"How do you keep making us do that?" Alina demanded. "I usually don't dance for free, you know. And I would never choose to dance with her."

"It's all in the mustache," Archibald said with a wink and a nod. His long white nose-tickler vibrated as he harrumphed. "Are you beginning to understand how adventures work on Althanas at large?"

"I... I think so." Alina said. "It is very different from Fallien. There, just surviving the elements was a struggle. You don't take a step in the land of sand without something trying to kill you. But here, in Scara Brae, and also in Corone... threats come from the silliest places. Women with snuffboxes, carnivorous plants, man-sized insects... it's hard to take it all seriously sometimes."

"That's where you err!" Archibald laughed, throwing back his head. "Taking things seriously on Althanas will get you accused of being mean and salty every time! Instead you should just grin and quake it off, quake quake, quake it off-"

"Oh please," Alina moaned, head in her hands, "just go back to bastardizing Gilbert & Sullivan."

"As you wish!" Archibald grinned merrily, and his mustache wavered. Alina's shoulders slumped as she and Esmeralda obediently sat on the bed once more. The harp strummed, and then broke off as the harpist snapped a string, swore audibly, and switched to his backup harp. Archibald cleared his throat as the intro played.

"Now then, this is the third verse, and you'd think I could do worse
But we are not just yet quite done,
You still have much to learn, if EXP you want to earn,
And you're still not having fun!
So come dance a little lighter and forgive Miss Esmeralda,
She really didn't mean any harm;
She might be a play rapist but at least she's not a sadist
Who'd feed you to pigs on a farm!"

Esmeralda rose and gently took Alina's hand. At first the dancer wanted to jerk away, but Archibald's song had touched her. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps she took herself and her adventures a bit too seriously. After all, the only thing that Esmeralda had actually done to her was splash her with a paralytic, chain her up, cut off her clothes, pour weird oil all over her and touch her a bunch. Was that really so bad? The two women danced daintily to Archibald's side as the orchestra swelled to the chorus.

"And everyone has said,
That they would rather be dead,
Than spend AP on a judgment or re-read their own work
So what a very complicated problem thread this problem thread must be!"

Applause swelled from nowhere, and flowers (both individual and in bouquets) arced onto the floor all around them. Archibald grasped Alina's right hand and Esmeralda's left, and led them in a company bow to no one in particular.