I understand now why Harsut insisted I join him to Sozar’sep for this round of trade. While I’m sure he genuinely wanted to help me see the world (you and Dad would never have had me leave without a trusted chaperone), I think he had another motive: he knew my black-and-red fur, with its distinctive split, closely resembles that of a felinar who was very famous here about 200 years ago. A certain Magdi was a musical virtuoso who lived most of her life in Sozar’sep; apparently, she pioneered the steel-string guitar and was an accomplished composer. I’d never heard of her (and I guess you at home hadn’t either), but here she’s remembered fondly. People approach me and ask if I’m Magdi’s descendant, and I have to disappoint them. When that happens, and Harsut is with me, he steps in, gently guiding the conversation, drawing out stories and anecdotes from them, as though he orchestrated our encounters from the start.  
Harsut is a master in talking to elves, and believe me, some talent is needed to have a conversation. It’s not about language: every elf knows at least three of them. It is more than that, everyone has an idiosyncratic mix of laconicism and oversharing: some things are so well-known and obvious as not to be worthy of any elaboration, other things are a reason for extended storytelling involving personal anecdotes. Surely, between them, they quickly find a common ground, but with outsiders, they often run the conversation into a cul-de-sac of incomprehension or slopes of rambling tangents. Harsut, with the help of a good conversation starter, can smoothly guide the discourse, employing well-placed questions and insincere nods to open them up and to skip digressions. The naga says that’s his way to “cut out the crap” and “assay the elvish market” (and seeing his success, it seems to work).  
When I’m alone, it’s much more complicated: people will use outdated names for places, mention past kings and queens as if they died yesterday, and fixate on facts long relegated to the footnotes of history books. Since I resemble Magdi the musician, many inquiries are about music and art. They will sing me old melodies, those tunes that everybody knows, that are just in the air, and tell me about the people who wrote them. Magdi, for example, is the one behind the old nursery rhyme about the girl and the lamb, you know the one.

But, Harsut warned me, one must not trust too much the recollections of the elves. Most of them are overly sure they remember everything correctly, but their memory, while exceptional, still falls into the same traps as other people. If we embellish some personal stories, even unintentionally, you can imagine how ornate and elaborate some elvish memories are, having centuries of retellings to mold them. Their lapses can be equally impressive: if we are not sure what we were doing on specific occasions or periods, they can let entire years slip into a murky half-oblivion.

Conversation in Sozar'sep [3 of ?]