Bookish

His face.

It took Valli a few moments to understand what he meant when he said his face. He meant his mask. The mask he'd worn every day of his life in the simulation, and now was abruptly without. Valli had made a conscious choice to scrub the radiation burns from Gask's body, rather than copying them over, but he'd never given a moments thought to the mask.

And now he was.

"It's absolutely safe outside," Valli said, doing his best to be reassuring as he headed for the closet, digging around the top. Did he have anything that he could use? "There are only a few places on earth that have radiation like that, and people are kept well away from them. But I didn't give any real thought to your mask, and I failed to realize you might be uncomfortable without it, but..."

A few more moments digging and Valli withdrew, a rather plain black scarf in hand.

"It's a bit warm for it, but I don't think you'd raise any eyebrows if you wore this around your mouth, if it would help."

Valli held it out for him, if he wanted it.

Valli really hadn't meant for it to be used that way, but... well, it wasn't like he was in a position to complain. On Manta Carlos a full face covering like that would only raise a few eyebrows, but Valli still had some hope he could convince Gask to remove it once they got to the library.

He wanted to see his reaction - there was no better explanation.

"If you feel overwhelmed, you simply need to tell me," Valli pointed out as he let them out of the apartment. It was a nice building, and the hallway was well maintained although completely enclosed. After a moment's pause, Valli decided against the elevator--he didn't want to have to explain the small box that people took as an alternative to a few flight of stairs--and headed down himself.

"The door locks itself, but both the building and the island are fairly safe. It's less about being concerned someone might break in to steal things, and more about making sure that no one even considers it. Confidentiality is very important in my line of work, so I have to take extra precautions with things," Valli explained. Did Gask even care about those things? It was so hard to judge what he was or wasn't familiar with, and Valli had to struggle to compare what he knew, what he thought he knew, and what his simualtion-self had known.

But at least they were outside at last, near the edge of the residential district and not much of a walk from transportation.

"The city," Valli said with a small gesture. "It's large, although it's hard to say if you've been in ruins that are bigger. Maybe?"

Cities tended to be dangerous, so he suspected Gask had avoided them.

Ah mutants. A pejorative term for some, and yet still used on the island. Better not to use it though, and he was about to when Gask abruptly went quiet. Valli actually had to double take to figure out just who it was that Gask was looking at.

Red skin and horns didn't even rate for Valli anymore.

"Radiation is supposed to linger in metal, I believe. The frames of most buildings are made of metal, so the radiation itself would linger."

He wasn't an expert - not at all - but he knew at least that much.

"I'm sure you could find a book on it at the library."

There were a lot of transportation options, but Valli opted for something basic - a bus. A bus that was half empty, but would be more familiar than teleportation and let Gask see more of the town on the way to the school. IT wasn't a long trip, but there would be plenty to see, and Valli made sure Gask got a window seat before settling in.

Valli was happy to answer all of Gask's questions, each one taking a bit of burden off his shoulders. It meant Gask was engaging in the world. It made Valli feel more relaxed listening to him ask questions about every little thing, and he was so used to having to help with such things that he simply rattled off responses.

The question about building a castle, however, was not a simple question, and Valli had to pause to consider.

"Well," he said very carefully as they got off the bus. "I'm not an expert in construction techniques. It's certainly possible to create something so large via mundane means, but Starlight Academy was built with the help of magic. Telekinesis to lift stones, rock manipulators to fuse them into one whole... the library is over this way. You can more or less assume everything in the area has been affected by magic in some way, because it probably has."

He'd wanted to see it. He wanted to see Gask's face, wanted to show him the books. So many books. Thousands of thousands of books, of all different types and kinds. Fiction and non-fiction and everything in between. Books from different worlds. A million and one things and just from the look of Gask's eyes he could tell Gask's thoughts.

That he'd never seen so many books.

It was a relief when Gask pulled the scarf down, and Valli smiled despite himself. Even if he'd felt--at least for a bit--that he'd made a mistake, he couldn't regret this.

"This library has been around for hundreds of years. It collects mundane books from the normal world, but also makes copies of other books. Books from other worlds. Books of magic. A lot of them are written by people who call the island home. The last survivor of an alien race records his species history before he passes away. A mage explains their theory of magic so that there's a record of it. But there's also fiction. We have a whole section of books written by authors who don't know about magic who happened to get things alarmingly correct. And all the classics of course - we have a lot of those. Things you might have read parts of, or heard of. I think starting there might be best."

Valli didn't ask. The choice would be overwhelming. If he asked, Gask would probably just stand there gawking, unable to make any choice at all, so instead Valli guided him over towards the mundane books, and then towards the classics, sorted by era.

"The library works like this. Every citizen of the island is eligible to get a library card. The library card lets you borrow books - a few at a time, basically - and you can keep them for two weeks. If you need more time, you can ask for more, and if no one else has put the book on hold they'll extend it. Otherwise you return the book when you're done with them, and then you can get more."

That was the jist, anyway. It was what Gask would need to know, and Valli expected him to leave with as many books as his arms were capable of carrying.