"Maybe it's because she's so happy all the time and the stereotype of hills people is that they are drab and lifeless? That might be it. She might not be happy when you meet her though on account of dying grandfather."

"Yes."

Meanwhile, in the carriage: "It'd seem like you and Tia are very little alike, except in the obvious visual sense."

"On innumerable levels," she agrees. "We are both very intelligent and that is just about where the similarities end."

"So she doesn't do your finding-stuff-out-even-pre-magic thing?"

"She does not. Or only in a very different context. Her specialty is the sort of thing the Dochenzas traditionally get up to - inventions, engineering, mechanical cleverness."

"Yeah, that sounds very little like - detective work. Or whatever you'd call it."

"'Detective work' is a reasonable term, if a little narrow."

"Narrow how?"

"I do not only find out the kinds of things that detective work is for."

"What else?"

"Not so much. Example?" suggests Kiri.

"Examples," she says, "would also be too narrow. I suppose I could put it like this... the same thing that I do with information I have already sought out, to solve problems or answer questions, I am also doing the rest of the time with whatever information I happen to come across about anything. I don't stop doing it except when I am thoroughly occupied with something else. And it is very hard to thoroughly occupy me."

"And this goes on even when there isn't something in particular you need to know, you're just - assembling data as it comes into your possession, in the background?"

"Hmm. Yes," she says. "About my immediate surroundings, if nothing else important is going on, and usually even if it is. That is part of why I told you that I would mind my own personal space, when we first met. It does not take very much extra effort to always be aware of exactly how far away from you I am."

"That sounds very - intense."

"I suppose that it is." She shrugs slightly. "I am used to it. Any less would feel... muffled."

"How do you do it, have you always or did you pick it up on purpose?"

"I developed the habit over time, when I was very young. Not entirely deliberately. It is just - obvious. Comfortable. Something along those lines."

"It almost reminds me of my self-examination habit, which I also developed when I was young - but more deliberately and less constantly, it sounds like."

"Hmm. Yes. I am always paying attention. It's convenient that I have so much of it to spare."

"It sounds like it'd be necessary. Did you notice an expansion at all when you inherited? I did - I can barely remember what it was like before, but I have notes asserting that there was a jump in sensory space once it had constant input from all sources of warmth and especially nearby human beings."

"Yes," she says. "Although I haven't been thinking of it that way. I have more or less always, certainly for as long as I can clearly remember, had enough attention to distribute it among all available senses with enough left over to analyze as needed, all before touching on the sort of everyday mental activity most people seem to indulge in. That has remained true while the size of 'all available senses' has grown."

"I've never had opportunity to test if my space expands to fit extra more than a couple of people at a time if they crowd in around me," muses Kiri. "There's enough room for, say, Aleko and Jayce simultaneously without being too crowded; I don't know what would happen if I also added Loel and Patience, both of whom have also been known to allow it."