She wasn't expecting this either! The tear was between her and some very tasty-looking silverplums and now she is in the wrong universe and has no silverplums. She feels around behind her with one bare foot but doesn't feel the telltale temperature differential - not a gate she can just go through the other way.

"- hello."

"Hello to you too. What brings you here?"

"Accident. Where am I?"

"My house. Between Chequy Tower and the human lands."

"...the human lands?" Is the world not infested the whole of it over?

"I am not sure how much I need to back up and explain. You know what a human is?"

"I've heard of them."

"Well, there are places where they live by themselves and don't have to put up with us. And you can get there by crossing these woods."

"What kind are you?" He looks human but perhaps he's merely had a disfiguring accident.

"A fae but I do get asked that a lot." He shrugs self-consciously.

"You look a lot like a mortal, why is that?"

He hesitates slightly as he reminds himself that she is clearly lost and foreign and might have a very different idea of which questions are rude. "I started out as a changeling and I guess I didn't mind it. I don't know, why do you look like a plant?"

"I'm a leaflet."

"I've never heard of a leaflet."

"We're not especially common."

"Also I've never heard of a categorization scheme that 'leaflet' would fit comfortably into."

"...it's a kind of fairy? Like - glowgolds." He might be a glowgold, they do changelings.

"I have never heard of a glowgold, either. Is this... how you avoid names, where you're from?"

"No? We just use nicknames."

"...How do you make that work?"

"...I'm not sure what's confusing about it - what do people call you?"

"'My younger sister's friend who's a changeling', 'my coworker who likes soap operas', 'the guy who lives by the woods and grows cherry-plums'..."

"...and you can't decide that you're going to tell everyone to call you Cherryplum or what have you because..."

"Then my name would be Cherryplum, and I'd be telling people my name?"

"- I see. Well, I guess calling me 'the leaflet' will do."

"That's probably fine but you'd be safer adding an adjective if you're going to go around talking to people who've never met another leaflet before. But if this is new to you what do you do?"

"We use nicknames, like I said. It works fine where I'm from."

"...Maybe I should be asking where you're from."

"Qu- an autumn afternoon forest."

"An autumn afternoon forest. Does it... become an autumn nighttime forest and then an autumn morning forest?"

"Once in a while it'll do a daycycle, yes."

"...I am not even sure what kind of solar system could have such a planet."

"It isn't a planet."

"I have never heard of wherever you're from."

"I've heard of the mortal world but not of your kind of fairy."

"Well, how about this. I'll show you a map and tell you about the locals and you can tell me about your magic not-planet and how leaflets work. Sound good?"

"Sounds good."

"Well, so you're closest to Chequy Tower, which has open borders with most other nearby fae settlements and loves tourists. If you're just visiting, all they ask is that you not steal anything or break anything or try to kidnap anyone or defraud anyone. If you buy property there or stay more than a year and a day, you will have to pay taxes and follow some additional laws. And... I've got a big map inside if you feel safe coming in?"

"Shouldn't I?"

"Uh, I'm not going to hurt you and there's no real reason I would but in some places it's conventional to be wary of strangers' houses and territories and if you're in one of those places it's also conventional not to invite people in, and this isn't one of those places but I don't know what to expect from you."

She tries to make an unobtrusive little fairylight, somewhere beyond him so she can see it and he can't.

This works as normal.

"I'll come in."

In the room immediately inside there's a wooden table, a vase with flowers, a television set, some cabinets, and a big poster on one wall displaying a regional map, with Chequy Tower near the north edge, with settlements shown west and south of it. The whole east edge of the map shows a forest and arrows pointing off the poster labeled "to Vanera" and "to Sarvon".

He has things to say about the various fae settlements shown. "This one's nice, they've got a garden theme going on and sometimes they rent the place as a setting for movies, but the laws are pretty draconian and I wouldn't want to live there. This one is weird people with human pets or something, a friend of my cousin lives there. This one's really big, thousands of fae, amazing library, famous university, they have this system where you have to pay to visit but they'll pay you back if you don't break any laws while you're there. This one is honestly kind of terrifying..."

"Human pets," she remarks neutrally in case that elicits more detail.

"It's not my thing at all so I don't know. I hope they're well-treated but then I would hope that, wouldn't I." He almost doesn't sound bitter. Almost.

"Would you particularly? Is that to do with being a changeling?"

"People say so, anyway. I don't know. I think some people come out of it hating them and I kind of do too so maybe that's just a stereotype. But there are some things you can do in a human lifetime and it seems like a waste if they just spend decades being miserable and then die."

Nod nod. "What's terrifying about the terrifying one?"

"Really concerning legal system, mostly. Plus not very much actual concern for... the things I personally think a legal system is for. So, you could easily end up spending entire centuries in a dungeon, but I believe they actually had a murder there once."

"- I'm not sure I follow -"

"Uh, so you'd expect a functioning legal system to punish people enough to deter crimes, and you'd expect there to be a tradeoff between false convictions and false acquittals, so if there's lots of punishment and it's very easy to end up convicted, then you'd expect that at least you could expect there wouldn't be much crime there. And - of course it's not just that they had a murder once, it's other things, but the murder is a really egregious example, right? Or maybe your kind of people aren't as hard to kill."

"We're... hard to kill."

"Then you see how it'd be rare and, you could say, impressive, for a place to be so dangerous someone died of it."

"And the centuries in a dungeon would be..."

"...Really unpleasant? I don't know, maybe they sell your kidneys to the humans a few times each, I haven't been there and I really hope I never go."

"- what do humans want with kidneys?"

"Not sure. I think it's good for their health somehow. We could look it up."

"I suppose. What do you pay in to visit the one that wants collateral?"

"Uh, I think they can accept a lot of local currencies, and it comes out to about five thousand crowns."

"Does one need money for a lot of things around here?"

"Yeah, lots."

"- like what?"

"You usually use it to pay taxes or pay your employees or buy a house or really most things that involve more than one person on either end of the transaction. Stores like cash because then every employee can charge the same amount of it instead of them all having to be able to appraise everything someone might want to trade."

"- huh. Does... everyone need to pay taxes?"

"Most people do, yeah. It's probably possible to avoid it forever if you're trying for that at the expense of everything else."

"I don't have any money on me."

"Traditionally what people do about that is get a job, which I guess is hard with no references. What are your skills?"

"Sorcery."

Blink blink. "...You can do that professionally?"

"I've never tried to do it professionally."

"I wouldn't expect it to work but you might be different."

"What wouldn't you expect to work about it?"

"You'd try to fix chestnut blight and the trees would stop having that and mysteriously fall over or turn into walnut trees or maybe end up perfectly healthy and grow three percent faster and produce extra nuts, but you'd never be able to quite tell why it went either way."

"I've... never had that problem before, what causes it?"

"I mean, it depends on what level of cause you want, it's the sort of thing that happens when you promise something too specific or try to watch too carefully or try to show off, but I don't know the mechanism."

"I'm not actually sure what you're talking about."

"Uh... hm. You know how, when you do things that don't involve magic, if you're very careful to do exactly the same thing every time you get the same results?"

"Yes..."

"And with magic, it's not quite like that, and it's less like that the closer you watch it. At least in my experience."

"That... is not my experience."

"It might be different for your kind or it might be different in... afternoon autumn forests."

...she makes a little fairylight, this time where he can see.

He is mildly surprised by this.

"Flashy. Is that how you expected it to look?"

"Yes... they generally are, but I guess I don't know if they always will be around here."

"It might be that you'll be able to do really precise magic and people will pay you hundreds of crowns and you'll live like a king."

"For lights? Or would I need to do other things?"

"Probably other things. The chestnut blight example is real, it's a big problem in some places."

"I guess I could try to fix a blighted chestnut."

"Probably useful. Also humans need healing sometimes, but you'd want to be careful if you're going to deal with them."

"Why's that?"

"Well, they're dangerous. Less so than one of us, individually, but if you're in their territory you'll be surrounded. And they don't like us much, at least not in most places near here. Or did you mean why do they need healing?"

"No, I know why they'd need healing. What do they tend to do about not liking us?"

"Well, I had some humans try to beat me to death once. Obviously that didn't work and all of them had other things come up pretty urgently, you know how it is, but I got a concussion and some broken ribs out of it and then one of them slit my throat before leaving."

"- I don't actually know how it is, I've never met a human."

"Hmm. If you're like us, then a lot of things go well for you. When you drop things they don't roll out of reach unless digging them out of wherever they wound up would be fun or educational or you'd find something else with them. If you're flipping a coin to decide what to do, you'll usually get good advice. And humans aren't like that. So even if they knew how to kill a fae, or had the persistence to just keep beating you up forever, something would happen to get in their way, because their luck is worse. That and they always have urgent appointments because everything is urgent with them because they're all dying. So if some humans ever do start trying to beat you up you can just wait them out."

"I see."

"They're not all like that. Just... enough of them."

"I imagine they vary, yes... I'm not sure what else I ought to be asking, hm."

"Hm. Does this look like a tech level you recognize?"

She looks around. "I haven't really lived around opportunities to buy things that could be said to have a tech level, so..."

"Oh, boy. I'm not sure where to start. Uh... the biggest thing in my lifetime has been that we've started using electricity to do almost all our manual labor for us, but actually you might want to start with the concept of agriculture or private property..."

"I know about growing plants on purpose and owning things. Just lived in a very low-density area."

"Ah, yeah. It was still like that in the country around here not too long ago. Basically in modern society there are all these clever things that turn one kind of movement into another kind - back when they were big enough for me to take a look and understand what was happening it was stuff like building up steam pressure in a closed space to push something that turns a gear that moves something and from there you get, say, vehicles that don't need to be pulled, machines that do laundry, and, uh, somehow if you do this with individual electrons you can use it to transmit information for long distances and display it in refreshable pictures made of tiny lights but I don't understand how those work."

"Wow."

"Yeah! I have to say I'm a fan."

"What would be a good way to earn enough spending money that I could go visit some of the places you mentioned? Is there a chestnut tree for me to try healing conveniently about?"

"...You know, there probably is, I know someone who manages some private woods who I can call about you. Also people usually check ads in newspapers and shop windows and so on, but that's harder than asking friends of friends."

"Why is that harder?"

"Well, your friends are a little more likely to know what you need and recommend you the right person, and people usually like helping their friends. So people would rather hire friends of friends."

"Well, I'd appreciate it if you'd call your someone."

He can do that right now if she doesn't mind waiting; he's got a phone in the other room.

She waits. Tries a little more small sorcery to make sure it works normally.

It still works normally.

After a couple minutes her changeling friend is done with the call. "No chestnuts but he has some other trees with issues and the omens seem good so he says you can come by any day between nine and five. I'll draw you a map, it's not that far."

"Thank you very much. - omens?"

"You know, if you have good luck then divination helps a lot."

"Oh, I guess that makes sense. How much will I get if I can fix the trees?"

"You'll have to talk that over with him but, for context, it's pretty normal for people who are paid by the hour to make ten to fifteen crowns an hour if they're new at something, and more when they have a couple decades of practice at it."

"...an hour?"

"...Ah. Time passes at a constant rate and an hour is a twenty-fourth the time it takes the sun to go all the way around and back to where it started."

"Yes, but why is pay per hour and not per - tree, in this case?"

"It might be per tree - in general piecework is getting less popular relative to hourly wages and I'm not totally sure why, and the last time I did any was decades of inflation ago so I don't have a useful comparison for you."

"Okay. Is it safe enough to just fly straight there?"

"I expect it should be." And he can tell her how to recognize the place and which way to fly for how far.

She thanks him and gets in the air toward the sick trees and their owner.

The sick trees and their owner can be found amid an even larger number of healthy trees.

The tree person does not look like a tree but he does look somewhat like a bunny, mostly because of his ears and the way his body hair resembles very soft fur. He doesn't seem to have wings of any kind. He's happy to see her and wants to hear about what she's planning to do, if and only if hearing about it won't make it work any less well.

"I'm going to need to look at each tree for a while, longer if they're very big, and when I'm done the ones I've seen to should be fine. It won't keep them from getting sick again, though. How much were you thinking of paying?"

"Honestly I'd been expecting you had some sort of standard rate but let's say thirty crowns?"

"Per -"

"Per tree, unless it makes more sense to go by, I don't know, area or time."

"Per tree works for me. Where do you want me to start?"

He can show her to a tree which is having problems with fungus.

She inspects it from many angles for about fifteen minutes, and then the tree heals instantly.

Then he'll show her to a bunch of others. And on the way he asks if there's anything else she can do like that.

"A few things, why?"

"I know people who would pay for this kind of thing for animals. Or to have you fix things that aren't alive, like a radio or a sofa."

"I think I can do an animal or a sofa but I'm not sure about a radio."

"You'll have business, then. And I'll let people know you're for real."

"Thanks!"

And in the mean time he can finish showing her his trees. At least, the fraction of them that need magic help. There aren't too many more at the moment.

He has cash on him, in the form of pieces of paper saying they're worth ten or twenty crowns each, to pay with.

"This is what money looks like around here?"

"There are also metal squares, but yeah, those are good in most of the northeast. They're harder to counterfeit than they look."

"All right." She collects the paper, careful not to touch him. "I need somewhere to sleep, at some point, do you have recommendations?"

"I hear good things about Chequy Lodge and there are some decent places to camp near here - for free if you don't want running water or anything, or you can pay to stay someplace nicer - really just stay near town and don't crash on someone else's property without permission."

"I'm not attached to running water. How do I tell if someplace is someone's property?"

"If it's in town, or looks really cultivated, or has a fence around it, or it has a sign saying 'private property' or 'keep out', or if there are buildings that look like someone could be using them, or if someone tells you it belongs to them."

"Okay. Assuming I find some tree somewhere none of those apply I can sleep in it?"

"Yep, absolutely."

"Thanks. - how should I find out if anyone else has a job for me to do?"

"...Advertise?"

"I've never done that before, can you explain?"

"You pay for a newspaper to mention you in the section where they do that? And you put a phone number or a street address in the ad."

"What is a phone number?"

"It's how phones recognize each other. If you don't know what one is then you don't have one to put in the ad."

"I don't have a street address either though."

"I think you should arrange a place to stay or hire someone to take calls for you or something."

"Maybe. Where's Chequy Lodge?"

He points in its general direction.

"On the far side of town, has its name on a sign out front."

She nods. "Thanks." And she flies in the indicated direction.

In the indicated direction there is eventually a town where the streets are paved with black and white stones in a checkerboard pattern, in the center of which stands a stone tower which is also black and white. At the far edge of town is a quaint wooden building, three stories tall, built around a central courtyard, with a wooden sign by the front gate that says Chequy Lodge and claims to have one or more vacancies.

The town is kind of intimidating but she lands at the lodge anyway.

In the lobby there's a desk, with a person (they could pass for human but their ears are awfully pointy and their canines awfully fangy) behind it who is just hanging up a phone. To the left of the desk there's a rack of postcards for sale. To the right, there's a collection of soft chairs and stools and a couple of tables with plates of crackers and cheese and cured meat laid out on them; there are a few people sitting around, two of whom (one with feathery wings and one who could almost pass for human in dim light) are sharing the food.

Promise steps warily into the building, looks around slowly, doesn't address anyone right away because she's not sure how to read everybody's positioning in the room and their activities as corresponding to their roles.

After a moment of that, the person at the desk smiles warmly and tries to catch her eye. "Can I help you?"

"Hi. I was recommended this place as somewhere to sleep."

They can quote her some prices for rooms of varying fanciness, starting at nine crowns a night and going as high as thirty-four.

What is fancy about the fancy ones?

Some or all of more space, additional furniture, fancy balcony, or extra decorations.

She would like a balcony (or a large window that opens is also fine for her purposes) but doesn't care about the rest of it.

The cheapest room with its own balcony can be had for eighteen crowns a night, and it's available for the next couple of weeks.

She has nothing else to shop for at the moment, she can pay for the balcony room.

Then she can have the room key, on a keychain that has the room number on it. The room number will also be written on the door, check out is at noon, breakfast is free with the room if she wants any.

This kind of fairy must be weird about food somehow but she's not sure how to ask.

She goes to sleep in her room and in the morning she takes water, purifies it, and flies back to the first person she met, they seemed friendly.

When she gets there he's just stepping out the front door.

"Hi. Can I copy your map? I stayed at Chequy Lodge and it was fine but I'd rather live in the woods long term and need to know where's a good place."

"Sure. It's a little big for the copier but we can do it in pieces."

"The copier?"

"If you want to copy it by hand you may but I have a machine that does that more precisely and pretty quickly. But it's only built to handle a paper about this big by this big in one go."

"I wasn't going to copy it by hand recreationally, I just didn't know about copying machines."

"Well, come on in, then. Why don't you help me get the map off the wall while I get the copier turned on?"

"Sure." In she goes.

He makes no attempt to betray her or kidnap her. He can even explain to her how the machine works while they get the map copied. It takes four overlapping pages.

"Want to tape these together somehow or just keep them separate?"

"Separate is fine." She's not sure she should demonstrate how she can stitch paper edges together by magic.

He wishes her luck and he has to head out pretty quick now or he'll be late.

"Thanks for your help." She goes out and looks for some unoccupied woods to live in.

Most of the unoccupied woods are unoccupied because of who their neighbors are - the ones to the east border a human country; there's a bit of a buffer (though less of one) all around the territory of the court that the changeling mentioned as keeping human pets - but out west of Chequy Tower there's a sparsely populated area dotted with small claims but still fairly open.

She will fly around there and look for a place she can make reasonably nice that nobody is using.

A little west of Chequy Tower, there's an old, grim little building, parts of the roof of which have caved in, in the middle of a yard full of weeds and tiny saplings, surrounded by most of an old wooden fence that was once painted red. And there's the area claimed by a nearly-two-foot-tall carnivorous fae who's only using half of it for actually living in and just doesn't want anyone else hunting or scaring away the game from the other half. And there's a lovely unclaimed stretch of forest by the bank of a little river that sometimes floods.

The woods to the east, between Chequy Tower and the humans, are positively full of nice places that absolutely no one seems to be using or building in at all, and that don't show much sign of frequent traffic either.

Leagues to the north there's eventually just open wilderness.

She considers the river - she could build a wall along it if she cared to - but eventually decides to go a couple minutes' flight farther off to settle in less of a flood zone. There aren't any trees as big as the one she's used to, and if she grew one to that size it still wouldn't be hers, plus it would stand out awfully - she sets about building an exterior treehouse, instead, high up in an elm.

That's out of the way enough to be undisturbed for a while, although if she's around when someone passes by in a couple of days they'll try to talk with her about her vision for how her treehouse will fit into the aesthetic of the area.

"- I had mostly just intended on building an attractive enough treehouse and out of local enough wood that I didn't imagine it would separately be a concern."

"Oh, I'm not concerned, there are plenty of valid directions you can take the aesthetics here. I'm not even close enough to clash with you anyway."

"How far out could I garden before this would be an issue?"

"Oh, well, I don't know everyone to your south and I can't promise no one's going to move in between us at some point, but I don't expect to be complaining if you don't go more than, oh, three quarters of a mile in that direction?" They point approximately northwest. "I'm a little worried that if more people than just you move in the area could get crowded enough they'd have to arrange some kind of neat transition between our aesthetics but that's probably a problem for years in the future if it happens at all."

"I don't expect to come with a whole wave of more like me, or to garden for quite that far out, so that's all right. I'm not accustomed to anyone taking such a - high-level view of the aesthetics in an area."

"...I'm sure there are benefits to doing it your way," they say dubiously, "and anyway this isn't a town or anything so you're fine."

"It's more difficult in towns?"

"Well, everyone's closer together and more of the structures are artificial. I mean, it's not strictly about the number of people, I know there are, you know... some courts... that have a lot of buildings for not a lot of people and... don't take a high-level view of the aesthetics..." This might be the face of someone who is vagueing someone in particular. "But yeah! Towns make it harder! And everyone's got their own idea of what they're going for even if they think they all agree."

"What happens if they don't even think they agree, and have very different ideas instead?"

"Well, I guess ideally you're not supposed to move in if you don't like the town's aesthetic, but if you don't have much choice I guess that's when you have to pick one and stick with it. I have heard of people going to war over who gets to pick but I think that's a myth. And I guess in some places you just have clashing decor."

"I'm glad it's not commonly warred over, at any rate."

"Probably better than the alternative. Anyway, if you ever need to coordinate with the neighborhood, such as it is, I'm just a bit of a walk over that way most of the summer."

"Is there a landmark?"

"Nothing I'd expect to be more recognizable with less description than just... the fact that there's someone there, the fact that I might have a clothesline up or a fire burning."

"Okay, understood."

They'll leave her alone, then. So will pretty much everyone, at least for the immediate future.

That suits her pretty well. She builds her house. She finds plausibly edible-looking plants and starts cultivating samples of them, generation after generation, till she thinks they're safe to taste; this takes about a week for the most promising items.

Then eventually she'll be able to try some berries or dandelions or garlic mustard.

They're all pretty good, though she has some recipe experimentation to do.

Better-fed, she begins to feel up to exploring her environs more, in slow spirals out from the treehouse.

The surrounding area is mostly woods, with a mix of different tree species - some maples and conifers of various kinds, some elms, and a few other sorts. There's an asphalt highway going north and south, that sees occasional traffic mostly from trucks transporting large amounts of cargo. There's a billboard by the highway with an ad for a car rental chain. There's a little river that eventually meets another little river to become a medium-sized river. A handful of people have off-the-grid homes of various kinds in the woods; another handful have cottages like the changeling she met first. South of Chequy Tower there's a fork in the road where the north-south highway meets another one heading west (but no further east), which sees more traffic than the stretch of road north of Chequy Tower. The woods to the east are mostly empty of people; not very far to the east they give way to human towns. There's a town to the west, miles away, a little smaller than Chequy Tower, and surrounding it there are fields being farmed.

She sits on the billboard and watches trucks go by for a bit. Peers at the crops to see if there's anything she might want to nip a cutting of.

The trucks sometimes have brand names or phone numbers or both. Occasionally they have hazardous materials signs.

They've got peas, rye, zucchini, parsnips and corn growing in the nearest fields, and there are some glass buildings with oranges, mangoes and avocados inside. Further west there are some animals in pens, and then more fields with an only partly overlapping selection of crops.

Animals are sort of disturbing and she gives them lots of space. She smells all the plants except the ones behind glass. Looks for someone to buy them from in case that's customary.

There are people at work on or near the farms. Someone's checking that their machinery is still in working order; some people are picking avocados; some people are sowing seeds of some kind.

"Excuse me," she says to a seed-sower.

"Hello!" the seed-sower says, smiling. "Can I help you?"

"Maybe! Who should I talk to about buying some cuttings or seeds?"

They can point out where to find the right person to ask, a butterfly-winged person in a backless dress who'd be absolutely delighted to sell cuttings of pretty much everything.

This looks more like the sort of fairy Promise is used to! "Hi! What do you charge for seeds and cuttings of your plants?"

They can quote some prices. It won't cost much if all she wants is single seeds and small cuttings.

That will do her for sure. She wants to smell the plants in the greenhouse if that's okay to be sure which she wants.

She can do that, sure. "Not the kinds you're used to?" the butterfly-winged person asks.

"Yeah, I'm not from around here."

"Welcome to the area."

"Thanks." Oooh, mango smells lovely.

"You've got a greenhouse of your own, right?"

"I think I'll be able to grow it."

"Just making sure, I mean, it's not native."

"Is it more complicated than that it likes it warm?"

"This cultivar's finicky about humidity sometimes. Should be fine."

Other than that they'll sell Promise the cuttings and leave her be.

Then Promise will fly them all home and find them places to be and warm up the ones that like it warm.

Nothing else will demand her attention for a while. The days get slowly shorter and quickly colder. A group of several people, two of them human-looking, pass by on foot on their way south to Chequy Tower. A zoologist wants to have a look around and take some pictures as long as Promise doesn't object.

"That's fine - how does that work?" she asks of the camera.

"Uh, it has a light-sensitive thing, in the back, and light comes in through this window, and when I push this button it lets the light touch the light-sensitive film in the back, and later I take the film to someone else who knows how to take it and turn it into pictures that look exactly like the light that got into the camera. It's like a very realistic portrait, but faster."

"...cool! Where did you get it?"

"Oh, uh, probably in Chequy Tower, I don't remember for sure. You new to, you know..." The zoologist gestures vaguely. "Modernity?"

"...yes. It's interesting, though."

"It's pretty cool. Cities smell a lot better these days."

"How does modernity help with that?"

"Generally better waste disposal systems and also perfume?"

"I haven't been to a city before that either," she says.

"Huh! What brings you so close to civilization now?"

"I got lost, actually."

"Wow. - Uh, another wonder of modern technology is GPS, by the way."

"What's that do?"

"Tells you where you are by listening to - uh, things in the sky that go around the planet, that one of the human countries put there, actually. I'm sure there's a library in Chequy Tower where you can read about it."

"Huh. I should go. What do the librarians want in exchange?"

"It's sort of free if you don't break any laws - it's a nice thing, see, so it makes people want to visit, and the more people visit and trade the richer the town gets."

"How does me visiting and reading the books make the town richer if I don't pay for them?"

"If you wanted to stop by one of the stores, like to buy a camera, it'd be kind of a trip from here. So maybe you wouldn't bother. But if you're already there looking at books, then maybe you stop somewhere else while you're there."

"Oh. So I don't, but other people who like books might?"

"Yeah. Or even if you don't buy things, maybe you recommend the library to someone else who does."

"That makes sense. So the librarians also sell stuff?"

They take a breath as if to answer, and, looking rather overwhelmed, reconsider. "...It's more complicated than that and you can find a book about it."

"Okay, that's fair."