...He should be under the blanket, that'll be more comfortable. Mhalir fixes it for him, and then crawls in next to him. 

It's not really what he was expecting but it seems - all right?

Carissa feels like there was a correct thing to do there and she didn't know what it is. But maybe this isn't a bad thing to do.

Mhalir snuggles up with Ma'ar. He misses snuggling with, well, someone who doesn't share a body with him. That was a nice thing in Nirvana. 

Detect Thoughts has worn off, but Ma'ar makes a soft sound that probably indicates he appreciates this. 

They go to sleep. 

They wake up sooner on account of the ring of sustenance. She prepares Teleport and still finds that exhausting and goes back to sleep. Sorry, she thinks at Mhalir. Gets easier with practice.

Maybe they can get her a better source of magic to use, he thinks. 

Even after napping again for another few hours, they're still awake before Ma'ar. It's possible that he hasn't had enough sleep in a while. 

Wars will do that. She prepares a bunch of nonlethal stuff for sparring and then reads a book about teleportation accidents and how to not have them happen to you.

Nobody interrupts them, even though it's now properly Velgarth-local morning and Mhalir's staff who do not have Rings of Sustenance are now up, and presumably there are messages for Ma'ar coming in on the communicator. 

Ma'ar sleeps nearly ten hours and eventually stretches and rolls over. "Morning. I - probably should return to Predain for the day. Do you have more meetings with Urtho?" 

"I do not think he has asked for us. I suppose we could contact him, but I am inclined to give him some time to focus on his political responsibilities, much as he may prefer to ignore them, rather than occupy his attention with exciting magic." 

"Do you want us to come back with you and be powerful aliens at your side of the politics?"

He seems a bit surprised, blinks at her, then smiles. "Yes, I think that would help." 

It seems less fun than reading a magic book all day but obviously way more important.

Ma'ar makes arrangements via the comms, and then they can take the shuttle down to the capital of Predain!

Some officials have come out to meet them. They are very polite, and visibly nervous, and bow to Carissa and tell her it's an honour to meet her. 

Oh see this is completely legible! She likes Predain much better than Tantara already; she suspects that people will make sense, here. She tells them that their world is lovely and its mages will be the envy of Golarion, once trade routes are established. She reads their minds once they turn their backs.

One of them is thinking that she's hot, and wondering how the aliens chose their diplomatic representatives - or the bodies their leaders wear? Ma'ar explained it but he's a bit unclear on details - based on attractiveness, it'd be pretty reasonable to. Also the shuttle coming down and un-cloaking fifty yards up was a very good dramatic entrance, he wonders if they're doing that on purpose. He doubts she means it that their world is lovely, given that hers has spaceships, but he can believe it about the mages. Especially Ma'ar's mages - fine, Urtho can put on a shiny display too... (He has some national pride and soreness about Urtho and everyone thinking he's so great.) 

Another of them is musing on how trade routes would even work in space, do spaceships need to establish shipping lanes or is space, heh, spacious enough that it doesn't even matter... He wonders how Ma'ar got the aliens on his side and whether it involved compulsions. Probably not, they've got magic, seems too risky they'd detect it which makes it stupid and Ma'ar is never stupid.

Carissa immediately decides she likes all of these people immensely. She never really asked why Mhalir chose her in the beginning, and now finds herself idly curious.

Ma'ar ushers them toward a meeting with the King's top advisors; they'll meet with the King himself afterward, over supper. 

Mhalir is trying to remember! ...He thinks they went back and forth a lot on whether to try kidnapping her or another of the wizards just returning from the Worldwound; he liked her as a candidate because she was younger than most third-circle wizards, which probably meant she was unusually clever and ambitious, but he worried this would make kidnapping her a riskier affair. In the end he thinks it's the fact that her living quarters with her parents were less well-protected that decided it for them? And then, of course, he knew much more about her, and - had a sense, already, that they were people who could work together even from the fairly hostile starting point of his having kidnapped her, because she would do what was in her own interests and he could promise her SO much spellsilver, and she was a wizard and clever and both of those things made her a more appealing replacement for Alloran than his other prospects. 

She remembers that part. She remembers being scared, and waiting and waiting for punishments he didn't seem to consider it worthwhile to deliver, and buying all the expensive things she could think of....

<I wanted you to be less scared. I - did not know how to convey that I in fact preferred to work cooperatively - it is not actually fun sharing a brain and body with someone who is afraid of me, and of course you are of far greater value as an ally than - as a puppet whose body I wear.> 

They sit down in a meeting-room and are offered tea. Ma'ar makes introductions. His body language is calm, his face nearly impossible to read; here, it seems to make people intimidated by him, trying to guess what he's thinking and who he feels favourable toward.

Based on her mindreading, they - it's not exactly that they trust him, trust was hard to come by in Predain before and a country can only change so much in fifteen years even with copious use of mind-control - but they, in general, expect him to win. He has a proven track record of being right about things, and he has the King's favour. People are deferent with him. 

It makes sense to her. She's - proud of Ma'ar, for it, in a weird way, he is showing skill at something she can actually recognize now and it's nice. 

She can explain how Golarion works and how travel between worlds works, though it's possible that a sufficiently powerful caster, like Aroden, could just do a Gate now that this place is known interesting.