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If there were two things Nemausa loved in this universe, it was food and trinkets. Not necessarily in that order. For a long time, food had been his number one priority because of the whole, you know, dead world, and before that, the whole, you know, garbage world. He and the people like him were kept down, made to scavenge, while the people above him lived luscious, rich lives full of goodness and delight. He didn't often feel jealous, per se, but he did spend an awful lot of time imagining, in his mind, what it would be like to enjoy some of those snacks every now and again.

Trinkets, though, were never in short supply on Nemausa. Sure, it took some doing, wading through the garbage heaps, examining everything that came your way for hidden abilities or possibilities, but every so often, you got lucky, and you found or made something that could only be described as a treasure. Aside from his friends, the thing Nemausa was saddest about leaving was all of the treasures he and his people had created, but he'd brought as much of it as he could carry when it came time to come to Earth, and whether out of a latent fear of someone else on Nemausa trying to poach his stuff or the reasonable concern that someone might find his nest of goodies down in the sewers, he mostly carried his precious objects with him, tucked into pockets or slipped into his oversized sleeves or hidden beneath his hat. A little mousie could get quite creative, when it was literally all he had left of his home.

But all of Nemausa's treasures - the boy and the planet - paled in comparison to what he heard someone else call a 'gift shop'. That seemed counterintuitive to Nemausa: a gift was a thing you received for free niceness, while a shop was a thing you did with money. But he didn't worry about the details, because he was far, far too busy soaking it all in.

Of all the places Nemausa had ever been, of all the wonders he had ever seen, it was entirely possible that this 'gift shop' was the most beautiful, the most enchanting, the most magical. There was - everything. Nemausa almost didn't know where to start, but he couldn't just break down and cry tears of joy over it all like he wanted to, so he forced himself to move, selecting a direction at random. As he always had, Nemausa followed his nose: small brown squares with brightly colored sprinkles. They looked and smelled amazing, even through their preserving wrappers. There were also those things from the library, the place he'd been chased out of - he wasn't so interested in those because they didn't taste very good, and also they were written in Earthling, which was a language he did not know very well, if much at all, though sitting with his friend who's forehead was cracked had illuminated enough of the basic aspects to help him along considerably.

The rest? The shinies, the little just - things and stuff that populated the room? Nemausa couldn't help the happy sigh that escaped him as he gently brushed the tips of his fingers over the edges of some of these tiny objects.

Being here, in this room...

It almost felt like home.

"Oh!" Nemausa started in surprise, his tail reflexively tensing and then wrapping around his own left leg. He shook it out quickly, hoping his new friend - Almadel - didn't notice. He wasn't a pinkie anymore, he shouldn't be so easily scared.

But this was a whole new place, and Almadel...he didn't feel like anyone else Nemausa had ever met before.

"Nemausa," he said with a broad smile, momentarily forgetting to be shy, though the timidity returned as he cautiously fit his hand into Almadel's, more holding it than shaking it. "And...no, we--humans use their hands for everything, it's so--weird," he said with a little laugh. He was pretty sure that Almadel wasn't a human, though he did lack any outward signifiers of alien heritage - no big ears, no tail. At least none that Nemausa could see, but maybe they were invisible...?

Before Nemausa could chase himself down that thought-shaped distraction-hole, he noticed the brownies, and the big smile was back. He started to reach for the plate, caught himself, and frowned slightly. He didn't have any Earthling money to exchange.

Hm.

Nemausa paused, then shoved his left hand up the sleeve of his right arm. He rustled around for a moment or two, tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth as he squinted with focus.

"Ah!" Nemausa removed his hand victoriously. Clutched between his fingers was one of his precious few trinkets from Nemausa. It was a tiny representation of a seed, not dissimilar to an Earthly acorn, though it had two caps, and they were on the bottom instead of the top. It was made of a metal common on Nemausa but not found on Earth, and though it was tarnished - both from spending quite a long time in a trash heap and then not quite as long tucked between Nemausa's elbow and his clothes - it was clearly delicately made, with classical Nemausan engravings filigreed in a winding pattern, like vines or branches, until they met at the top to form a tiny delicate flower, for which the seed's adult was known for growing.

Or at least, so the myth went. Nemausa hadn't been alive in the time of trees and green and growing things, but that's what the stories said used to happen when one of those seeds got planted.

"Would this be okay?" Nemausa asked, holding the trinket out to his new friend. "For so if I could shop that?" Nemaus added, glancing to the plate of delicious-smellingness his friend had nudged closer to him. It seemed like a fair trade to him - as much as it gave him a little pang, giving up a piece of his homeworld...

Those yummy squares smelled really good, and he was pretty sure it would definitely be worth it.