<This just will not do.>  She doesn't think it aloud - she is happy for Marcus with his roomy main room, and that large double bed in that street facing bedroom with the nice balcony that catches the light from the suns in the morning, and would probably get just nice and cosy and warm right as you wanted to wake up. BUT. She lives down south of the markets, still better than most, but apparently not as good as some. Where some is this random human dragged from a realm named Tyr.

Her task today, rather than her own research or heck her life in general, is to play watchkeeper over this human as he goes shopping with City Council funds. With no faith in her returning him to his place of origin, she had woken to a missive from the Council that he was being set up as a citizen, and that she was responsible for the set up. He had borrowed her floor last night, complaining the entire time that she should have some sort of 'couch' at least for him to settle on.

"And your AI friend was telling me I'd have to learn how to grow food or else be on a cafeteria diet. Don't you people have restaurants I can buy from?" Marcus says with a grumbling face.

"There are many options for what you do to gain food, but each resident has their own space, and you work that space for the betterment of yourself and others." Thalia says, as if explaining it like a parent or early learning tutor would.

"And you personally grow your own meals?"

"I grow a couple of staple foods, then trade people I know for things that are more interesting." She points to a small planter set up on his balcony. "You'll also have some space set up on the rooftop, and you'll have a section for larger crops down in the community area. Down the street they have a whole fruit tree set up for their building. They must have pooled their resources."

"You're not usually up this area of town?" Marcus says, taking a squat beside the bed as he thinks.

"No, this area is one step short of being high society and I'm not well published enough to be that."

Marcus looks up at her and she sees a strange emotion flash across his face as he seems to choose his words carefully. "Is your mentor located in that area of the city?"

She shakes her head, relieved at his direction. "No, his own papers don't really advance society either, given we are much more concerned with what has come before."

His brow furrows and he grits his teeth. "Progress is ever the goal, even in the hippy utopia."

"How about we progress towards the door while you consider what you want to spend your funding on." Thalia says, trying to concentrate on the upcoming vanity over this discussion on the evils of society.

What irked Marcus most about this city was how matter of fact the citizens took their technology - and the fact that so much of it was just integrated with magic. His guide, Thalia, was alot of 'oh let us take this cart with a dozen articulating legs that through magic just knows how to traverse multiple inclines' and looked at it like it was nothing, like the bigger worry was that how he laid their purchases would cause them to crease and then she would have to teach him their version of an iron. If they had that.

It was still strange to him that this world felt like something out of both a fantasy holo and aliens, though the holos back home would have at least had the decency to make the one who brought him through into him. Anyways, they were out to get outfits, and he had been told to make them respectful in the AI's message. Though how he would do that with the choice of guide was beyond him.

He still had hopes to integrate the AI with his wrist implant, the thing powered by his heart and so still completely active. As they walk towards the market he sees families playing on natural shrub cover, not like the fake grasses and concrete of home. Distinct family unit of too many adults seem frequent and from all the touching, seem normal and accepted.

They pass several café looking things, each with their own live music coming from instruments strange to him. These artists tended to be appealing, both men and women alike and he got winks from both. The music was nice too, though much more indie with the tendency towards things that sound like out of tune guitars - but still sweet, or hand drums.

He sees a place called Moonlit Melodies with holographic vines encasing it and a sign that reads closed, and makes a note to ask Thalia to bring him back when it is open. And then they are in the centre of the city, a massive glass structure before them with pink leaves poking out the top of the dome. It must be glass, for Marcus can see mostly through it, to the lush gardens inside, though this building is the size of a small stadium for sports-ball.

He slowly deviates as he touches the terminal nearby. "What is that large building Br1n?" He says it Br-one-nen, but each foliad he has seen say it slightly different.

"That is the Arboretum, the great garden that holds the ancient Sakura tree. It is the focus of the modern and ancient worlds." Br1n says with a generous smile for a smart AI.

Cherry blossoms? Marcus finds it strange that so many plants and concepts seem to bleed across the worlds, but that many other things are different or from myth. Makes alot of the world familiar until you concentrate.

Thalia calls to him, dragging him back to the path and  headed for the market district. Stalls line the edges of the area, this whole section transient with no fixed buildings, just pop up shops grown from plants and magic, with those weird solar cells curling up and over the side of these weird multi- tiered shops. Here most of all the ground feels organic, with 'floors' for the second story being rooves for the first and all of it being one giant leaf where-ever there is need for another rung. Long draping flowers on delicate vines lace the promenade, and Thalia tells him they will light up as it gets towards dusk.

Marcus sees a couple of stalls that hold robes, more that have simple shifts in the dull muted greens that he has seen in the outfits of the prestigious academics wandering the Academy fields. And then his eyes alight on colour and a grins slips onto his face, wide and infectious. Home is blacks and silvers and muted, especially the areas he is from where everything is corporations and conglomerates and progress and consuming, and here with the 'hippies', this is his first taste of choice in awhile. 

It feels Thalia is the same, watching her, but while she is constrained to her normal life, Marcus picks up a pair of almost vibrant orange harem pants, and a black top that loops over the neck and crosses over the chest.

"How many outfits is my stipend going to cover, Miss Thalia?" He says, holding the top against his body while looking into a mirrored surface.

"About three, maybe four if you go for a set of academy robes."

"Academy robes are the things you are wearing? Do you wear anything different?" He considers her, and despite himself he gets the urge to do something a little wild. "I will get two academy robe sets, if you take a gift from me."

As he leaves her there to humph, he finds what he is looking for, a deep purple scarf, made of this fine delicate hair like fabric. Getting Br1n to help him navigate paying, he returns to Thalia who is making the last touches on buying the academy robes and furnishings. He slips behind her, draping the scarf around her in a swirling whirl.
Watching the light spark across her features in a smile is joyous, and unexpected. He had expected surprise and a little anger at the audacity, but she seemed honestly like she was...

He watches her run her hands over the material in a kind of worship, pulling it tighter around her neck as she turns to him. "Thank you Marcus. You don't know, I appreciate this."
She promises nothing, but her gaze is enough.

Maybe Thalia did not take everything as nothing.

Next on Thalia's list of things to get, once Marcus' outfits were in the woven bags she had brought, was to introduce Marcus to the city's head gardener. Get him a way of changing his plot into food, at least in the short term. Then maybe a job, so he can get himself something nice.

She had not been kidding about the jobs, there were only a few jobs in the city that took up most of a day, and even then, they were not all week affairs. Taking teaching the young ones, that was generally a morning activity, before they either needed a nap or lost attention for the day. Then they would be under the care of their parental unit, or one of the street guardians whose job it was to assist Br1n with a physical presence. And then it was mainly the children tending to and learning from themselves.

It is just the lack of familiarity that would be a problem. One couldn't get by on good will alone, no matter how much she was growing to appreciate him. Plus he kept having this odd urge to shove his arm inside Br1n terminals before fiddling with the skin around his wrist and that device. She thought she had seen holo-text on his skin, but given that he did not know the magic - the circuitry and signs, she knows it could not be holo as she knows it.

Still, she knows her next goal is likely to be in one of the rooftop gardens or the arboretum, but really all they need to find one of the other gardeners for they would know where he is headed. She rubs the gifted scarf again as she watches him fiddle with his wrist.

"What are you doing there?" She asks with a polite but inquisitive tone, trying to lean for a closer look. He seems to have the outline of Br1n floating an inch above his wrist.

From the outline comes Br1n's voice, "Mr Marcus and I are trying to form a link between myself and his implant. For greater access and information."

"What was your job back on your side of the tear?" Thalia asks Marcus as she pulls him by the collar off the middle of the path as a cart barrels past on dozens of legs while hosting a collection of cabbages.

Breathless he utters "engineer" and when that gets confused silence, "I used to design things that people would make in mass."

"And they would get you to work even when you were not making things?"

"Well they did not want to pay me for nothing." Marcus says with a appalled tone as if getting paid to not do work was obscene.

Thalia distracts the conversation a moment to drag him to the external access to one of the rooftop gardens, hoping to get up and find a gardener before anyone would need to forgive their trespass.

"But they would take something you made without paying you? This was acceptable where you were from."

"Yes, that was usually under a law that meant what I designed in my free time was theirs. Like the modifications to my wrist implant." Marcus holds up the implant to her and she gently grabs his wrist to have a look. It looks and feels like there's something beneath the skin there, the rest curling around his wrist like a skin-tight bracelet in that 'metal' again.

The midday suns beat down on them, reflecting off the glossy exteriors of the buildings around here, even as they make their way up vine constructed ladders, working towards the roof of one of the nearby buildings, having spotted a gardener up there - if not the head gardener in question.

"So what are you even trying to do with your implant?" Thalia asks on a second floor landing, catching her breath and thoughts.

"I'm trying to see if I can connect to the terminal network with it, so I can have Br1n on the go as it were, we'd never gotten AI working to the level Br1n is even though our fiction is full of it. Having access to all that knowledge.... You're an academic - you know the lure of knowing."

Her face flushes and she nods, both pleased that he noticed her drive, but also pleased at the recognition in his words. She moves to wave him off though, trying to close her face off to the warmth flowing through her.

His brow furrows and he touches her hand. "I know I'm being nice, but you need to not let praise get to you like that. Not nice people might take advantage of that."

She makes a noise of dismissal. "You didn't do that much, human. I was merely empathising."

He moves past her and up, shaking his head, shiny grey clad thighs pushing him up towards the roof. 

When they reach the roof, they quickly spot the gardener, a young lad with a delicate face who gently uses Br1n to call up the head gardener.

The man is a wisened old gentleman, his overalls covered in little wooden and shell like buttons, selected and painted with wash-like dyes. As Thalia tries to set up some gardeners to come see to Marcus and his plots of land, she notices that he has returned to the old tinkering with his implant. The young gardener Leti seems enthralled and a part of her wishes she could stop her talk just to watch him work. 

Her focus returns to the gardener, almost completing the transaction before her and the hologram are interrupted by a whoop of joy. Her head swivels and she would see text floating above his wrist. "It says it is Br1n. I swear." His smile is ear to ear and pushes out the dimples on his face as Leti has his hands clasped around Marcus'. A slice of itchy heat settles in her gut and she pushes it away, afraid it will meet her face. Marcus and the 20-something in a skirt dance and she sees the hope and joy in the human and the way it infects those around him, and a part of her misses when science and exploration was like that for her.

Her mind sinks back to the sealed container under her bed, full of things covered in rock dust and grime, and the pair of sandals she had bought long ago to keep her safe down there in the dark. And she closes her eyes, closing off that part of her from this bright and sunny day and the way foliads should act, what will make the council and the people around her happy.

Hopefully.

She is walking the street, Marcus going on ahead with Leti and Br1n on his wrist. People swirl all around her, out of focus, a blur of green and brown, muted and blending into each other. The only sparks of colour around her are the smears of the Br1n projections and the sparkle of colour high above, dancing off the distant membranes of the Grand Library that can still be seen here in the lower districts.

Clouds have come overhead and it looks like it is going to rain and she should call for Marcus, get him under cover, but the sign for Moonlit Melodies beckons, invitingly.

A holo-sign sits above the door, delicate and intricate and designed with care, dull blue in this muted rainy day - when had it started raining - as delicate string sounds come from inside. She moves towards the door, stroking the entrance circuit to request entry and watching as it parts open, unfurling like a flower as she steps inside. The scent of sandalwood and honey and chamomile tea mix on her nose and she gives it a little wrinkle, not used to the luxury and care such a place suggests. She goes to leave, muttering "What would I have to trade for an hour here?" even as a hand clasps her shoulder to stop her.

Woven red curtains fall shut across her path and she is pulled back onto pillows filled with the softest plant-down, feeling them bounce as her weight is forced into them with casual ease, and a disturbing strength.

And opposite her, he is again. Here, in this now dream, she remembers him, even as her robe is askew and her hair scattered like spiderwebs behind her.

"Hello again." That voice is playing with her, like she is prey, like creatures you could see stalking the forests from the walls at night.

"I never got your name." Thalia breathes, careful with her response, as if judging whether he was here for more mischief or an active threat. She notices her fingertips are stained black, as if dipped in dye just from being close to him.

There is a large bloom beside her that pours off heat into her sodden form, bursts of flame tickling the air briefly as it warms a delicate kettle hanging off a rod above it. A blur of transparent silk swirls around them both, Predator and Prey, and her mind starts to realise she is in a dream or a vision.
"I never got your name." She repeats, with more force, eyes sliding along him to gauge what he has planned.

He holds up something she's thought possible, but which is a taboo among her people - a carved wooden cup, made from wood of an older tree and with no signs of... a natural death. A spire made of stone stares at her from its face as steaming tea is poured into it by the silken shadow. She holds a hand to her mouth in shock and she tries to concentrate on his face and his response.

"I am Xylos, the kind of thing your friend would know as an Incubus. And I am so very close."

He takes a long sip of his tea and she looks away, down to her cup that is full of blood. Deep, rich and red. She shudders as she considers the symbology. "And helping you, listening to you, obeying you will lead to ruin I guess."

"Hardly. I cannot call myself innocent, and I do so want to set claw upon your delicate soil. But I am a man with two goals, and one is to make a woman who is worthy to be my right hand, and you are spectacular enough to do so."

He brings up a container, dreadingly familiar to her, with dirt smeared around its seam. The air cools and they are deep inside the forbidden forest, kneeling as cold air breathes around them. She shivers as the echo of animal caw laces through the air, distorted by so much distance - still she is alone with the incubus.

She touches the seam to the container with trepidation, watching the seam unzip with hundreds of tiny little plant-teeth. Inside are three stone rings, a book made of paper and leather, and a shiny but scuffed shiny brown device with stamen that look like they could turn. Beside them is a small binding of notes, and a brush and a sharpened pick with veins of a golden imperfection.

"These are my things." She says to Xylos, illuminating the obvious. "How are they here?"

He reaches out, across this limestone path and touches her forehead, pushing back some hair. "Think, little dove. I know they exist, because you know they exist. Tell me what that means."

She moves to speak but his thick finger presses under her chin, stopping her words.

"You need to let yourself out. You are a bird stuck inside, a pet for your mentor, for your master, for your council and I WILL not have my right hand bound in chains. Tell me what I must do to unchain you and I will. Must I rake you with desire? Must I give you money untold? Tell the words and I will find the answer." His black eyes burn with an intensity and it shivers her to her core and then color blooms her eyes - impossible light burning away the temptation of the incubus - for now.