An elderly man with a cheerful grin and a ladle — who would click well with someone who enjoys shaggy dog stories — waves her in and goes about ascertaining her soup and bread preferences.

"I'm not sure, what would you recommend?"

He considers her with a surprising intensity.

"Beef and onion stew in a rye bowl," he concludes with a decisive nod. "That'll be 145 resh."

"I'm never wrong about soup," he explains, tapping his nose. "You'll like it."

"Sounds good." She hands over the needed payment. She looks around, does it look like she should wait to be seated or just claim a seat. If it's not clear she can just ask.

The restaurant has half-indoor, half-outdoor seating, with the side of the building open to let the fresh breeze in (and the smell of the soup out, the better to attract passers by). It seems to be the sort of place where she can claim a seat.

She'll sit in the outdoor seating area then.

Her soup is lighter than the typical stew, but full of rich flavor with a hint of spice. The people passing by exhibit the same mix of styles, sizes, and species that she's seen elsewhere on Terrance's back — although now there is an added dimension to watching them, because she keeps getting impressions about who would make good friends with whom.

Between finding the restaurant, ordering, and savoring her soup, it has soon been almost a full hour.

A black, crystalline orb drops out of the sky, arresting it's motion about a foot above her table. People in the street startle, stop, and stare.

The orb unfolds into a shallow bowl containing several letters and a book. It makes her aware that its next stop is Dragon Mountain, after which it will travel to the Great Market, before returning to Kingsport. Total travel time will be just over a day. None of the letters are addressed to her.

Huh, some sort of mail carrier. She doesn't actually have anyone she knows in those places to send a letter to and she's not going to super rude and open other people's mail. Can she just send it on its way?

The orb obediently folds back up, and then vanishes back into the sky with a rushing of air.

A young boy (who enjoys getting enthusiastic with people about knights) hesitantly steps forward out of the watching crowd.

"What was that?"

"It's for sending mail but none of the letters were for me and I didn't have a letter to send."

The adults in the crowd say things like "... like a scrap of darkness ..." and "... haven't heard of it ..." and "... wasn't alive, but it was fast ...".

The young boy, on the other hand, perks up.

"That's really cool! I can't be a mailcarrier because I'm going to be a knight, but maybe I could be a mail-knight if mailcarriers can zoom like that! Imagine if you could fly like that with a sword."

This has proven a bit more dramatic than she was expecting. But she smiles at the kid. "It was cool wasn't it. I'm not sure if people can learn to move that fast. You might need to be a wizard for that and I'm not sure if wizards also work as knights."

The boy looks thoughtful.

"I don't think so? Maybe they just don't mention that part."

With the spectacle having gone, the people on the street mostly resume their journeys to their various destinations.

"Do you have a particular knight that you want to be like?"

"Sir Percival! He's so strong that his sword is longer than a river is wide, and he can cut the tops off of hilltops by spinning around," the boy informs her, spinning in a demonstrative circle.

Whether this is fantasy story, propaganda, or truth is not particularly clear.

"Wow, that's so long for a sword! And cutting through rock must take a lot of strength."

The boy nods.

"That's why I help Papa with loading and unloading," he explains seriously. "Even though there are lots of people on the ropes it's still heavy, but Papa says if I keep helping then I'll get stronger."

"He's right about that."

When no more cool magic or questions about knights seem to be in evidence, the boy nods goodbye, and runs away into the crowd in the way of over excitable children everywhere.

The background music slips into a calm, background idyll sort of tune. A group of friends order a sampling platter of soups in bread rolls and seat themselves a few tables over.

More that's the immediate ruckus is over she turns most of her attention to appreciating this lovely soup. In the corner of her mind though she's thinking about the magical mail flyer. Where should she go to find out more. A part of her thinks the obvious answer is the library but she's not sure that it'll work given the lack of a card catalogue. The other option that occurs to her is trying to talk to Terrance. A couple people have implied that's possible.

So after she finishes her soup she heads on the direction of his head to see how feasible that actually is.

At the headward end of the city, things narrow to a point. At the nape of Terrance's neck, on the edge of his shell, a jutting wooden walkway turns into a wide, gently swaying rope bridge. The bridge follows the curve of his neck like the chain on an elderly woman's glasses up to a small pagoda perched on his head like a hat.

A woman with a fancy hat of her own leans against the railing of the walkway with a book. Beside her, a small hand-gate closes the bridge itself off from the general pedestrian traffic. Her general pose suggests a public servant with a terribly boring job, who is at least professional about it.

She'll walk up to the woman. "Hello there, I have a question about a wizard thing and I'm guessing that Terrance is one of the most likely people in the city to know about wizard things."

She blinks and straightens up, closing her book.

"Ah! Well you're certainly welcome to go ask. The council session finished up a few minutes ago, so I believe he's free."

She pulls a pocket abacus from her belt, and slides a bead over before lifting the gate.

"If he's in another meeting, please wait your turn. Also remember that he cannot see you, because he can't see the top of his own head, so you'll need to make your presence known audibly. And please return promptly once your business with him is done — he can carry a lot of weight, but he doesn't like people loitering on his head."

"Thanks for the pointers. I don't know if I would have realized those."

She'll go through the gate and towards the pagoda.