She swoops over the auditorium and comes to a gentle landing halfway up the park slope. It doesn't seem to be quite time yet, so she lays in the grass and stares at the sky, thinking.

Friendly Amentans in the park say hi and welcome her to their planet and city!

She says hi back, a little vacantly.

(She's in a little bit of a mood.)

...Does anybody here know how pumps work? Maybe they could think about it while she listens. She was curious earlier and hasn't had a chance to find out.

...this purple knows how pumps work, sure?

Draak barely have any of some kinds of technology and this Draak has not personally studied much of what they do have! Pumps are interesting. So is almost everything else. And she can't actually read Tapap, let alone text as tiny as a pocket everything shows, so she has to ask questions when she's curious.

The purple will explain pumps as the theater fills up.

Fascinating. She stays there learning about pumps as long as this purple will indulge her, coming out of her bad mood and occasionally checking for the spirit-signature of her helpful chaperone yellow in the Song. (Mahkemiken always seems to know when things should happen, and River doesn't, so she's assuming she will find her and tell her when to go start.)

Mahkemiken is over there, and does eventually walk over and say, Your start time's in ten minutes, will that be okay?

Sure.

She strolls up to the edge of the theater and considers how trapped she's likely to feel in the center of it. The lack of roof helps a lot. The many, many people present doesn't but she's not about to back out!

How big is the spot in the center? Big enough to move around a bit?

Yup, she can pace around a fair amount.

Then she will go there and curl up in the center as if sleeping and remark to Mahkemiken about possibly getting some props, next time, and wait for the first song to start.

The theater has a staff green come on and introduce her, and then the green goes away and the music pipes out of the speakers hidden in the stage.

Ooooh! These are much better at making music than pocket everythings! She was a little worried.

She keeps the excitement hidden, and sends out a feeling of deep darkness, deep stillness, deep calm, while the first song slowly picks up... Snow and frost around a cave entrance melting and running away, and grass creeping in... And then uncurls and stretches on the stage while Singing about this young Draak, named Stream, and how her hibernation is over and she can go out and see the world again! 

(She scans the audience and tries to see if the most distant seats are getting everything.)

They're leaning forward but seem to be engaged with the performance!

Good, then she can continue! She has to tell the story as about some other Draak, as a-thing-that-could-have-happened, at first. It breaks the immersion a little bit.

The story she told Mahkemiken earlier pours out of her mostly unaltered, a multimedia telepathic movie that touches every sense River can make it touch, accompanied by the music and her onstage dance, with only occasional pauses. Her performance doesn't exactly line up with the songs either, at first. She keeps finishing ideas too quickly, then needing to fill the time with random, wordless imagery. That's hopefully alright - the story has a pretty high ratio of wordless lush sensory detail to actual content already.

The protagonist Stream has a wonderful time meeting all manner of animals and musing on how the rabbit's story is the exact opposite of the fox's, how an insect is simple and blind to the larger world uncomprehending of the titan hovering above it, how a tree wouldn't notice the tiny dramas that play out around its roots, instead paying attention to the warmth of sunlight and the quenching rain.

Stream is confused by everything from clothes to fingers to smiling to speech when the purple-haired Amentan visitor is spotted and cautiously watched. His face is indistinct, and everything about him seems slightly distorted and strange. (She was possibly aiming for humor in this section, but seems to have missed the mark.) But his tools! His boat! She has to figure out what's going on, perhaps even make friends...? If only he hadn't left so quickly, the Draak and the stranger might have learned something from each other...

She really gets into it after that. The sense of unreality, of this-is-a-story, disappears and she is Stream, facing all these challenges, venturing across the dry desert and hoping for water, frantically trying to solve Pebble-Counter's gemstone riddle, defeating the brash Flare in a fight by cunningly tripping him up... (She might scratch the stage a little bit flailing around during the more dramatic bits.)

She misses the start of the next song, fear of Burning Eye knocking her out of that flow state. She keeps going, though the telepathy during the last song before intermission is jerkier and less coherent than the rest. Stream is trapped and disconsolate (and River wishes she had a real cage to lower over the stage) and wow she really needs her break, she's almost panting.

Everyone bursts into applause as the music quiets.

Good! Thrilling! Excitement and cheer and appreciation from hundreds of minds fills the entire area in the Song, now that she's silent in it. She stands and absorbs it for a little while, trying not to think.

A great success! Except... For a while there she was almost Lying. She wasn't actually trying to deceive anyone, it was a story, but still - she was projecting something made-up as it was completely true.

...Mahkemiken, can you get me some water? ...Also, did you notice anything about the middle part? After seeing the purple, until the last song.

It got more immersive around then? Mahkemiken says, running to grab a bottle of water off a vendor with a cart.

Yes. It did. She 'sounds' unhappy about this.

- I think that's a good thing?

Not really. It means I could lie.

I don't think anyone in the audience thinks you're telling a true story. Water bottle.

-Huh, these are really light. This is almost all water.

She gently grabs it in her front teeth and slowly tilts her head up to drink.

No, that wasn't lying, but I started to believe I was Stream for a while. So I could lie about something if I really wanted to. And that's awful and dangerous.

...I'm not sure how to help you with that. Amentans can lie and it's not the end of the world.

No Draak can lie for long. Every Draak thinks that. If you do lie, you slip up eventually, and it's one of the worst crimes. It's unfair and just wrong. And I didn't mean to but it happened anyway.

Whuf.

I guess it's not your problem. It's mine.