call him that. And even if they’re elves they can’t take issue with it for being ugly. And it makes a way to describe him without reference to Ashkon.

So what’s the ✨number ✨?

56-7912-4522-6238-2739!

It’s so arbitrary! It’s so void of patterns or anything that would make it stand out among other ID numbers! It’s so unmemorable, so faceless! It’ll be a bit of work to memorize it but he can get started immediately and also keep a written copy.

The organization that destroyed Purgatory (!) gave him this so they can keep track of him so they can give him things! The only context he could possibly be happier to be called anything in is if Ashkon wanted to use a pet name for him and that seems unlikely to ever actually be useful for anything and also like it might escape its context and try to turn into a name, so.

<You're adorable.>