## dinner He comes home with fish for dinner, asks if she likes fish. She apologetically explains that no, she doesn’t like fish. she’s enough of a political operator to eat without complaint, though, and she appreciates being fed, and being safe, but she’d like answers please. Thought bubble: focus on the important things - does he know of any way for her to get home? —> explanation of how people end up in the void, extruded by their worlds. She’s insulted —> don’t be, he thinks it’s a way that the mature world seeds make sure their ‘children’ have what they want. Besides, he has a theory that she’a copy, a dupe, based on her explanation of how the teleports work —> but that’s illegal and viscerally disgusting World seeds don’t care about human laws. —> what about the stele? caption: World seeds care about their own rules quite a bit. It’s the core of their identity, the magic, what they become. Fueled by motes and symbiosis. Sevarik: The stele isn’t intended for TUFT to obey. Miria: oh ## both go to bed, when she wakes up he's gone He leaves a note on a lovely notebook that is blank, no lines or anything. “Seemed like you were still asleep. I went to fetch a cup of cream. Literally, if you can believe it. Not sure when I’ll be back, but you should be able to get breakfast in town.” PS: “There are probably more notebooks upstairs somewhere.” She takes the ring off experimentally. She can’t read any of the words. ## go upstairs and explore **PAGE <$N>** PANEL <$SN> The house firmly in a state that Miria would have called disrepair. The inhabitant had clearly given not one single damn about organizing his treasures, or even storing them safely. There were globs of sticky gunk dripped across the floor, the beautiful desk was stained with ink, torn papers littered the floor. CAPTION More than anything she missed music. Dancing with herself while she mucked out stable stalls hadn't seemed that fun as a child, but now, stuck in a house full of things she didn't understand, deadly artifacts and weird things from monstrous dungeons -- tasked with bringing order from chaos that didn't even have words to label the dusty monstrosities piled on every floor and surface, she missed the radio. Even advertisements would have been better than this awful, oppressive silence. She couldn't even hear the birds fighting outside the window. PANEL <$SN> Miria takes a book off the bookshelf and tries to read it. Unlike the stele or Sevarik’s note, it’s incomprehensible.  MIRIA Sevarik didn’t mention the books.  (cont) He said Tuft’s magic would translate everything. Did he not understand--?  (cont) Maybe this really _is_ gibberish. Maybe Tuft won’t translate anything dangerous.   (cont) Maybe Tuft doesn’t know what it says, either. Maybe that’s why it can’t be stored inside the aura.  (cont) Maybe it’s like an artificial intelligence that knows python, and c, and javascript, but was never taught to compile into assembly.  = [[compiling vs transpiling]] (cont) A safety measure, perhaps, or maybe the underlying ‘code’ of this universe is too complex even for a world seed. CAPTION Miria is, in some ways, too smart for her own good. ## finds the peacock-dog's egg It’s gonna take several months of constant tending the hearth to hatch it, and Sevarik hasn’t ever had the time at home to do so.