He nods seriously. "Thank you. I should go finish reading your books so I can give them back to you and write new ones."

"I'm really impressed that you can already read them instead of just some of the words in them."

"There were words I didn't know but I can guess them from the words that are near them and thinking what makes sense, and lots of times the same words are somewhere else so I can tell if my guess was right."

"Do you still have my pen?"

He immediately pulls it out of his robes.

She holds out her hand for it.

He doesn't look happy, but he gives it back.

"It'll run out of ink eventually," she says. "I'm going to find out what kinds of pens there are for drawing, and maybe whoever does drawing pens will be able to do this kind too."

"I can do it. I took it apart and looked - I was really careful - and we don't have anything for making things that small but I could make a bigger one, and I'll think of how to make it small."

"And you put it back together -" She draws a mark on her hand. "And it still works. ...You would hate my world so much."

"I'd die," he agrees solemnly. "And if your Emperor was my dad instead of my dad I think I'd mess up a lot before I did. I don't take things apart I can't put back together, that'd be mean and make me even more awful."

"You aren't awful."

"If I broke your pen it'd be another bad thing about me existing that I have to be good enough to fix."

"Where'd you get the idea that you have to do that at all, anyway?"

"It's just obvious. How could anyone live with themself if the whole universe would just obviously be much better if they'd never existed at all?"

"Lots of people do, actually. Maybe not so much here. Some of them don't think about whether they're making the world better, or don't think it's their problem, or think they are but don't think about it in enough detail to really know, or think that's an unreasonable standard, or try but fail and think trying's good enough, or take credit for things people around them do..."

"Most people aren't the reason their mother is dying."

"I don't think that's why people think like that. ...Childbirth is pretty often fatal in my species and some others if somebody tries it without a healer on hand."

"I'll fix that."

"That would be great, but I brought it up because those kids go on living even if their families can't afford to resurrect their moms and I don't think they usually feel nearly as intensely about it as you do."

"Then they're ...wrong." He looks at her as if this is obvious. "If they killed their mother and the only reason she's dead is there's not enough money to bring her back how could you not have to earn enough, as fast as you possibly can..."

At that he just looks confused. "People don't like me because they liked my mother and now she's dying. Once I've fixed everything they'll like me."