Feya will follow. He feels that he has successfully convinced the woman that he isn't malicious...but it's also possible that she used the phone – he still has no idea what the phone can do, aside from show maps on its surface – to contact the police or something.

He's still really baffled by the fact that they don't seem to have any person that can cast truth spells here? It's one thing for all the practitioners here to have died during the Cataclysm, thus extinguishing all the Society lineages, but there would still be Geniuses – people that awaken spontaneously. So...where are they?

She walks him to the hotel, a good 15-minute walk, before ending up outside the first-floor lobby. It has a very high roof, together with a very inviting lounge. It doesn't seem like anyone's working at the hotel at the moment. She waks in and taps a few buttons on her phone, before walking over to what looks like a cargo elevator. "The room is up through here", she says.

He feels apprehensive about walking into the Strange Self-Opening Room alone with the woman, but he reminds himself that he is a Tranquil practitioner, and she is not.

What is the aesthetic of the hotel like? Is it decorated? Everything he's seen thus far feels Firey and Perfect. Does the aesthetic of the exterior match the interior?

The hotel is extremely undecorated; it's all in greyscale colors, with occasional symbols that have a very strange ability to "speak" to Feya. There's an arrow on a button, letting him know that the room in front somehow lets him head upwards. A different symbol informs him that the button it covers can be used to summon someone, if he wishes to speak to someone in person. Yet another symbol manages to communicate that devices can receive energy... from something. There's some kind of hole in the wall, near the ground, in the vicinity of that symbol.

Ah, it continues to give Perfect, though the greyscale colors remind him of Tranquil.

It seems that he can also understand their pictograms! He feels apprehension about the Heading Upwards, but it is what it is. He does not want to summon anyone! He does not have any limited-use artifacts that require charging.

He will calmly abide by the woman, which he realizes hasn't actually given him her name yet, but which he feels awkward about asking now, having forgotten to ask earlier.

Stepping in, they race upwards, only taking a few seconds to get what has to be at least 2 dozen stories above the ground. She walks over to one side of the elevator, pushing a button to make the elevator to reveal a corridor. She walks into, touching her phone to the doorknob and opening the door into one of the rooms nearest to the elevator. "This is a perfectly ordinary room that'll fit you fine." It has a wide bed, a window that's essentially the entire wall, and a door leading off someplace else. The room is fairly large for just one person, and especially the bed seems like it'd comfortably fit multiple people. It has a very open and inviting feeling.

Feya covers his mouth to suppress himself from screaming. It mostly works.

"Thank you very much for your kindness," he says again, while bowing.

The window is very majestic, but it also feels exposing. Does it have a curtain?

"I don't have a phone. How do I open the door, once you leave?"

She taps her head, realizing she had gotten so used to always having her phone ready. Then she walked in and found a key placed on the bed. "This is how you open the door once I leave." The key is almost perfectly cylindrical, and very thin. It has an incredibly smooth and even surface, which feels a bit uncanny in the hand. It almost looks featureless with how pristine it looks.

There are no curtains of any kind in the room.

He is familiar with the concept of keys, but he has never seen a key shaped like that before.

"I see, thank you. Suppose I have other questions, or questions about the room – who do I talk? Do I press the button from the other room to summon someone?"

The lack of curtains is very saddening!

"Well, yes. There is a button you can press, by the entrance, to let the staff know that you have questions." Next to the door, there are 3 buttons, one to ask for food and other services (cleaning? it doesn't "speak" as clearly as the other buttons), one to ask the staff for help or information, like the one in the lobby, and another one to let them know about an emergency that could prove life-threatening (it has a vaguely... serious aura).

This seems like a very good system! He has no idea how the buttons cause this to be communicated, again without the use of energy, but the part of his mind that is alarmed by out of context things has run out of juice and he honestly just feels numb about it.

"Thank you, that makes sense. How much does food cost?"

"It's very, very cheap. What are you thinking of having? Assuming that you're hungry."

He has no calibration about what 'very, very cheap' means!

"I don't know what there is to eat. I refrain from eating meat and would greatly prefer options that do not have meat. Were I home, I would have been planning to have peanut steamed buns for lunch. I don't eat a lot for lunch.

I do not mean to sound ungracious, but I worry about imposing on you too much. You don't have to feed me – I can survive without food. You are already doing me a big favor by paying for me to stay the night."

"I think I'd be a terrible guest to a stranger if you had to go without eating! I'm happy to send for some non-peanut steamed buns for you, assuming you wouldn't rather be going without food instead."

He wants to ask about the peanut thing but he's Tired so he doesn't.

"To elaborate, I refrain from eating animal products that require the killing to produce, which includes meat, lard, suet, and offal. I do not refrain from eating honey, milk, or unfertilized eggs. I would prefer to eat, but if the buns contain any of the former ingredients, then I would prefer not to eat, if there are not any other options."

Oh my stars he's literally being a choosing beggar this is MORTIFYING.

"The buns are made without having an animal killed in order for you to eat it, and they feature no animal products whatsoever. Which I believe means that you do, in fact, wish to eat them? Would that be correct?"

"Yes!" He smiles.

"Will there also be water? Does the inn have piped water, or do I need to go to the fountains to fetch it?" He wouldn't expect a cheap place at home to have piped water, but this is also the place that had the room that brought him up a dozen stories without any perceptible energy. So.

"Then I'll ask for some buns, and water. We have running water, that's the word for it. There's a sink you can drink from in the bath."

That is so good! It's an order of magnitude better than the places they stay at while caravanning.

"That's very good!" He is very pleased!

"When will the hotel ask for payment?"

"They ask for payment in advance, I sent them the money on the way over... that might be new to you. Here, people are very insistent on getting paid in advance. So they will, virtually always, be asking for the payment in advance."

??????????????????????????????????????????? there were no flying things coming from her on the way here ?????????????????????????????????????????????

Feya understands advance payment!!! He does not understand the other thing!!!

"How did you send the money? I didn't see anything. You didn't talk to anyone else on the way here."

"I used my phone for that! It keeps track of the money me and everyone else has, and lets me send money from me to them."

What is this phone such that it can do all of these things.

He feels so so so tired, and it's not even the tiredness of physical exhaustion, or the tiredness that arises from excessive Tranquil casting, but existential and social tiredness.

"Thank you for explaining," he says. "Is there anything else that you believe I should know?"

She looks at him awkardly for a moment. "You don't know the right word for running water. But you know what a flush toilet is, right?"

"Yes!"

After a pause, he adds, "Actually, may I trouble you to explain the bathroom to me? In the case it has stuff I don't know." Which there probably will be.