Wow. "Wow! That's - really great! I don't know how to do that." That helps explain why Liushna is such a great person! "I haven't heard that more powerful druids can, either, I just assumed they just get more spells and the spell lasts longer until it's enough in practice. I should ask Voshrelka if her forest knows a better way." Feather can't think of a reason such a power would be secret if it existed, but she can't ask the senior druids of Ravounel anytime soon, so Voshrelka will have to do. "I don't know any specific animals I'd want to talk to yet, though. Maybe if one of the birds has something interesting to say I'll go talk to them some more. It takes ten minutes to cast the spell for talking with all the birds, though."

“I don’t think Druids can, it’s a strelta,* Imazi and Shalyene get those and Druids don’t.”

*hex

Feather doesn't know much about how mages other than druids and clerics work, and tends to round them all to wizards and sorcerers, and Liushna isn't a wizard.

It would be immensely frustrating and unfair if sorcerers could have unlimited speak with animals and druids couldn't. Of course Liushna isn't the one she's frustrated with. She's even likely to raise some of her children as druids! The itarii are the only people outside the forests who Feather ever met who have their own druids and she respects them immensely for it. If she wasn't at the convention it would be the highlight of her year to discover that. She wrote home about it, of course, and she expects some people will fly to visit them and try to establish ties. Druids outside the Forest, but closer than any other forest, are Important.

"I wish I could learn to," she still says wistfully. Maybe if she lives many reincarnated lives and becomes very very Wise she can learn to become an imazi, whatever that is.

“I don’t know how you would but I have discovered so many things to be possible since coming here!”

"I've mostly discovered very many things I don't understand yet, which is less of a surprise, but yes, I think almost anything is possible! If you're Wise enough, and try hard and long enough, just like with adventuring." Feather contemplates how many risks she'd be willing to take, to eventually learn to speak with animals at will. Of course she'd take all the risks if they were just to herself but she has Greystripe to think about, and a responsibility to the whole Forest.

"Right now I'm working on speaking while I'm an owl, without using a spell. Third circle druids can do it, I haven't got it down yet but I have a teacher for it back home. And on changing shapes more times every day, that's just a lot of meditation and hard work on my own. Something druids don't already know how to do is very far away, but it feels so liberating to know it exists, right? To meet a friendly person who knows how, and not just - hear a story about a dragon far away or something. I'm very glad I met you." She smiles widely; she's pretty sure by now that itarii use smiles like humans do.

(Well. Her kind of humans. The Chelish humans don't seem to smile at all, in comparison.)

"I don't think the Wisdom thing is universal, I cast from cunning and sorcerers cast from splendor, we just use wisdom for making good life choices and not for becoming incredibly powerful. I'm glad I met you too!" (Even if she is gladder that she met Voshrelka. Feather is deeply confused but she's also a sweet person.)

"I don't mean casting from Wisdom, I just mean - understanding and learning some things is more suited to wisdom than cunning. Wizards do math or something and that needs Cunning, we try to understand people and empathize with them and that needs Wisdom." Wisdom is best because it helps you learn to become someone else who has more cunning or splendour or whatever else you need.

"I think probably being able to do things like resurrect the dead and give people new powers is more based on achieving phenomenal cosmic power than empathizing with people. Not that empathy isn't great! But I would really like to resurrect the dead." 

Two days ago Feather would have said only clerics can resurrect people because the gods rule the afterlives where the souls are, except apparently druids can reincarnate dead people!

"I'd like for you to be able to do it, too!" she says instead.

"Voshrelka says it's fifth circle, which is so high, but--people get there! Apparently!"

"Fifth isn't that high. I mean, I know people at fifth, I hope to make fifth myself eventually and not die on the way. Archmages are at ninth and it's a surprise we have several on the same continent. I think you can make fifth as a cleric! If a god sponsors you, I'm not sure which god sponsors wanting to resurrect people but probably a Good one?"

"I think I should probably just try to get there as a Shalyene instead of trying to find a god that likes what I'm up to enough to help me get stronger faster." 

"How do you know you can learn to resurrect people as a shalyene and all you need is more power? You already know what shalyene can do, but you didn't didn't know resurrection was possible. Unless you think you can invent it? I think I'm confused about how shalyene get new spells."

"From our patrons! And from other Shalyene."

"What are patrons?" Is this something she's supposed to know? 

"...The Itarii have a good relationship with the spirits around our mountains, and we work with them for magic. Most of them just work with the Imazi, but particularly powerful ones can empower Shalyene. We're more like clerics than like druids or sorcerers." 

"Oh! That explains a lot! You said you weren't a cleric so I assumed you were some kind of sorcerer.  I've never heard of spirits making clerics like that. Does that mean you - pray to them? Are there different spirits who want different things from their followers? I don't think druids have dealings with spirits that aren't - being an animal or plant at the moment, and I always thought they're not sentient, or at least not normally. Are they - well, all right? Are they happy, do they suffer..."

"Shalyene don't directly talk to spirits much. Imazi do more of that, and it's a more--equal--relationship than clerics have with gods. They're...different from people, but like, in a different direction from how animals are different from people? Mostly they're alright but they're possible to hurt or anger." 

Oh good, it doesn't sound like there's another burning moral emergency over in the spirit world. ...the other Good druids would have told her if there was, she's being unfair.

"That sounds great! So - you hope you'll get to raise the dead at fifth circle, but there haven't been fifth circle shalyene or imazi among the itarii until now?"

“Or if there were it didn’t get into the histories. If someone left home to get stronger, and succeeded but never made it home…anyway, yeah.” It’s sort of a weird way of putting it, though, why wouldn’t they be able to? It’s probably just, like, a cure spell but bigger.

You can't cure the dead! Curing is for the body; raising is for the soul.

"How are you still getting spells when the spirits are back home and you're here? Did some spirits follow you around?"

“I don’t know, I can’t talk to them.”

"I guess clerics can't really talk to their gods either. ...it's maybe a bit clearer to me now why you call the world Gozreh, if all the spirits in the world can sort of act as little gods." This is fascinating and Feather has a ton of questions that Liushna probably can't answer, such as 'what happens if the spirit empowering you is reincarnated as a normal fox or something'?

"I think - one thing I should learn from all this is that the Forest should reach out more to people outside it. We live close by and we have things to teach each other, and we can help one another, and - we're too used to thinking the outside world is hostile, but not all of it is. Maybe someone in the Forest knows about the itarii outside it but most people don't and I think they should."

“Surely the Itarii in the forest must know something.”

"Maybe they do! I never asked them, because I didn't know what to ask."