You're cute. I take butterflies, no cash.

The lizard thing scampers off of Imrainai's head and over to Mahan. He places one very small foot on Mahan's hand and pauses, as though asking permission.

"Hi, funny thing!" he says in Hari.

This doesn't seem hostile, in any case. The lizard thing scampers up his arm and curls up on Mahan's head.

Not sure how to help this death mage, Spite expresses, in Hari. The words are clearly understandable and are also clearly not coming from anywhere else in the room.

What!

Okay.

What!!

You're telepathic! What! How!

Telepathic is what?

Telepathic is my thoughts, Mahan taps his head and points at Spite, in your head! Oh, now I can just show you what I wanted to draw!

He pictures tub of water. Alive cholera, he carefully thinks the Kaltish words. He pictures himself frowning at it for a minute. Not alive cholera. He pictures people drinking. He pictures the streets he walked through, but without lots of sick people.

I know this works! This is Har. He pictures Mar Geru in all its patchwork homeyness and grandeur, streets full of glossy-furred cat-people and tiny cute things and weird almost-humans with clear skin who walk like they're in no pain. No one is sick in the picture he shows Spite. You need a death mage to kill the diseases in your water! Or you can boil it! He pictures boiling water, people drinking it afterward, people not getting sick. And wash with soap! He pictures washing his hands with soap. Count yourself lucky I don't think it's worth trying to explain the fecal-oral disease transmission route without a shared language, you wouldn't like hearing it anyway.

You understand, right?

Well that sure is a thing. Whole lot of things, actually.

Spite understand. Tomorrow - an image of the sun rising, and of Mahan in front of the fountains - Mahan kill diseases. Later - an image of Rainfold with no sick people. An image of Mahan entering an extraordinarily tall building, speaking to the people there, gesturing at fountains. College will pay Mahan for information, he expresses, in Kaltish, over the image of the people in the building offering Mahan coins. Mahan yes?

Mahan yes!

Good! he thinks, before remembering that Mahan may not actually have the Kaltish word for 'good' yet. But eh, what the heck, if he repeats words like that then probably Mahan will pick them up from context. Thank you, Mahan. Tomorrow kill diseases. Spite sleep now.

He climbs off of Mahan's head and back to Imrainai. OK. He thinks the cholera is in the water and that he can kill it with his magic. He thinks boiling the water works, too, you should test it on your patients or something. I told him that if he could demonstrate a proof of concept and then take the idea to the College of Rainfold that they'd be willing to pay him for an explanation and a demonstration. He's a remarkably mercenary person but I guess if he fixes the water supply he'll've earned it. Also he claims he's from a frankly ridiculous place with a bunch of cat people and people with clear skin, but honestly I think we should put figuring that out on hold until he's solved cholera.

Makes sense. Or, uh, I guess we'll see if it makes sense. I will find you some butterflies. Somehow. But nice job.

"Spite and Imrainai sleep now. Mahan sleep now? Cholera tomorrow."

It's still been less than twelve hours since he woke up but whatever, gotta figure out the new time zone eventually. Sigh. "Mahan sleep now."

She clears the dishes away and then leads him upstairs. He really should go to stay with the men's branch of her order, but their complex is over a mile away and it's late and he's a healer and he's from very far away and he might not be able to speak to anyone there.

She leads him to a small room with a bed, a dresser, a shuttered window, and a chamber pot. These are pretty much its only features. She gestures at the room. "Room. Later, Mahan paid, Mahan will sleep in Mahan's room. Now, Mahan will sleep here."

It takes him a minute to figure out what the chamber pot is for and then he's very annoyed that he'll have to reinvent plumbing. Don't they have plumbing. Isn't that what the fountains are. Maybe they... like having their own waste around? Maybe it's a cultural thing?

He tries to ask Spite where to dump it when it's full. He's sort of expecting that they just dump them in the street at this point.

Spite climbs up on his head and gets the question. 

He sends the image of Mahan dumping the chamber pot in the street, and then of Peth frowning. No. Very rude. He sends the image of a man with a cart coming to take the waste to the sea, at the mouth of the river that flows through the city. Better.

"This is why your water makes everyone sick," he mutters in Hari. "Good, thank you, Spite," he says in Kaltish. "Good, thank you, Imrainai."

And now he'll just. Lie awake trying to be tired this early. What a lovely world.

Thank you, Mahan. Spite will sleep here. It's not a question, he still doesn't actually trust the guy to stay out of trouble on his own.

He climbs off of Mahan and curls up on the dresser, where he sleeps.

She closes the door and leaves them alone. Annnnd now that she's given her room away she'll just, uh, find somewhere else to sleep. 

She heads back to the other building and replaces the chamber pots there with clean ones. She empties the full ones into the larger barrels that will be hauled to the sea in the morning. She cleans the dirty ones off with stagnant water, and then, struck with inspiration, boils the water, in case that'll actually make them cleaner somehow. While she waits, she sits with the patients who can't sleep, sometimes praying with them or adjusting their blankets in an attempt to make them more comfortable. One of her patients seems to have died since she was here last, so she calls another nurse to help her carry the body out to the cart in another part of the complex. All of the people with blood pox are feeling better now, though, so she sends them to a different room and tells them that they are welcome to go home in the morning. Mahan must have done something for them, she certainly doesn't have the power to cure it that effectively.

There are still people who need things when she gives up and heads upstairs again, and the nurses still on duty can't realistically attend to them all. There will always be people who need things, and if she never ignored them then she would die down here, in this room, and would be unable to help any others.

She knocks on the door to a friend's room and explains that she's given her own away for the night. Her friend says that she is welcome to sleep on the floor, and so she sleeps.

They don't even have private places to sleep? Or maybe they just don't want to give Mahan any privacy. Wow. That goes on the list of ongoing humanitarian disasters to fix, right after waterborne disease and before indoor plumbing.

He lies awake being very still and cataloging the magic he's seen and the things they should be doing with magic but aren't. They do have illusion magic, they also have telepathy and maybe other kinds of magic that don't exist in Har, their knowledge magic seems to make people sick when they use it too long, they seem not to have death magic at all and if they have defense or sun magic he's guessing it's a lot rarer than it is at home.

He falls asleep several hours later. Being watched. While he sleeps.

Spite, being asleep, is honestly not doing very much watching. When he wakes up with the sunrise, he stretches and yawns and scurries out the window to look for butterflies. He doesn't find any. He does find some regular flies to eat, but they aren't very magical, so they don't make him feel tremendously better. After several hours he returns to see if Mahan has woken up.

Mahan wakes up a little late but not as late as he fell asleep. Having slept on it he feels better about everything. It's an adventure! In a terrible world he needs to fix before he can be comfortable. Maybe there'll be places to conquer or something.

By the time spite gets back he's just trying to figure out where he's supposed to go now.

Oh good. He goes in a different window and fetches Imrainai.

Then Imrainai will knock on Mahan's door.

"Imrainai! Good! Diseases now?"

- she was going to offer him food first, actually, but all right, if he's that eager to fix the water supply.

"Yes, kill diseases in water now? And then food later?"

"Yes, and then food later." He's not actually sure how to ask them to show him to all the fountains but presumably they can figure out that they need to do that. He hopes.