:To grandfather, then? Or do you want to space out meeting members of my family with something else?: 

:Doing something else right now would kind of just feel like procrastinating. I should properly join my new household first, as best I can.:

:I *think* that meeting went pretty well? A bit awkward at the end, but it really was for the best not to have the water discussion publicly. In hindsight, I suppose I could have waited on that until we left, rather than when I was reminded by Aulus's water barrel.

Is it a good sign that he felt comfortable swearing in front of me? I'm not sure how meaningful that is.:

:It would have been a bad sign if he didn't. We are being very polite but we do not generally avoid profanity. I do think he likes you well enough, though. He's a generally friendly person. I think we might need to get better at ... performing the fact that we're thinking about something while we talk? Or something like that.:

He will start walking into the house as they talk. Finally they are once more in a space where the ambient temperature is above freezing. 

:And it might also get easier when people are accustomed to the idea that we might discuss something amongst ourselves. It occurred to me afterward that he wouldn't have known that was possible: it must have come as a surprise to him.

I do hope he didn't feel too left out. And that his assistant didn't feel too left out of anything either, for that matter, though perhaps the assistant was just shy.:

:Assuming only things which you know factually to be possible are happening would be an unwise way to live your life, I think.:

:You shouldn't try and participate in conversations just because you're in earshot. It's sort of rude.: 

:I'm rather getting that impression, yeah. But it's still a surprise when any specific one happens, even if your model of reality had enough flex and open space in it that it's not a fundamental shock.:

:I'd normally expect that to depend a lot on who's in the conversation and what it's about, but I'm not familiar with the local customs on this. I probably couldn't even describe what *my* local customs are in a way that would get an immigrant to my own world up to speed.

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to greet the assistant also, but since they didn't speak up I went along with that.:

:I think generally you need to be very willing to politely ignore people because people don't really have a lot of privacy otherwise. Especially when the weather is worse than this, we might all be basically stuck in the hive itself for days. But that's not always true and I can't really explain what the exceptions are. And people are just rude sometimes.:

People in one big room with open wall capsules don't really have a lot of privacy (at least for sound) even if they are politely ignored, but he supposes it's a useful coping mechanism to think of it that way if you can pull it off.

:Fair enough.:

It's nice to be in the warmth again and all, but...

:...I'm guessing you don't do home-entering purifications^† here, is that right?:

(Home-entering purifications of some form appear in a lot of cultures across many worlds, including cultures that don't have germ theory, but it's not universal (nor even as common as nodding your head for "yes").

plus there's only so much of a sanctuary a home can be when you are keeping sheep inside it)

---

^†cleansing yourself upon return, to maintain the sanctity of the home against outside intrusion: most centrally by washing your hands, sometimes washing your feet and/or changing your clothes, occasionally other forms ↩

:I mean, we take off our jackets and boots and keep them in the entryway? But that doesn't seem to be what you mean.: 

[This sequence of concepts is less closely approximatable as English sentences, but it goes something like:]

:There are many places, and mine is one of them, where we think of the home as a sanctuary. The outside world has its filth and dangers (as I am all too aware, having been recently reminded), but the home protects its people. One doesn't take the precautions at home that one would take elsewhere, amongst things that strangers have touched and air that strangers have breathed and even a tree in the forest that a deer may have pooped on.

The home is kept apart, and one mustn't track the impurities of the world at large into it. So that you can move freely, and be at peace, and have things that belong to you and your kin and are not shared with the parasites.

(To not have to wonder, is this safe? Is this clean? Or is it the thing that will cause me to spend days burning with fever and barely able to tell reality from dream? Or crushed beneath the weight of pure, elemental misery? Or fragile with nausea, and deprived even of the ability to lie down and do nothing? (Or waking up dead one morning?))

So in our entryway, there are jackets and boots, yes, but also a place to keep your bag with the things that are yours but which belong to the outside, and a place to keep new things that *will* be brought into the household but do not *yet* belong, and a handwashing sink with purified water and soap, and a set of...not *fresh* clothes necessarily, it would be wasteful to launder your clothes every time you left the home, but *separate* clothes. (Some cultures put showering areas or places to clean your feet in the entryway, but we normally don't. There are probably other variations I'm less familiar with.)

...some of this was probably rude, and I am sorry. I don't mean to accuse you of foolishness. And I have a feeling that soap is expensive here.

But it...:

(He does not say that "it will take some getting used to", because he's not sure that getting used to it is possible or even desirable.)

:...well, it's very disconcerting for me. I'm sorry for the outburst.:

(He has not known sanctuary in six days, and it is starting to sink in emotionally that maybe he never will again.)

(He's never going to know whether or not he infected anyone in his unwitting violation of the household sanctuary, before he knew he was unclean. Maybe they just hadn't finished incubating yet.)

Marcus does not say 'You shouldn't worry about this. It's not going to be what kills you.' It wouldn't help. 

He also does not say 'We are all vastly more likely to die of a mite infestation than we are of any sickness of the human body, even if you assume the thing we're going to die of isn't violence or the elements.' 

What he does say is: :Don't worry about it. You died, nobody is expecting you to be okay about that, and I understand that outsiders have very different customs. You're right that most of those precautions seem like they'd be prohibitively expensive. It doesn't mean we can't aspire to be the sort of person who can afford prohibitively expensive things.: 

It wouldn't be enough, to have a world where soap is terribly expensive but he personally can afford it. He wants a world where you can walk down to the store and buy a three-month supply of handwashing soap for your entire household for half an hour's wages. Everyone deserves a world where you can walk down to the store and buy a three-month supply of handwashing soap for your entire household for half an hour's wages.

(Okay, maybe two hours for a household this big. But still.)

He sends a somewhat shaky acknowledgement.

And then, because he is scared to ask but even more scared not to, :Maybe I should pet a bee for a bit first before we talk to your grandparents. That might help me feel better.:

(He thinks his clean-sense will have an easier time with the bees than the sheep.)

:Sure.: 

He is going to relocate to his cell for that, navigating effortlessly through the noisy and crowded space of the hive. It's really quite dark; starlight can't illuminate within the hive and there are no fires within. Small wicker baskets glow a pale blue from within, just enough to indicate where people are standing so they can be dodged past, but not enough to make it easy to tell people apart or tell what people are doing. It continues to smell of unwashed humans and equally unwashed sheep. A bee bounces off of Marcus amicably as he travels, on its way to some other destination. On the other side of the hive, there is a light glowing within one cell; two small children are using it to play some kind of game with sheep bones as the pieces. 

Second the bee is going to follow them, having been informed by gesture of the point of this exercise. 

The sensory overload is not exactly helping.

at least it's not too bright?

(On a back burner in his mind, Minaiyu is contemplating how to rig a shower system (even if mostly for rinsing). Squeeze-bottle style is probably the simplest way; he's almost certainly not going to get rubber around here, let alone soft plastic, but he could probably get a small waterskin. And...clay, maybe, for the showerhead? But then how to attach the showerhead so that the water comes out the holes and not around the edges of the attachment point? Hmm...)

It's like...vertigo, but in his clean-sense rather than his vestibular system. This place is his and not-his; he is as safe as he is going to get anytime soon and barely safe at all.

(Would he bury his face in his hands here? Should he?)

Regardless, he isn't taking any motor control, at the moment. Even a well-lit hyperprosoponic wouldn't see anything wrong. They'd just see Marcus, moving through his home.

:What makes them glow like that?:

:They contain a particular species of glowworm! They need to be watered and fed and various other things but it's safer than using fire to light your house.: 

:It certainly is.:

(It's good that they can get away without needing open flames in the house. One less thing for him to worry about.)

(some lightbulbs would be nice though)

They can arrive at Marcus's cell then, and he can climb inside. 

Marcus has no idea what to do under these circumstances. He will try and yield the front. 

...it might be very bad if he wakes up mid-climb one morning. He does not have enough information on what it's like in this body to wake up second to know if that would be very bad or not.

It doesn't feel like this exact moment is the time to point that out, but he is making a mental note to, before they go to sleep tonight, ask Marcus to make sure they're both alert before getting out of bed. (At least at first, until they have a better sense of how it would go.)

Even with much of the noise and the scent and the breath still reaching them, it feels viscerally less dangerous, or at least less overwhelming, to be in their own little capsule. He is surrounded by the comfort of solid walls, where nothing can sneak up on him.

He will reach out and give the bee a tentative pet. Can he tell in this lighting whether the bee seems happy about it?

The bee is in favour of being pet! It will wiggle approvingly, which can be felt even if not seen. 

Aww.

Not something you want to be startled by first thing in the morning, sure, but once you have your feet under you they are pretty cute. Maybe especially when you've spent much of the day learning how to team up with them.

:Do you think it would be okay if I hug her? I'm not sure if that's the sort of thing that makes them uncomfortable.:

[It doesn't directly come through in the telepathy that Minaiyu is unsure whether giant bees take the "ensouled" noun class or "soulless/object" noun class and has started erring on the high side, because he's not actually speaking Tashayan here and the pronoun is more like a mental gesture at that-bee-there.]

:Bees don't like having their wings pinned because they are relatively fragile, so hug them like this.: Marcus passes over a muscle memory of how to wrap your hands around them without touching their wings. 

Hug.

he still kind of feels like he is hugging her under false pretenses, but maybe she's started to catch on by now, and anyway at this stage hugging Marcus's family would probably be more awkward on net

She's very warm.

Which is, first of all, cozy, but also...it's because this place is so crowded that they don't need to risk having fire inside the house. Crowding brings danger, instinctively and also means a great deal to lose if they have unknowingly gotten some infected deer poop on their hand; but it brings safety, too.

Maybe there will come a day when being surrounded by his hive abuzz on every side will feel supporting.

He hasn't steeled himself enough to touch their face directly, but--after a moment's hesitation--he is going to rest their head on the bee.