"...huh."

" - he's lying. If that wasn't clear."

"Oh, now we don't approve of lying."

"I figured, just momentarily I entertained the scenario and it's the exact opposite of me."

"You learn words reading them?"

"Well, yes, but also I write things down to think about them."

"I'd worry about someone spying on me."

"Yeah, I worry about that too. I have a cipher and in extreme cases secret page."

And the flying carpet returns to the city.

"You're sticking around, right?"

"Sure, if you want me along."

"I want you along because my friends are lawful humorless stick-in-the-muds. Or at least one of those things."

"We'd be grateful for your help, if you're interested."

"I'm in. When do we go and how long should I pack for?"

"Once we've done the scrying we'll have a better guess about where, but it'll probably be within a hundred miles of here. I'd pack for a month."

"Next time I level I can shoulder some of the scrying. I'm coming up on it, I think."

"Oh good," he says fervently.

"If it's as bad as you say maybe she won't want to."

"Some people don't mind it."

"It doesn't sound that bad. Crystal ball's a better deal but the upfront cost is nuts."

"I just dislike concentrating for an hour. Used to lose the spell all the time by getting distracted. That doesn't happen anymore but it gave me a bad introduction."

"This doesn't give you a spell prep problem? It took me a while to get used to preparing spells."

"Eh, that's more interesting."

"I used to think I'd just go straight sorcerer, I think I was imagining a slightly more narratively surprising brand of adventure than one finds in reality and expected to run into a lot of sudden changes of plans."

"Huh. Most sorcerers do, I suppose once you get used to not needing to prepare spells it's more annoying than it seems to me?"