"...I think a lot of people are worried about what it might do if it gets bored. The fountains are shooing that fear some but we've never interacted with athrai before. Makes you nervous."

"I mean, it might do unpleasant things. That's a risk with athrai. But it won't kill people. And I think for as long as it's still panicked about the Neuroi it'll keep being helpful as best it knows how."

"What are some examples of unpleasant things? The UDF might or might not 'forgive' a couple reasonable things given all the help it's given us already..."

"Making someone disappear and then reappear fifty or a hundred years later in the same place they left... turning someone into a talking animal... all really small-scale individual stuff, they don't do bad things to large groups of people, at least not near Haela."

"We have cursebreakers. I'd give them even odds against athrai magic, even, I can do lots of things but none of them as well, so. Yeah, the fountains outweigh that by so much it's not even funny."

"Yeah."

"...Did you learn to read in just English? I know Suomic and Ostkav, they're different."

"Yeah, I haven't had time to achieve literacy in the rest of them. Teach me!"

So she does.

Literacy! Yay!

Presumably he was already literate in his other language.

Which Gren would be interested in learning the bare basics of, at least.

Sure, he can do that. It's called Haelahar. Here's the alphabet. Here's a few basic words and sentences. Here's a nice poem he remembers about his family's mountains.

Memorization is a skill she has honed reasonably well. And she knows several languages already - makes it easier to pick up a new one.

She's no prodigy at it, though.

Tiro still has fun teaching her. And he's pretty good at it.

Sooner or later her free time is up. "See you some other time."

Meanwhile, the UDF would really like to know how is is best to talk to an athra, and learn his language. Gren will be writing up the basics for them, already.

Tiro is happy to teach Haelahar to anyone who wants to learn Haelahar. He can also probably convince the athra to give itself the same language-comprehension magic he has, although convincing athrai to do things is kind of hit-and-miss even when they're really helpful.

"The problem is that athrai don't think the same way people do and I really don't expect good results from trying to teach someone how to talk to them. I'll do my best, but my big advantage here is the fact that I grew up knowing about them and hearing stories about them and I can usually make good guesses about what they're up to."

Yes, they've noticed that it doesn't seem to quite get humans. Things like facial expressions.

Would he like the chance to ask one of the more powerful precognitives in the world how the athra will react? She's rather vague, but they've already determined she can see its actions from some experiments earlier.

That sounds really useful but he's not sure what to ask. What do they want him to try to get out of the athra next? He could inquire after plausible strategies and see what the precog thinks.

They've been organizing their requests not by how useful something would be, but by how terrible it would be if it somehow went horribly wrong.

They know that the athra seems to like beautiful things so that is another criterion they've been organizing by.

A forge that helps its user create whatever they like, couched as being for the best craftsmen in the world. An artifact that can let people see other kinds of light than the ones humans usually can. Weapons to fight the Neuroi with or direct intervention against them. Buildings of various sorts in various places. An artifact that can grant people refuge and safety. Large quantities of raw materials would be nice but they don't expect that to go over well given what they know about it.

Empowering people as witches and a tame Neuroi to study would be very nice but these are rated high on the 'potential doom' scale.

Tiro predicts that the forge will go over well, the light artifact might or might not work but won't be a disaster, he has no idea if he can get it to cough up weapons and isn't sure what will happen if he tries, buildings seem worth trying and hard to have go too terribly wrong, refuge and safety definitely sounds worthwhile... he agrees that large quantities of raw materials sounds hard but if they're interested he could see if he can get it to raise a mountain full of nice ores or something. He has never heard of an athra raising a mountain but it probably won't be dangerous to ask for one.

What does the precog think?

The precog thinks... That the athra will do one thing and then go away? Maybe? She is confused.

She gets an emotional reaction to the results of a course of action so complex situations like this are iffy. 

The forge and refuge seem most likely. They would much rather have the forge but want to toss around plans and see if they can get a plan that doesn't make the athra go away.

Okay... what if Tiro tries his hardest to get the athra to explain itself, can they get a more useful emotional reading under those conditions...?

The precog's mild drug habit is helpful. They can have her decide to have some only if the answer to a particular question is 'yes' and get clear readings that way.

It seems that it will decide to spend a long time away crafting one of the two things. But it will be much more impressive and useful.

...The forge is a long term concern, going to be used for prototyping and development and art. The item for refuge is needed now. And the precog is now exhausted for the day so let's go with that.

All right then. He can go ask for a forge and a refuge and try to get it to do the refuge first and make the forge more impressive.

And right after would he like to try a dozen teleporters to see if one can get him home?