"When you try forcing it what happens?"

"I feel bad about not caring about the right things and then I think about that."

"Hmmm... I mean, I know you care about people being happy in the abstract..."

"Yeah. It's just not what makes working on things satisfying, usually. Maybe the reason I pick a project and care about it, but not the reason it's fun to do all day, and not the reason I'm happy when it's done."

"When I give somebody something and it's not a sort of rote, 'happy Khersentide have a set of teacups', thing, but a spontaneous thing, I start from noticing something that they'd like, or that they could use help with. Like how I thought you'd like the jumping-around spell because sometimes you look like you're going to figure out how to jump that high without magic at all; or how I knew you were upset over the time sliding and thought a watch might help. I bet you could notice that kind of thing if you tried. I think it's okay if other things about making the thing you give the person are interesting in between the part where you decide to make it and the part where you give it to them."

"Khersentide's a popular holiday that involves gift giving on my plane. And that was not a thing he mentioned when I asked him what he was looking for from you."

"What did he say he wanted?"

"He said 'maturity', and I said this would only be a better answer than 'age' if he could tell me what that meant in a way you could work on instead of wait for, and he said that he prefers a different attitude to curiosity than you display - more wonder, less impatience - and that you would probably need the skill of respecting adults' decisions without always needing to hear or be able to guess at the reasons. Well, he said adults, but Nerdanel has a head start and you should probably mind her too if it comes up."

"She's not dumb," he says as if this were a major concession. "But I'm only going to get more impatient if I have to wait."

"He thinks you might grow to be a less impatient person in general. This happens pretty frequently as people get older, so it's not an unreasonable thing for him to think."

"I don't think I'll get less impatient."

"Well, maybe you could channel some smartness into some patience and then actually have to wait less, that seems like a good tradeoff."

"How do you channel smartness into patience?"

"What would it look like if you were already patient?"

"I wouldn't care when things happen. I wouldn't care about the time slide."

"Do you think I probably am or at least seem to people like Mahtan more patient than you are?"

"...yeah."

"So you would not have to not care about when things happen or not care about the time slide to be more patient. What makes you think I'm more patient than you, what've you seen me do?"

"You're a grownup. You don't get mad at people as much. You know more things. I dunno."

"Well, I'm a grownup for my species, but I don't think people would have bought that they should treat me that way if I didn't act like it, and I don't think 'acting like it' is about how well educated I am or how frequently I experience anger. More guesses?"

"Sure they would, because you look it. If I acted this way but looked grownup I'd still be treated as one."

"...Well, I'm not sure that's true but I don't have a way to demonstrate that," she says, "so leaving that aside - what does me being a grownup or feeling angry or knowing things have to do with how patient I am?"

"If someone says to me 'no, you can't do that, do it in a year', I'd get mad at them and try to find a way around it and do it anyway. You - well, maybe you'd do that, but you don't seem like you'd do it, and you know how to seem reasonable and stuff."

"If somebody told me I couldn't do something and had to do it in a year, I'd wonder if there was a reason before I got mad," she says. "Separately I'd wonder if there was a reason to wait, and if there was a reason for it to be a year in particular."