The young shad scratches his head while wandering through the garden, quite uncertain of whether the plants and grass are even real. This looks like nothing he has seen before, but it doesn’t hurt to give it a shot. When they see the gardener at work, Polp waves and greets from afar, unsure of whether any rules in this place prohibit him from stepping off the walking paths.
“Oh Mister Gardener! Oh hello!”
As an afterthought, Polp turns to Hilaren and points a reprimanding claw at the ranger, doing a poor job of sounding like a parent.
“No beating up the gardener!”
After the man or woman has his attention, Polp makes his request as politely as possible. If the gardener is not authorized to deal with such matters, the shad asks about how to go about it.
When eventually they see the other team in the sculpture garden, the tunnelrunner waves and runs to meet them, but skids to a halt halfway at a pathway-curve while considering yet again if he’s allowed to cut through the grass.
Zhegre bows politely, thanks her once more, and leaves.
"Well," he says to his friends, "that's our errand. We can't get in to the Hall of Prophecy, but I'm sure the others are going to visit the sculpture garden the clerk mentioned, either before or after they're done with their part of the research. Perhaps we should head there to wait for them." If no objections, this way he heads.
Zhegre mutters to himself as he goes along. "'Entropic radiation.' There's more to that bloody oath than a simple promise. I'm going to need a sodding atonement if this rot keeps up. A man can keep his word without being geased to it, for goodness' sake... Come to think of it, I wonder if we're shedding chaos-bits around Mechanus. That wouldn't be very polite."
He looks up at the sculpture as they enter the garden, and blinks. Spends a couple of minutes pondering it. "Fine craftsmanship," he remarks to his friends. "Unless it was a cooperative effort of two sculptors, you see here an artist with mastery of both abstract and realist idioms. Fluency with two forms of depiction so different bespeaks a high level of skill." His grumpy mood has quite dissipated by the time he's done appreciating the work.