Relative to little Thuy, the single-story shops and houses were as tall as office buildings. The buildings looked to be assembled from naturally grown components as well. Overhead, shells and shiny seedpods hung upon lines stretched across the street; they’d been crafted into representational forms: a star, a candy cane, a cuttlefish holding a triangle—Thuy recalled Azaroth’s mentioning that the cuttlefish was a symbol for a Hibrane religious figure. Perhaps these were ornaments to celebrate a holiday.

All these things Thuy noticed in the first flash after landing. But the bright-clothed Hibraners were taking the bulk of her attention. A dozen of them were in view: slow-moving giants, ethnically Chilean and Polynesian. All of them were staring at Thuy, raising their arms in slow-motion alarm and widening their mouths. And at the same time they were probing Thuy’s mind. She tried her best to think pleasant, innocuous thoughts, but perhaps her worries about the nants leaked through. In any case, the Hibraners were scared of her.

The air rumbled with their low-speed cries, deep and draggy as sounds heard underwater. The Hibraners wheeled about in waltz time, fleeing from the alien gnome in the striped leggings. Their slow-motion panic was spooky.

Across the street was the place like the Tuna-Ahi Barbecue, its stony walls flowing smoothly from the soil. Although the building bore no written sign, it was telepathically emanating the image of a bluefin tuna. Thuy went inside. The inn was only approximately similar to its counterpart on the Lobrane.

The interior furnishings formed naturalistic curves, with each chair or table different from the others. The lumpish bottles behind the bar had no labels; instead they bore telepathic notes. Thuy picked up that the telepathic labels were called teep-tags.

Quite a few people were dining on the patio. The chairs were made of hardened kelp stems, and the tables were disks of mother-of-pearl with further kelp stems for their legs. A slender waitress in vibrant blue was just setting down pearly platters of rice, beans, and tuna steaks for a group of six: two women, a man, a boy, and two girls. Thuy yelled and charged toward them. As she’d hoped, the diners rocked back in their curved chairs. In two quick hops, Thuy was standing on the opalescent dining table.

She grabbed hold of a tuna steak the size of her torso; to her it felt like it weighed but a pound—as the matter here was less dense. The grilled fish was warm and savory, emanating faint images of its long, vigorous life in the deeps of the sea. Thuy tore into it; rapidly scarfing down the slab of fish and a mound of rice the size of her head.