Mmhmm. Want to see what I have so far?

Sure. You draw things to remember them?

Yup. My memory is pretty good but mostly for things I've seen and heard, not as much for things I've thought about, so this helps with that. She puts away the notes she was transcribing from and picks up the sheet she was transcribing to, with its columns of little sketches. I'll probably do one in string, to have for the talk itself, this is good to memorize from but might be a little distracting while I'm there.

In string? I talk to myself so I can remember what I'm thinking.

She nods. How I'd do it in string is like this: these are the main topics - she gestures across the top row of pictures - and then these are the things I want to remember to talk about within those main topics - each column under them - and each of those gets a knot in the string, with bigger knots for more important things or things with topics within them. I still have to memorize what the knots mean, but then I can hold the whole thing in my hand while I'm talking and it'll help me remember what I wanted to talk about, and I can still watch everyone while I'm doing it to see what they think of what I'm saying.

Huh. I haven't given talks but I don't think I'd forget what to say, exactly. More like how to get it through to people, that's what's hard for me.

Nod. Maybe you can come up with a way to draw that? I think seeing how people are reacting is more important to me than to you anyway, you might not mind having a drawing to keep looking at.

Yeah, I will just get nervous if I try to guess what they think because I'll guess they're thinking what I think.

Hug. Yeah, guessing what people might be thinking is a bad idea, what I do isn't guessing.

It's just nice guessing. You decide something nice and guess that.

It's really not - one of the things I do a lot of is notice when people are sad or angry or scared and do something about it so they aren't any more, I couldn't do that if I was just guessing people were happy all the time.

Not that they're happy, that they're nice.

I'm not guessing that, either.

Here's a way I could probably show you - next time we go watch some debates, I can usually tell how those are going to end before they do, who's going to win or if it's going to end in a different way than somebody winning is pretty obvious from their body language even though I can't understand most of what they're saying.

That's bad, though, it means people are choosing winners off stupid irrelevant things.

Not really? Most of how I can tell is by watching how the people debating feel about their own and the other person's points, if someone makes a good point and they and the other person know it that usually means they're going to win. Sometimes it's other things - sometimes someone has a good point but just isn't good enough at talking about it - but usually it's that.

You can tell that just by looking at people?

Mmhmm. It's mostly a kobold thing, I haven't met anyone here yet who's very good at it at all, but I can do that.

Okay.

He turns back to his fountain.

And she goes back to her notes for a while; eventually she puts them away.

I'm going to go for a walk, do you want any spells before I go?

I think I should have enough to make this work, he says frustratedly.

Something not working?

Well, it's not good enough yet, is it?

I dunno, is it? It's your fountain, you're the one who decides that.

It's not good enough yet. But it will be. 

Grin, hug, mmhmm.

Are there any spells you might want? I'm probably going to be gone until dinnertime.