Aten likes Feradi quite a lot.  Many people are good at games; anyone can be good at games.  Almost no one is good at being good at games.  It's the sort of thing that only comes with a genuine passion, a desire to prioritize it over other things.  Anyone could copy that but most people don't, because why would you.  Aten feels no urge to copy a genuine passion for working, even though it would make him much richer if he were employed all the time instead of half:  what use is money if you've overwritten the parts of yourself that would benefit from having it?

Feradi innately cares very much about table games (or, mostly the one), which is why he's good at being good at them in a way that almost no one else is.  And accordingly Aten is fairly fond of him.

So when Feradi comes and dangles a new card game in front of them, and says he expects Fiaten to enjoy figuring out the rules by playing much more than by copying the knowledge or having them explained, and does not say but does imply that he'll only go along with this if Fiaten gets them both lunch and also dessert, well...

They aren't exactly rolling in money at the moment, but it will not literally cause them to need to pick up a job immediately, so Aten mentally leans on Fia in the way that means he wants him to accept.

If they do this then that means Fia is going to have to be the one running things while they eat, since Aten can't be seen in public.  And as much as Fia doesn't strictly dislike this guy, surely they can come up with a plan that involves the one of them who likes Feradi much more than the other being the one to interact with him for long blocks of time?

(Fia also cares very much about table games.  In fact, he cares about them exactly as much as Aten does.  But he's much more into the social connection they can bring, generally, than the actual mechanics.)

...Maybe they can -

Fine.  It's not going to work, though.

"Sounds good!  Should we bring the food back to my place so we can get started playing sooner?"

"And get food on the cards?" he scoffs.

"You're probably right."  He told you so.

But it ends up not mattering, because then there's some sort of monster like nothing any of them have seen before, close enough that even though they're a normal amount of quick for people of these builds in this location, they can't dodge the (honestly very pristine) mirror coming at them.

It is cold as fuck here.

That's so unpleasant!  That's as much unpleasantnesss as he thought would be in the next hour or so!

Both of them are at least in sleeves; it was fall in Chraida.  Fia is wearing two layers on top and he passes the outer one to Feradi.  They only need one of them to be warm.

Is anyone else around??

Not immediately? - That might be a group of people, dark shapes tromping along in a line alongside that weird glowy wall of light there.

Fia points to them emphatically.  ...That's pretty far and Feradi's in sandals; if they've already picked this for the copying direction they should swap shoes.

...He accepts this.  They're small on him but he doesn't change his foot size about it.

It is SO COLD.  Taking Feradi's heat as fast as he can will definitely keep him from accumulating more injuries from this than Feradi does, but it's really really uncomfortable to be losing that much heat even if he's getting some of it back immediately.

The people notice them after not much longer and they stop and confer with each other about it.

Even with the consolidated layers these two are slowing down real fast.

The patrol group forms up and trudges in their direction but not like they care a whole lot about whether the two of them live or die.

In that case huddling might be better than trying to make forward progress.

...Fine.

This does not obviously affect the behavior of the patrollers. Eventually they're close enough that one of them calls out something in a language.

That's not close enough to grab it.  "Do you have Cretari?" he tries.

The same person calls again, still in an unhelpful foreign language that is not Cretari.

Feradi knows the most languages between them; he calls out selections until they're close enough or until he's too cold to keep trying.

The shouting gets increasingly terse and annoyed as they close the distance.

Fia tries to shuffle them closer once it seems like that might help, and - can't, which means that if these people won't come within like two him-lengths (and he's really not tall) they're going to freeze to d - okay, that's close enough; that's a person and he's going to copy their warm warm warm warm warm - and immediately get chilled again after each one, his borrowed heat radiating back into the environment - and then he'll start working on grabbing the language.

Feradi's faster.  "- Hello."

"If you could speak Taldane this whole time what the Abyss were you on about?" snaps the lead patroller. "State your business."