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Kim responded to Grey with a similar "Hello", waved eir hand at the two and pulled eir hat back a bit before glaring at Baskerville for a moment. Ey grinned at the thought of a sentient doggie and was slightly surprised in a positive way.
Kim's equipment smelled more than Kim emself. Ey had plenty of electronic devices in eir pockets and eir coat had been unwashed for who knows how many years. It didn't reek, though, at least in Kim's opinion; if it did, ey would've washed it. Kim's left arm obviously smelled of plastic and metal, but it might not be distinguishable from the rest of eir stuff. Otherwise, Kim smelled mostly like a weird generic human who hadn't showered in a while and with very little sex-related pheromones.
After having looked at Baskerville for a moment, Kim turned back to look at Grey. Ey wondered for a moment whether ey should mention to him that Baskerville was indeed real, but decided that ey wouldn't unless Grey asked. "My name's Kim Gillian", said Kim in English, with a slight generic accent – English wasn't eir first language, but ey had used it so much that it almost was. "How about you?..." Ey glanced at Baskerville again, slightly confused.
Grey appeared completely stumped by this, or possibly comatose on his feet, but Baskerville didn't mind stepping in.
"Baskerville Rover-Brimstone Suitov, but you can call me Baskerville." He held up a forepaw, perhaps begging but more apparently offering to shake.
This one smelled something like someone else he'd met, only... not entirely. He didn't know what to make of the mineral-sap smells from Kim's artificial bits; one component of the smell was a little like rotting wolf melon, but he doubted that was really what it was. The sexual ambiguity confused him much less.
Kim still eyed Baskerville somewhat weirdly, grinning a little bit while doing so. Seeing as the dog-like thing offered a paw, Kim spent a couple of seconds thinking about what ey should do before deciding to offer eir hand as well and hold the creature by the paw as in shaking hands.
Kim wasn't really too surprised to find that Baskerville's mind seemed to be mostly full of scents, and ey liked the fact that it was easier for em to ignore his thoughts since Kim didn't know that much about smells.
Now Kim looked back at Grey, waiting for him to answer something.
Oops
"'m called Grey." Exhibit B didn't move an inch and rubbed his hands slowly. His mind was mostly full of bewilderment, but some practical thoughts decided to bubble up, namely that if, er, Kim was not a hallucination, and not weirded out by randomly popping up in weird places, he might know more about how you got into weird places in the first place.
Unfortunately they were not quite up to makes complete sense, so what he said was "How did you do that?"
Nice style, that. Sylvie memorised the lines best as she could.
"I guess taking some closer looks to find out what exactly is left would be a good idea." She got up, thinking that starting now with the caryopteris would be best.
She was "blind" as far as telepathy was concerned, and had no idea about Kim's scanning.
Kim grinned a little at Grey's reaction. Ey didn't meet that much lost people unless ey was looking for them, so ey was fairly curious. "Oh, it's just a 'hole' of sorts with which I shift dimensions. Might sound like science fiction, but I guess it is. Why, are ye lost?"
Kim didn't care about the people inside the inn for them moment.
Portable worldgates. Neat. Baskerville wasn't terribly interested in that, though Suitov would have been.
The chap himself, standing round the back of the building with Sylvie, said "Feel free. Only please mind how you step: most of the paving stones seem to be uneven or cracked.
"I'll turn this off as well, although just call me if you want it back up." A few of his illusory lines erased themselves, thinned or altered their lie slightly, as though someone was making quick corrections to a sketch before putting it away.
If anyone had been watching Suitov for traces of magic at that moment, just for an instant he would have made their head ache. But then the illusory grid winked out unremarkably as though it'd never been there.
Jelly's whiskers fluttered as is in a heavy wind as Suitov disappeared his spell, and his eyes widened immediately from slits to full, pupils wide.
"Damn, mage, my head hurt. Watch what you do, some of us can't turn off our senses like you humans." Disgusted that his catnap had been interrupted, he set to washing himself. This was not a lengthy endeavor, as his tongue seemed at times rather out of proportion to his body. Which was just rediculously small in the first place.
"Was it the compilation? Sorry." Just before he'd let the magic-working go, the traces around him had seemed to twist in an unpleasant way not readily describable if you generally lived in only three or four dimensions. It hadn't looked unpleasant to Suitov, because he couldn't see himself.
"I can't turn off my magesense," he added, "except by closing my eyes." Suitov detected magic primarily by vision. He didn't bother to mention his secondary, much weaker sense, but that one couldn't even be suspended to that extent.
Grey answered, "Maybe," still not sure what to think of all this.
The more details she heard of, the more different Suitov's school of magic seemed. But Sylvie certainly wasn't going to point out she had to concentrate to spot invisible magic while that abrasive fluffball was listening, so she went to check on that plant Suitov had been worried about.
The moderately sized, deep-blue-flowering shrub was seriously overgrown, kept in check only by the more vigorous weeds around it, though it could perhaps be tamed.
Suitov watched the little cat licking itself. He hadn't come close to many cats, Terrimoirine varieties all being wild and timid; still, he was sure there was something not quite right with this one. Apart from the talking, which was merely cute.
His dog snuffled around a tuft of grass, snorted, rolled his head and looked up again as if to check he hadn't missed anything while nasally engaged.
Kim looked at the confused Grey, not really thinking much anything. "Well, if you are, I might be able to get ye home, provided I can get my scanner fixed. This stuff tends to malfunction every now an' then..." Kim looked around some more and now concentrated on the inn. Ey sensed people inside, but didn't bother to make more sense of it yet. "Ye have an inn here, I see. What's it called, or is it just 'The Inn' of the area?"
"It's not technically open yet, never mind named," Baskerville put in. "I think the boss was toying with asking for suggestions. Otherwise it'll be something standard like the At The Crossroads... or the On The Bit Of Cursed Land."
If he had known Sylvie was looking for a way home, he'd definitely have sent for her there and then. Gratitude from females tended to result in food. Hugs, at the very least. Maybe she'd let him explode the little lizard.
Suitov Iceheart spoke a few clipped, sibilant-salted words in Offwhite City's aristocratic dialect.
"Please," said the monk in common language, "there's no need for hostility."
"Isn't there."
"Sir, that is your prerogative, of course. But I give you my word that I'm not here with authorisation to do anything but socialise. I am, in any case, only a trainee."
The monk, all wide blue eyes and friendly face and retaining a trace of adolescent gangliness, certainly didn't look like anything to be frightened of. That Suitov lord really was being such a silly.
"Of course you are. I will tell you what I would tell any member of your" calculated pause "organisation: this place is open and safe to you until the second you harass or harm anybody here." My own rules are unfortunately abundantly clear on the subject. I knew fairness would get me someday. "You will, though, be so good as to keep your distance from me unless there is some pressing need."
"I wouldn't dream of making a nuisance of myself, let alone getting under my brother's feet by bothering his mark. I'm sure he'd never forgive me," the monk said.
"Hmm? As long as we're clear." What a bloody obvious attempt to winkle some kind of reaction out of him. As though he hadn't enough on his mind without having to keep an eye on a sodbedamned... diplomat.
"I shall go and look around," said the monk. He was excited. What a nice place this was.
Grey twitched and looked at Baskerville. "Did you say cursed?"
The caryopteris appeared healthy enough to Sylvie, all it needed was a bit more room, and pruning the old wood. She decided to leave that for now, and have a look around the perimeter of the garden-to--be instead.
"Yeah," Baskerville said, wagging.
A few minutes passed while Sylvie explored the garden.
Then a young male - looking no more than eighteen or so, dressed in clothing of similar style and material to Weft's and quite apparently the same species - came back out of the main building and picked his way fastidiously through the thorny weeds and disturbed paving slabs until he was within polite hailing distance.
"Hello!" he said. "Isn't this a lovely place?" Definitely a familiar accent there.
"Cursed, eh?" Kim made a disbelieving face – even though this world didn't function like eir "own", ey could still not help feeling amused at some of the terms used. "I think I can 'curse' things. I definitely can curse. In several languages, too."
Seeing a newcomer, some boy, Kim naturally took a glance at him and did a light scan while waving a hand at him – the cybernetic one for once. "Hello."
"Ooh, you must teach me some new ones," the dog replied laughingly and unspecifically.
The youth drew close enough to join their group. On the surface, his body language displayed friendly interest; his thoughts did too, only more acutely. Looking at Kim he said "I'm sorry, I overheard part of that; did you say something was cursed? As in literally?"
Baskerville, used to being talked over, intercepted the question as though it were a throwy disk. "Hmm, yep, that's what they say about this plot of land here." He indicated the now outwardly renovated inn building and its garden with a sweep of his tail. "Unlike the rest of this area, which is just kind of displaced a bit, this particular one of the inns is supposed to pull in people who are lost and distressed."
The youth looked very impressed. "And is that rumour true?"
"Well, I don't know if it's really because someone said I curse thee, miscreant sod," Baskerville said, "but all the same, I've seen people pop up. Like this one here. He came out of a wall." He pointed at Grey.
"Crumbs," the monk commented.
Grey blinked. "I don't think the wall was damaged." I hope. Walking away became a really tempting idea.
"Even more impressive if that's the case. Are you some kind of magician, sir?" asked the youth innocently.
"I don't pull rabbits out of hats. Or cards. I mean, card tricks. And such. I don't do any." After saying that, Grey did a brain-check. "Or what do you mean when you say 'magician'?"