The next time he ran into Alban, it was when he was coming back up from the negative first floor, and it was with a bundle of letters.

Alban saw him and they stared at each other a bit; then he smiled warmly and whistled. "Those envelopes are huge! Do you have a penpal who's a troll?"

"No," Seph replied with a grimace, and then, "Well, yes, if you could call the administrative branch of High a penpal." They certainly were trolls. In the High sense of what a troll was, anyway.

"I probably wouldn't." Alban eyed the papers, leaning against his crooked doorframe. He had a twig-looking thing in his hand, and idly he stuck it into his mouth; it glittered and twitched slightly and emitted smoke, and he gnawed and inhaled alternately as he watched Seph maneuver his door with the handful of envelopes. "What are they? Litigious assertions?"

"Just bills."

"Bills?"

"I moved, but I still need to pay for this and that," Seph explained, and Alban eyed him and then nodded, correctly interpreting Seph's ambiguity as an unwillingness to elaborate.

"Well, it's fair injust for you to have to continue coughing up sums after you've set up roots down here. You wouldn't care to take a load off the wallet and have a bite over here, would you?"

Seph thought.

"I'll stop by," he said, "after I set these envelopes down," and Alban nodded at him, a quick upward flick of his chin. He removed the twig from his mouth, pinching it between index and middle finger, spinning it about a couple times.

"Give me a bit longer, actually," he said. "I've still got to get things ready. Come knock at the next flicker."

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