Once out of Galade's immediate presence, his aura of certainty, Melian all but cringes. He's made an ass of himself, wandering around as if he belongs here, blundering and babbling like a kid on a field trip, misconstruing everything, he's not good with people, dammit. The walkway under his feet is paved in an oblique pattern of foamstone slabs that strikes him suddenly, poignantly familiar. He stares at it for a minute or two, feeling acutely out of place.
Then he turns, heading back the way he came.
The overnight room is small, pleasant, bland; it might be a room in a low-end hotel on Arden, or on Roseline, or Asenath, or anywhere. He flips the blinds on the small window overlooking the city (the town, it's a good-sized town, by any objective standard), and curls up with the handheld, and doesn't sleep till well after midnight.
But the next day he walks into the main Archive building a little before noon, heart beating hard.