"No--," Tony started to correct, but couldn't confidently say that they weren't collectively imagining this place and corrected, "I mean, maybe, this whole place is weird. Look at the stairs. They're not Agrii sized." A bunch of human brains producing a city would probably have made human-sized stairs. It was less likely they would have made this unfamiliar stone-screen that Tony finished climbing toward to lay a hand against, the other still twirling as he worked up what he was trying to say to Jon over his shoulder.

"And, fine, obliterated it. Scared it away. Did the sexiest thing with a flower since O'Keeffe." Mostly, he was trying to encourage Jon to join him at the window, where it overlooked the library garden. Where the one back in Temba looked abandoned and overgrown, this one appeared naturally lush with thick tree trunks and wide, flat leaves that accumulated the humidity to send it dripping down to the colourful forest floor, like natural fountains. Tony could see a massive, glinting fish drift lazily through what might have at one point been a carefully cultivated pond, and a tiny bird with antennae like a butterfly preening its scaley-looking wings on a branch. It was less expected that one of those dripping leaves started to move, making the bird go flapping away Tony stare in surprise until the colours of it shifted and mottled, and he could see the rolling eye of their curious, sticky friend as it went limping across the garden.