It started raining somewhere between the academy and her apartment, only a cold meal and an empty place awaiting her after the full-ness of this morning.

The streets are empty, and the flowers and fungus that illuminate the area with their bioluminescent glow struggle against the wetness of it all. She could cast a spell, or pull out an umbrella to push the water away from her, but her mind is damp and so she needs to reconnect to Natare, to Levis in general in this struggling damp.

She moves slowly, with caution, lest she loose her footing on the wet cobbled stone street, bare toes almost curling around each rock for purchase. 

Br1n illuminates the sign about a small stall that says 'Lanterns' and she tilts her head as she heads towards it, wondering the why of the guidance. She ducks under the 'tarp', stepping before a small little holo menu that is turned off until Br1n's presence makes itself known in that familiar blue. <All will be ok.> She says, by bringing up parts of the menu, highlighting just words.

Thalia goes to start, to protest against this being made from who knows what, as Br1n continues.

<I will help the children of my city where I can.>

She thinks to her parents, cave hunters for the city, assigned and trained to explore the dark and forbidden places so that others did not have to. With so much risk, to be such a team, and almost as well known as the lowest mage or scientist, they had talked in her youth about getting a place closer to the city, to accept another into the family when they could spend more time closer to home, when the city needed them less. But the city never needs you less, not Br1n, but the people inside it.

She shrugs the memory away even as she sees light start to glow from the tent behind the stall. Its a low thing, old leaves draped over a frame rather than a house or apartment - grown to live and speaks to the kind of person who expects to move, or be moved.

A small cloaked being wanders its way from the tent, rain avoiding the being as it hums a small tune. The front of the tent opens as the man pushes back the hood of his cloak. His skin is foliad green, greyed slightly with age, and a close cut hairstyle. His eyes are wrinkled with impossible amount of lines, curved slightly in a deep gaze, full of warmth.

Behind him lanterns float the air aimlessly, membranes grown around a circuit, ready to take off, but woven with magic that weaves designs over their skin so that the illumination will leave shadows before they depart.

He gives a deep smile, looking her over. "You must be Marcus' friend. He has told me we should meet - though I did not expect it tonight. Or for you to be so wet." His long pointed ears flick in amusement as he bows slightly towards her. For a moment she sees stars in his eyes before they reflect a familiar brown.

She is shocked Marcus would talk about her, especially with so much of a new world to explore and her being so curt with him - apart from the time with the scarf.

"What troubles you, child? I am Mr Kaito and I am here to bring light."

She bites her lip, not wanting to trouble an old man before he speaks again. "You are right. Speaking like this tonight is no good. You will come with me."

He walks back towards the tent and as her feet squish through the mud off the path, the rain does not fall on her, encompassed in Mr Kaito's umbrella, she thinks.

He lifts the corner of the tent, and ushers her inside, smiling and guiding her behind a screen. "Off with the robe. I will find you something, I have a lot of cloth. Linen. Ah you know what I speak of. She hears clippers and the click of thread and needle, and then an outfit is thrown over the divider.

It is a robe like her old one, but with with a cowl neck and a three quarter 'marie' sleeve. He has clipped her old clasp to the centre and chosen a darker green than is in fashion. "Don't dawdle, you'll catch a cold."

Thalia grumbles, shrugging on the gorgeous dress and pulling the clasp until it sits right on her hips, the fabric drawing tightly over them compared to her academic robes.

"Do you design clothes too?" Thalia asks as she settles beside the flower that burns little puffs of fire as she is passed a deep gourd like bowl of deep luxwood bark tea, its golden black texture rich and slightly nutty on her tongue.

"I did once, I might do so again, but nothing inspires me yet, and the smiles of children bring joy to my heart." He gives her a gentle grin, sipping his own tea and watching her.

"And you know Marcus after two days?" 

"Three. He helped me put my tent right after the superstitious tried to move me on. Said I was guiding the spirits away from the goddess and the forest, but your Marcus helped get it straight."

She smiles fondly, another name to the list of people he has charmed. "Do you wish for me to tell him the trade is complete? "

"No no. I will tell himself when the job is done."

"Tomorrow?" She feels her hair slowly drying, fizzing up at the edges in a pink black green mess.

"I think later. They would have sought violence and I would have had to change cities. Which is bad for business this close to the harvest festival. For a city with so many festivals, your countrymen insist on pretending they don't know why they dance."

Thalia smiles, this is something she does know of. "Before the current age, our cities used to openly worship several pantheons of gods, usually matched to the regions they inhabited. You can still see that in the name of the Solaris Protectorate to the north. Solaris being the god of technology and knowledge, you see. Now the council will tell you it was a campaign of enlightenment and independence.  Though truthfully it was because people were finding religion too easy to get tribal around, even within settlements where you'd actively want community effort. So councils and governments and a still surviving king had a meeting to work out what to do."

"And they decided to promote that religion was unintelligent in a society that values intelligence?" Mr Kaito finishes for her with a small sad nod.

"Thus making anyone who openly finds comfort in it small and backwards." Thalia says, not judging, just finishing a thought. "But you can see the old ways even in magic. The circuit for casting growth, one of the cornerstones of the entire foliad city structure is shaped like the old sigil for marking the goddess of harvest and production, Elythera."

"And you have your harvest festival."

"And the stamp pressed into Starberry Wines bottles and caskets." Thalia counters. "It's all still there, it's just hidden. Like the men who hated your lanterns."

They both pause to think a bit as she sees the mechanisms in Mr Kaito's mind work.

"The council keeps many things hidden. Like our friend Marcus. Obviously not the first, but if they valued discovery and innovation as much as they claimed, purposefully bringing a human across would be a public presentation. And with so many witnesses it would not be this easy to brush out the door."

Thalia huffs from her seated position. "But it is. It's not just the council who wants this gone either. My mentor wants to find a way to claim it for himself."

"So he is actively studying it?" Mr Kaito seems confused. "Why would he not just claim credit as your mentor then, use words to downplay your actions and just slide to the front? He is well known even outside this city after all."

Thalia goes to speak and then pauses, stuck on those facts. "Maybe he thinks it was an accident."

"That you don't check up on? When I build my lanterns and one of them does something new, I try at least to have it happen again."

"I don't think I'm ready to contemplate what that means, honestly." Thalia says with a sigh. The tea tastes lovely and Mr Kaito pours another cup. The rain outside patters on the tent roof as they consider the implications. 

"You implied you've travelled." Thalia says after a few breaths. "Have you heard of humans outside of Natare?"

He gives a wide, toothy grin. "You have obviously heard of Brambleberry with its creature-kin. One of its long distant founders was human. Then you have Saburra, there is an older trader there, lovely woman who is human." He gives a cheeky chuckle. "I should go back there to taste her pickled onions."

Thalia bites her lip, trying to hold back a laugh, worried the dam of emotions might break should she enjoy this moment. She steels herself and decides to go for it. 

"Do you know where I could go to get more information on the humans who have been here and their old customs? If I knew more I might be able to both help Marcus and use more of the things I have more effectively."

"You have considered visiting the libraries outside of Natare? There are a few that might work,  but you might need a guide to find what you need."

"Think I might need to sleep on it. I have someone I need to confront in the morning, now that my energy has returned. Thank you for that." Thalia says, nodding in respect to Mr Kaito.

"Just remember that the rain is a source of growth as much as any spell is."

Thalia smiles, resting her forehead to his before getting up and retreating into the rainy mist.

With the waking of the morning, and the dry tones of Marcus' voice, Thalia awakens once more. Her new dress dries on a railing by the balcony and the idea of seared eggplant slides into her mind for breakfast. She incites a missive to the office of VRPI and that Orion in specific and gets about starting her day.

With a poke to Yarrow through Br1n's network, Thalia gets to cooking breakfast on her heating pad, watching the thing glow as she turns the eggplant on the magic wooden pan. She breathes in the toasty scent as the vegetable oil gets those slices of deliciousness nice and burnt the right way.

She is halfway through her morning routine before Br1n tells her she has a missive. "Mr Valtor will see you after sundown at his estate outside Natare. May I suggest the new dress, my child."

"Thankyou Br1n, can you tell me the direction when we get closer to?"

"Yes, also your breakfast is getting cold." Br1n's voice is a gentle chide.

Getting back to working and eating, Thalia considers how she is going to find the old woman Yarrow had met in the bookstore. She knows the district they were in when they found the store, but a simple hunt earlier had discovered that that was no longer the case. So given that the lady with the book had told her to read the binding, that was her first goal of the day.

By the second chapter, Thalia had discovered one thing - there were going to be hard truths evident in her further study of humans and of ancient foliad past. The other thing Thalia realised was that she was being manoeuvred by yet another being, though where to was less obvious.

The book, for it was a translation of an old human book, was on the practice of mining - bringing rocks up from the ground to turn into other things mostly through destruction and fire -in the ultimate destruction of the natural world and the foliad's place in it.

She has a hard time thinking anyone would be accepting of the concept and yet here it is, in holo text and bound book she finds so many facts, the history of how it was done, the developments over time, each image more and more obscene until she is looking into an open hole in the ground as if the god of stone and bloodshed had manifested itself to the page. She is not a religious person, but the images on the page look like the greatest disaster to ever exist, and to know they are on a realm out there - makes her want to lock that world far away from hers, even if Marcus is a godsend to her life.

She closes the binding with a shudder and grabs her nose, breathing deep through her mouth as her heart races. It takes everything inside her not to grab the heaviest object and go to where the case is and not just smash it to pieces.

But then she knows if she does that she is stuck where she is in life, with just a timer on someone else getting the smart idea to look into this. It just means that whatever her research with Marcus and the metal case - she has to be careful now, cautious and knowing there is a predator in these information woods - the entire realm of Tyr.

She knows now that the path forwards is even more certainly more research, and a desire to talk to Orion Valtor and why he put that metal case into her lap. The book was obviously a warning, and the dye felt like a distraction, but if Valtor knew about the way humans were in their realm, what was his angle?

She would have to find the bookstore woman. She would have to travel to Saburra. She would have to meet with Orion. Thalia had to take her path in her hand, lest she be led to stone and ruin.