"...Hi, Aunt Alys," says Mial.

"It appeared. Must have been pushed from somewhere but I don't know what it is," says Alys, shaking. "It appeared and it - put him through that plate, mirror, thing, on its front end, and he was gone, and if he'd been swallowed, if he'd lost a form he would have burst right out of it, if - It chased me and I got out of the house and burned it and if he was there if he'd lost a form he'd have -"

It is not, on close inspection, much of a snake. For one thing, it has the mirror plate thingy in complete lieu of... a head at all. No eyes, no mouth unless the mirror counts; its spine goes halfway up the surface's backing and melts smoothly into it from there. The scales are huge, and interlock in a distinctly inorganic way, hinged in places, accordioned to collapse when it bends. Some of the bits have been warped with heat; part of its side has burst open and it is leaking dark sludge which does not smell terribly pleasant.

It bounces off.

"I would apologize for disturbing your rest but I have other things on my mind right now such as where the fuck am I," says Aurin.

"Sunnydale," says the someone. Then he takes a closer look at Aurin, and amends, "Which is a town on Earth. Where were you previously?"

"I was in my house! Not, say, a sending circle!"

"And then I was here! And my crystal's gone dead," he brandishes a small green crystal, "and I've never heard this language before in my life and you'd think I'd know all the ones with any currency such that you'd deploy them to complain at a random shouting fellow, wouldn't you..."

"Why, pray tell, would you think that?"

"Oh, I s'pose it's dark. 'M a dragon."

"...Did you just smell me to try to figure out if I'm a dragon?" inquires Aurin. "And then get the wrong answer?"

"I said you don't seem very dragonlike; I didn't say that you weren't a dragon," he says. "You smell perfectly human, but that's clearly not definitive. What's a sending circle?"

"Wizard thing. The sort of environment which, unlike my living room, is usually associated with suddenly being in another world with unfamiliar languages and people who don't know what dragons are."

"I'd credit local phenomena if there were any suspicious characters nearby, but there aren't unless you count me, and I didn't just summon you here from another world."

"Thank you. One thing all my favorite people have in common is that they've never summoned me to foreign climes unexpectedly." Pause. "Crystal's dead but I should probably song Mother. And my cousin."

"And that means...?"

"Means you get to hear my lovely dulcet tones. Mother's'll take ages, Mial first -" And then he sings a few bars. He is not a particularly gifted singer but he manages to stay in tune, for otherworldly values of "in tune".

"And what effect did that have?"

(Among its effects: Mial immediately teleports straight back to Alys's house, still holding the reference book he was reading, and says, "Aurin just songed me! He's in another world!")

"Well, I don't know, until he songs me back," says Aurin. "If it let me send arbitrary telepathic messages I wouldn't even bother buying communication crystals. Just a sec." And he sings a much longer song.

("Oh," breathes Alys, still staring at the snake, unable to produce any more eloquent statements of relief. "Can you get him back?")

("Eventually, yes," says Mial. "I need to look up the right spells, though. I'll go do that." Back home he goes with his book. As an afterthought, he songs Aurin back, just to demonstrate that he's paying attention.)

"Okay," says Aurin, "probably my cousin will summon me back any minute now. What an interesting misadventure this will have been."

"Your cousin has access to casual interdimensional transportation? How nice for him."

"He's a wizard. I don't think he's ever done it before, it'll probably take him a while to look up the spell and draw out the circle."

"And then you will vanish as mysteriously as you appeared. Well, substantially less mysteriously, but with about the same level of control or effort from either of us."

"For all I know Mial will also figure out why I vanished in the first place. Probably it would bother him if he didn't."

"Perhaps Mial is at fault," he suggests whimsically.

"Well, I was rambling on more than he really likes about a topic he cares very little about, but this is not quite his style of retribution."

"Oh? And what is?"

"Used to be he'd start talking over me very loudly about topics I do not care about. Scoots, most often. Sometimes he just throws Finnah at me instead, she's fine to talk girls with on occasion."

"Scoots?"

"And the weaknesses of autolinguistics are made manifest. Uh, capsule-y things with seats in them that zoom around in the air or scoot around on the ground by magic?"

"Enthusiastic about them, is he?"

"Built his own. Races it. Wins, usually. Has been since he was a kid up against people twice his equivalency."

"Equivalency?"

"Yeah, Mial ages like a dragon." Pause. "Youuuu know so little about dragons that I'm surprised your language has a word for us at all, but, dragons age about ten times slower than humans? Till we're two hundred, then we stop. In assumed forms, anyway, natural one keeps getting bigger."

"The word applies to a diverse set of probably-mythical creatures of which most are large winged lizards," he says. "Are you in any meaningful sense a large winged lizard?"

Aurin turns into a large winged lizard. "Ta-da."

"Well, there's one mystery solved."

Aurin shifts back. "This form's more convenient for most of my day to day uses besides commuting, though."

"Commuting being easier when one can fly?" he guesses.

"Yeah. Should probably learn to teleport one of these days, I guess, though it'd make Mother nervous."

"Is teleportation especially hazardous?"

"No, not really, but my dad died in a casting accident."

"Oh. Well then."

"And the aforementioned cousin, plus his mother, are willing to teleport us places. So it's not that inconvenient." Shrug. "What's your name, anyway, I'm Aurin."

"Sherlock."

"Pleased to meet you, largely on account of I'd be considerably more upset if I had landed someplace so remote that I didn't know where to find someone to ask for directions to such commodities as bathrooms and lunches."

"What do dragons habitually eat?"

"Oh, I usually just eat in human form. I had leftover lamb and potatoes for breakfast. If I had to I could just hunt things and eat raw meat - more efficient to do the eating part as an eagle than full sized - but you don't get much variety that way."

"Human food is available nearby. If it comes up. Although in this town at this hour you'd frankly have a better selection if you ate humans."

"Around here? Yes."

"Shit. Am I going to be mistaken for one? What exact manner of monstrosity do I need to be prepared to set on fire?"

"Assorted demons. Vampires are the commonest."

"...We have vampires, or at least something inclined to translate thereas, at home, and they can bite humans but usually find other species tastier, but since they got religion this isn't fatal to the meal. The vampires here have not got religion, have they."

"The vampires here have not got religion. We're nastily allergic to many forms of it, in fact. But, conveniently for you, we're also very flammable."

"I'm not going to eat you. You're much too interesting."

"I'm accustomed to vampires who won't eat me without permission because God says so," says Aurin. "Anyway, I can continue being interesting like so, can't I."

"Suit yourself. Personally I find boredom a much more compelling motivator than God."

Aurin stretches a wing, then the other wing. "God works just fine for my accustomed vampires. I don't have a ton of details about why, they're cagey about most of their theology."

"God has never done much for me one way or another, whereas boredom is definitely going to kill me one day."

"Occupational hazard of local not-got-religion vampires?"

"Not especially. Most of them are content to entertain themselves with mindless slaughter. I'm just very difficult to please."

"Require your slaughter mindful?" wonders Aurin dryly.

"Look, if you don't prayerfully solicit nonlethal donations from your friends and neighbors, what do you do, is what I'm after here."

"Steal animal blood, usually. Less bother all round."

"Okay. Shoplifting is an improvement over grand theft bodily fluids."

Snicker.

"...You aren't just saying that because I could set you on fire, are you?"

"Am I? What do you think?"

"I don't know! I am unaccustomed to this sort of thing! It usually doesn't even come up in conversation that I can breathe fire even though I can and it's very cool!"

Sherlock cackles.

Aurin grumbles. And smokes slightly.

"I don't actually care very much if you set me on fire," Sherlock says helpfully. "Not enough to start lying about my dietary habits over it, certainly."

"I have not actually ever set anybody on fire," Aurin says. "Not a thing."

"You have the capacity, though. And I probably have the capacity to eat you if I'm very clever about it, but I don't care to try. So it seems like we are not going to kill each other. How friendly of us."

"I have in fact been called friendly but usually I have earned this by clearing a higher bar than 'not on the very antisocial end of pyromania for my color group'."

"Deciding not to murder someone when I probably could makes me pretty damn friendly for a local vampire."

"I feel like I should be arranging to export missionaries, except I think it turned out to take a disease or something to make the getting of religion properly unanimous, so maybe that wouldn't help."

"And local religion gives us awful blisters."

"That's very weird. Why does it do that?"

"Search me," he shrugs. "Because we're unholy soulless monsters?"

"That hardly seems like an explanation."

"It really doesn't."

"What about it gives you the blisters? If people... what, believe it at you?"

"The most significant holy symbols."

"All by themselves, not enchanted or anything? Really?"

"Really."

"I wonder if an archetype flower or an aspects mark or a Kiaor's Sign would do it."

"Probably not. Only some local religions have this effect."

"Huh. Why those?"

"I'm really not sure."

Aurin flops onto his side and twirls the end of his tail in the air lazily. "Huh." And: "I wonder how long my cousin's going to take to figure out how to haul me back. Obviously he hasn't done it lickety-split."

"Is he usually faster?"

"The exact situation hasn't come up before. He might be having technical difficulties or be reassuring my doubtless frantic mother or fixing whatever led to me landing here in the first place lest it swallow my entire province or something."

"How enterprising of him."

"That's Mial. If this is a province-swallowing sort of problem I may be in for a wait. I don't have any local money..."

"Are you or are you not covered in solid gold?"

"Yeah? ...Is it particularly valuable, here? I don't even bother keeping dropped scales usually unless they're the big plates."

"It's reasonably valuable. A few of those and you wouldn't have to worry about much unless you're extremely picky about your living situation or expect to be here for a year."

"All right. Not going to be great fun to pry them off but it's probably better than perching in a tree to sleep."

"Probably, yes."

"But for all I know I'll whisk away in a tick so I won't start trying to dig a claw under the loose one under my wing just yet."

"How sensible."

"Mm-hm. Although I'm definitely going to be hungry enough to get started on the process in an angle or three."

"In a what?"

"It's a unit of time. Uh, unless you have really different day lengths here it's probably not far off from an hour."

"Sounds like a reasonable guess."

"How do you tell time here? I have the vocabulary but assembling it into instructions would be laborious."

"Instructions of what type?"

"Well, at home, when I vanished, it was about third-and-ten, which means it was three angles and ten degrees since dawn. What time is it now and what relationship does that have to things happening overhead?"

"About seven-thirty, or seven and a half hours since noon."

"So it's... evening, going to be dark for a while yet?" concludes Aurin thoughtfully.

"Yes."

"And me coming up on lunchtime. Grand."

"Yes."

A folded note appears in front of Aurin.

"Oh, well, that's very polite of Mial, isn't it, probably," says Aurin, and he turns human to pick it up and read it.

I found a transworld scry and you seem to be getting along with the locals. Song me when you want to come home. And turn human, I'm not drawing a summoning circle big enough for your natural form.

Aurin snorts. "He says to song him when I want to go home. Any tourist attractions it'd be criminal to miss out on besides this weird rock garden?"

"Graveyard," he corrects absently. "Well, I could show you the mouth of hell, but it's not very impressive to look at."

"Surely the most disappointing aspect of a conveniently accessible excuse me?"

"What?"

"Explain 'mouth of hell' because we don't have one of those?"

"A sort of... convenient access point for a number of prominent hell dimensions. Must I also explain hell dimensions?"

"I suspect you must."

"Other universes, varyingly distant from this one, principally inhabited by demons and hell-gods."

"So you have interworld travel here too, but you only use it to go nasty places?"

"If there are non-nasty places to go, that information is not well-publicized."

"My world's not nasty."

"Then I suspect it is not a hell dimension."

"I'd worked that part out, funnily enough."

Snort.

Aurin shakes his head. "I don't much care to see the portal to the hell dimension, thanks. Anything else that ought to keep me?"

"No. This is very much a Hellmouth-centered town."

"Okay. Thanks ever so for the company," says Aurin, and he songs Mial again.

"Lovely meeting you."

"Ugh. Technical difficulties," sighs Aurin, reading this note. "A time estimate would be nice, coz... Ugh."

"Do you have any reason to suspect he has a time estimate?"

"Not a precise one, but I'd hope he'd at least tell me whether to get a hotel room or not. Hotels are a thing here, right?"

"Yes. Hotels are a thing."

"See, I can't rely too much on what words you have because apparently dragons are not, except for, today, me, a thing here."

"I can see how that would be confusing, yes."

"Have you got a pen? I'm going to write on the back of this note in case he summons it back."

Sherlock produces a pen.

And Aurin takes it and writes Can I get a general idea of how long I'm going to be here? Angles? Weeks? Months? If it is more than angles please be slightly circumspect about exactly when you scry me. Also, if you can get any of my or Mother's or Uncle Avar's or I suppose your own scales that are lying around I can apparently call it close enough to currency here in a way I suspect I could not do with kasri or aaberik and I'd rather not have to pry mine off before they want to drop. For that matter if it's going to be a long time I could use a few changes of clothes and AN EXPLANATION PLEASE AND THANK YOU MIAL.

Sherlock seems to derive great entertainment from watching Aurin write this message.

Aurin will allow that. He waves the note in the air, on the chance that Mial has an active scry running.

After several waves, it vanishes.

Aurin sits on a headstone and waits. Apparently he no longer feels the need to be reflexively capable of firebreathing around Sherlock.

"Right, I don't have to pick at my shiny exterior for cash, I'm getting a care package. Apparently I was eaten by a giant snake with a mirror for a face. Is that a here thing? It is not a home thing."

"I wouldn't be astonished to hear of someone being eaten by a giant snake with a mirror for a face and turning up in another world, it's broadly the sort of thing that happens, but I have not actually heard of it happening to anyone until just now."

Aurin scribbles: The local says the snake thing sounds vaguely characteristic of this place but hasn't heard of it happening in particular. Please tell Mother that I'm basically fine and they have things like hotels here.

"What sort of technical difficulties is your cousin having, anyway?"

"Summoning spell didn't work for unknown reasons. Even if the reasons were known I'd be the wrong person to explain 'em."

"Not a technical sort of person?"

"No, not really."

"But your cousin is the sort of person who prevents nearby provinces from being eaten by mirror-faced snakes?"

"Well, I think if it were in fact eating the province he wouldn't have stopped to write me a note, and it's not really nearby, he can just teleport. But sure, I can see him doing that if it in fact came up."

"Sounds like a useful sort of cousin to have."

"Sometimes. I don't often have snake related problems, though, this is actually only the third time a snake has caused me the least inconvenience and by far the most troubling."

"What were your previous snake encounters?"

"Viper bit me when I was eighty-five - eighty-six? Thereabouts, anyway - and a water moccasin chased me and one of my friends when I was a hundred eleven."

"How'd you manage to get bitten by a viper?"

"When I was in my mid-eighties I belonged to a charming little group called the Junior Wilderness Rangers. I was fine, one of the other kids was a light."

"And a light is...?"

"Oh, uh, they do this," Aurin cups his hands, "and get a little ball of sparks, which heal anybody who is not themselves a light, if they touch them. Very handy for everybody except the lights, who mostly rely on potions and healing the long way around. They also don't have to eat if they get enough water and sunshine."

"How convenient."

"Yup! Actually, one of the other Junior Wilderness Rangers pushed me at the snake, and later claimed to have been doing it because she thought the snake was going to get the light, who would have been in much worse shape. She was still in trouble for doing it."

"Did this particular Junior Wilderness Ranger have some sort of vendetta against you, or was she just a snake-shoving sort of person, or do you suppose she was telling the truth about her motivations?"

"It's possible she was entirely sincere, but we were not friends after the incident."

"I imagine not."

"...Later I dated her granddaughter! This sort of thing happens when one is a dragon."

"Did the granddaughter know about the viper?"

"I can't remember if I told her, actually. Probably."

"In your place I would have joked about it frequently."

"One accumulates other things to joke about. Besides, I usually don't discover who people's grandmothers are immediately, I probably found out weeks into the relationship at least."

"Really? How do you miss something like that?"

"They didn't have the same last name. And I have met probably tens of thousands of people to roughly the same extent I met Viper Girl, though admittedly not all of them shove me at venomous snakes, so I didn't recognize the limited family resemblance. In my country most people don't live with their grandmothers, so even if I go to my date's house I am unlikely to meet same. But I know there's places where people live with lots of extended family, is this one of them?"

"No. I don't know, I'm not two hundred years old, but it just seems like the sort of thing that would be obvious," he says. "Then again, my standards of obviousness are unusually broad."

"It was not obvious. I'm sure I've completely missed more people I've dated who have ancestry I have previously met in other contexts. I do try to be moderately careful to avoid dating the children of anyone I have previously been involved with, but that's easier than grandkids."

"No doubt."

"How hard is it going to be to turn gold and silver scales into something I can spend, anyway?"

"Oh, moderately. Well, I suppose that depends on how shady a character you're willing to sell them to."

"...what do my options look like?"

"I could find you a buyer among the demon community, but they might find some sort of nefarious use for them. I'm sure there are plenty of nefarious uses for otherworldly dragon scales. Or you could wait until tomorrow and look for someone who doesn't know that magic exists and will therefore be confused about the shape your precious metal supply comes in but unable to use it to harm you or your relatives."

"...Uh. Okay. Assuming I prefer option two, am I eating small rodents in the interim or can I borrow some whatever-one-buys-things-with here?"

"I will lend you twenty dollars and let you sleep in my crypt for the night, because I'm nocturnal and won't need it. It's reasonably comfortable as crypts go."

"Can you quantify twenty dollars in terms of something like, I don't know, bread, sofas, whatever would be likely to be about the same cost in real wealth both places?"

"Several loaves of bread. A small fraction of a sofa. One or two meals at restaurants, maybe three depending on the restaurant."

"Okay. I guess I should probably try to at least nap, overnight, but I don't think I can fall asleep right now. I might want to overfly the area, get an idea of what it looks like, any reason that's a bad idea?"

"Some people might be alarmed to see a large golden dragon flying around. Some other people might decide to try to fight you."

"What if I do it while shaped like so?" Now there is a booted eagle with slightly irregular coloring but otherwise pretty inconspicuous sitting on the gravestone.

"Well, an eagle at night is mildly bizarre, but not nearly as obtrusive about it as a golden dragon. What a convenient sort of large winged lizard you are. This cousin of yours, is he a large winged lizard too?"

"...Well, technically, y- well, actually he's small, for a winged lizard of his age. Potion reaction when he was a baby."

"Oh?"

"He's not technically a dragon per se. You haven't got a word for his thing. But he is in most respects including the convenient shapeshifting very similar."

"...I haven't? Is 'dragon' unsuitable in some way? It seems to be a very all-purpose word. Managed your variety of large winged lizard just fine."

"He's not a dragon. He used to be but he had an accident."

"Not the same accident that caused him to be a smaller-than-usual winged lizard," he guesses. "And not one that directly altered his winged lizard status. Is your translation magic suffering some sort of inscrutable bug, or is this a cultural artifact?"

"I have a word for his species but it'd just sound like a nonsense word - he's a shren," says Aurin. "He's still got the wings, but they don't work, he can't fly anymore."

"So he is exactly the same sort of large winged lizard that you are, plus an unfortunate disability or two, and there is absolutely no reason from my perspective why you couldn't share a word in this language which neither of you has encountered before today."

"Okay, one, no, two, also no, three, still no."

"Do explain where I went wrong."

"I'm not remotely sure I want to have this conversation. I am very unusually tolerant of shrens as dragons go, and I don't think I want to have this conversation anyway."

"You can always tell me which nonsense word goes with the unimpaired version, so I can properly disambiguate varieties of otherworldly winged lizard, and then I will stop harassing you about semantics."

"Draconic for dragon is siad."

"Sure. How about your cousin, can I harass him about semantics?"

"Depending on exactly how you do it he will be delighted or hate you, I haven't extensively divined his reactions to give you a map in advance. This would require you to have a way to communicate directly with him, though."

"You can tell him that I would like to talk to him the next time he sends you one of those notes, I assume. He seems like a resourceful person. I'm sure he can find a way."

"I'm a little reluctant to distract him from what I'm hoping is singleminded zeal at retrieving me from this surprisingly roomy snake interior."

"Well, presently the only method I have of harassing him directly is that song you sang earlier, and I have no idea what it does."

"It harasses him. Kindly don't."

He giggles.

"He may be experiencing singleminded zeal, you see. 'S a thing."

"What previous examples have you witnessed?"

"Oh, he does it on and off. Phases in and out of it with the scoots. Became a wizard very young. That sort of thing."

"How much younger than usual did he become a wizard?"

"Usually it's adults who pick it up. He went to a kids' academy, just barely old enough for them, and did all ten tiers in three years and a bit, still too young to start at nearly all the schools there are."

"I think I might like this person."

"Maybe. I can recommend you to him when the usefulness of his zeal has expired."

"Sure. It's not like I don't have time."

"What do you do all - night, I guess - anyway, when you're not talking to stranded dragons?"

"Not much. It's a problem."

"Is there nothing to do here or are you just a dull sort of fellow?"

"The first thing."

"Ah, man. I could have landed anywhere - I'm assuming, since I don't see what recommends this particular graveyard in the eyes of snake monsters - and I landed someplace with no nightlife."

"There's a nightlife, it just consists largely of murder, which I find unexciting."

"I find murder highly exciting in an exclusively negative way."

"Then you really aren't going to like it in Sunnydale."

"Suppose not. Anywhere else it's less murdery that I could loiter for the duration?"

"Not overwhelmingly. It's a murdery sort of world."

"Have you considered the possibility that this is, in fact, a hell dimension, which is why it comes with a convenient side door to so many more?"

"Do you really want to harass me about semantics?"

"Very likely."

Aurin is not, in fact, usually a combatant, and is not sure he is prepared to kill this thing, and has been warned that they're very flammable. He settles for growling (with smoke coming out from between his teeth dramatically) and keeping his paw on the vampire's shoulder to check sudden movement. Growwwwwl. (He's ready to shiftslip away and get back in the air at a moment's notice.)

After a half-second of further staring, the vampire also flees, in a different direction from the meal.

Buildings. Streets. Graveyards. So many graveyards.

Yes! Yes it is.

And there is Sherlock, standing by his crypt.

Aurin lands on a gravestone. He hopes that isn't a local faux pas or anything; he isn't sure Sherlock would tell him if it was. "I found nightlife. Both regular nightlife with dancing and the kind with attempted murder. I'm going to go visit the pleasanter one after you tell me how I get under shelter for my nap later, assuming that offer's still open?"

"Yeah," he says. "I'll show you the secret entrance."

Aurin turns human, presuming that the entrance is probably optimized for the human-shaped.

And Sherlock leads him into the crypt and shows him a cleverly hidden secret entrance, which in turn leads down into a room containing: one kettle, one mug, one box of teabags, and one bed.

"How spartan."

"I am not one of the glamorous vampires."

"Are there glamorous vampires?" inquires Aurin. "Of the not-got-religion persuasion, I mean, there are vampire theatrical stars and so on at home."

"Most humans don't know that vampires exist, and we can't go out in daylight without catching fire, so vampire theatrical stars are relatively rare. But there are plenty of vampires who care more about accumulating material wealth than I do. By the way, I should probably warn you that there's about a sixty percent chance anyone hitting on you at the Bronze secretly thirsts for your blood."

"...Are you doing your best to adjust for how often you expect people to hit on me when they don't thirst for my blood?" sighs Aurin. "Man, at home if vampires hit on me I assume they also want to drink my blood occasionally but at least they keep it separate."

"Our vampires are much more the lure-you-into-an-alley sort. And they outnumber actual seekers of romance about two to one most nights."

"Well, I went and acted all heroic so at least I know vampires are reasonably likely to flee from growly dragons."

"Most of them, yes. And if they attack you anyway you can always progress to setting them on fire."

"Theoretically, yeah, I guess."

"Not keen on the idea?"

"Not really, I mean, self-defense, but still."

He shrugs. "Suit yourself. Threaten to set them on fire, then."

"Definitely more comfortably in my repertoire. Do you happen to know if the pleasanter nightlife requires a membership or a cover charge or anything that might cut into my loan?"

"Nothing along those lines. It wouldn't be nearly so convenient a hunting ground otherwise."

Aurin sighs, then says, "Thank you for showing me the entrance," and goes out and flies to the pleasanter nightlife.

It's a club. There's music. There's drinks. There's dancing. There's young adult humans. No one seems to be overtly luring anyone else into any alleys, but maybe they've learned to be subtle about it.

Aurin does not buy any drinks - he doubts, somehow, that they have redreed wine, and he's not going to burn through his limited currency just for flavor. He gets water and dances with the young adult humans, trying to tire himself out to the point that napping will appeal.

Conversation is limited by the noise, but some of the young adult humans give him appreciative looks. It is unclear whether they are appreciating his value as an attractive boy or as a snack.

Well. He's going to be optimistic. Although he can't exactly take any girls back to the spartan little crypt, now, can he ("welcome to my recent acquaintance's crypt, he's not here because he's nocturnal so get cozy, look, the crypt contains like four objects") so unless somebody preemptively offers her place he'll probably skip the usual results of evenings like this.

Eh, he's probably going to have to resign himself to not getting laid tonight, and everybody he interacts with is another snippet of data about local culture. He will flirt back at the boy a little.

Whatever else he wants, the flirty boy does prove to want to make out with Aurin in some fresh air!

Oh, okay. Fun.

"...what the fuck?" says the flirty boy with fangs.

"That is not how you treat somebody who makes out with you!" snaps Aurin. "Bad vampire, no dinner. Shoo." And on shoo the smoke becomes a teeny bit of fire. Not enough to catch on anything.

Aurin puts his fangs away. "I have heard a rumor that there are relatively easy ways to shoplift animal blood," he remarks. "You could also try asking for small quantities. This works wonders for some vampire populations' social reputations."

"I mean, yeah, sure, some of us even get the humans to pay us for it, but I dunno, that place is so depressing."

"Haven't heard of the business model."

"No? I mean, getting bit by a vampire can totally be worth paying for," he says.

"Look, I'm from another dimension and where I'm from vampires are monochrome, highly religious ethical parasites who are forbidden from involving money in their dinners and from assaulting innocent dragons in alleys, catch me up here."

"Okay, sure," he says. "Around here vampires are soulless undead ex-humans who assault people in alleys a lot. And most of the time we don't bother, but we can make the biting thing a positive experience."

"Well, that's arguably better than the ones at home manage, they just leave numb spots."

"Way better than numb spots. The kind of thing people will go to depressing little blood brothels to pay for."

"No market for an opulent upscale version? A backwards corner café with its own cat?"

He shrugs. "Maybe in L.A. or something. Not around here, though. You may have noticed we only have the one club."

"I did notice that."

Flirty Vampire shrugs. "So anyway. If I ask nicely can I drink your blood?"

"I fed somebody who asked nicely a week and a half ago and need to wait another week and a half, and that's if you stick you restrained little swallows of the sort I'm accustomed to. Well, in this form. And I doubt somewhat you can bite through my scales."

"I wouldn't be so sure. Vampires can bite pretty hard."

"I was thinking of prying a couple off anyway," (and Mial isn't being particularly prompt about the scales he was going to deliver) "which might be more comfortable than puncturing them regardless. What kind of pleasant are we talking here, when I get home am I going to be laid up for a month in Sainted Roses spiraling down from an exotic addiction?"

"Nah. I made the 'blood brothel' comparison for a reason."

Aurin considers this. "Eh, all right," he shrugs presently, and he shifts, winces, pries a couple scales off from near the inside of his left foreleg's elbow, tosses them into the air, shifts, catches them, shifts back, and extends the limb.

Aurin purrs.

Isn't this a nice pleasant positive-sum interaction with no fire or assault? It is. Purrrrrrr.

Aurin shifts back rather than let the wound drip additional blood. He pockets the scales he's holding. "Very nice," he purrs.

Flirty Vampire grins at him.

"If I were," says Aurin, "actually the sort of person who's supposed to go around reforming vampires I'd probably have a speech prepared but in fact I just want to make out some more."

"Sounds good to me."

So they do!

It's pretty great!

When he wakes up, Sherlock is sitting in the corner with the kettle, drinking a cup of tea! All four of his objects have practical purposes!

"Morning," yawns Aurin.

"Good morning. You encountered some nightlife, I see."

"Danced, got hit on by a vampire," yawns Aurin, "vampire things happened, apparently they can do Sexy Biting when they are too spooked to try Eight Year Prison Term In A Civilized Country Biting."

"Yes, that's true," says Sherlock.

"'S nice, worth taking off a couple scales." He makes sure they haven't fallen out of his pocket in the night. Yay, there they are. "Even if the scales weren't probably saleable. Any notions where I ought to be going for that, by the way, whenever my care package arrives?"

"I could find you several demons who'd be interested, without question. Human businesses, on the other hand, tend to operate during daylight hours, which are closed to me. But I'm sure I could point you in the right direction."

Aurin pockets the pouch, reads the note, mutters "Mial shares my opinion of your decor," and investigates his luggage. "Mm, he let Mother pick things. I s'pose that's better than trying to do it himself but he ought to have asked Finnah..."

"What did he say about my decor?"

"You should probably go buy food," says Sherlock. "The sun's up, so I'll be no help. Make a token effort to pretend to be human and you probably won't alarm anyone too badly."

The note vanishes.

"Sure. Directions? Basic purchase-making protocol? Pointers to finding somebody who'll buy the gold and silver?"

Sherlock gives him directions to a grocery store and instructions on how to turn a twenty-dollar bill into some groceries. He suggests checking the town library for information on local jewelers and similar, if any exist.

"Oh," says the person standing behind him in line, "are you from London?"

"I certainly couldn't tell you," says the person.

"Ugh," repeats Aurin. "Thank you," he says to the cashier, and pays her, and gets his change, and puts it in the kangaroo pocket of his oddly exotic shirt. He collects his paper bag.

The mystery Brit proceeds to buy his groceries.

Aurin departs the store, finds a place to sit, and assembles himself a sandwich with the sausage and a roll. Then he eats his banana. The rest of it can wait. He nips into a secluded location to pick up the entire shebang as an eagle and tuck it so he doesn't have to carry his paper bag. He starts hunting for a place that will buy his gold. He finds a place that says WE BUY GOLD in large letters but they won't take the silver and the price seems suspiciously low compared to what twenty dollars would get him at the grocery store, so he notes its location in case he's in a hurry and moves on. Eventually he stops in a park to people-watch and give his feet a break.

It's a girl! She's pretty, so Aurin smiles at her and waves.

She waves back, and meanders in his direction.

Yay.

"Hi."

"Hi! My name's Aurin, what's yours?"

"Elizabeth, pick a nickname."

"That works too."

"So what are you up to?"

"A walk in the park. You?"

"People-watching. Taking a break from trying to find a decent currency exchange. It's a nice day for a walk."