"That's a good point," one of the others chimes in. "If every new wish has lots of complicated clauses, then really knowing what's going on is going to effectively require everyone to know about them as they're made. And there will be so much to memorize, plus making sure people are informed, or having different versions of different wishes ..."

"Well, maybe that's another reason to stick with wishes that make people more capable of doing things the mundane way," Gamesa suggests. "That seems like it would be altogether easier to keep track of."

"It would be safer, to voluntarily limit all Wished wordings that way, though it would also limit the ability to use Wishes for more esoteric means.   Additionally, how does one determine what the limits of mundanity are?  What of cases where more than one personality inhabits a body?" A set of individually-marked masks attached by string and leather forms a belt around the dress.

"I mean, for the most important things — like resurrection — there could be exceptions," Gamesa replies. "Not every policy has to be strict. I'm ... not sure how prophets are relevant, though? Do you mean, like, whether skills that visitors bring from the other place count as mundane?"

"To the first, how would such policy be decided or enforced? Genies, their Masters, and the resultant Wishes could end up spreading faster and having larger impacts than a reasonable effort to contain them. To the second- is the other place mundane? What of the visitors themselves? Their traversal here?"

"Magic proliferation is a whole headache," Gamesa agrees. "But let me do the planting before you want the summer squash.*"

"To answer the question I can answer: we don't know if the other place is mundane or not. Certainly, the fair ones can do things that we cannot, but I've personally always hoped that it's for the same reason that someone on the hill can see things someone in the woods cannot, and that eventually we'll figure out how to build metaphorical towers. By the time they actually get here, the other people have no more magic than I do, though. They only bring skills and memory."

* Translator's note: Let me lay the groundwork before asking the most difficult questions.

"Perhaps the cost of traversing is their magic, or perhaps the other place is itself magical.  I expect knowing soon would require magic to tell, even if mundane methods could be employed eventually."

..

"I feel it would be prudent to point out that, to my knowledge, all capabilities of a Genie are either magic or thought. It seems to me that it would be difficult to expand what a Genie could do through mundane means only."

Gamesa stares at the roof of one of the houses.

"Maybe I explained the distinction I'm trying to make incorrectly," he suggests after a moment. "It's not that I really care whether abilities are supported by magic or not, it's that I think it matters whether we use wishes to ... do things which are entirely new, or enhance what is already there."

"Like — Satenag, we all saw your reaction to the big resurrection wish. There were a lot of things there that we had never even considered. There were some, to our credit, that we had, but there were a lot more that just came out of the deep water, which we wouldn't even have known about by default."

"I think if we aim for our first set of wishes to enhance things that we can already do, but that are difficult, time consuming, or expensive, we can make our lives better without as much risk of something unknown coming up like that."

"I do see where you're coming from, but I don't really think that's going to be enough. You've already admitted that such a policy may need exceptions," Morvalha points out. "And this strikes me as the kind of policy that only really works well without exceptions. Yes, we didn't think of everything we maybe should have, but that's a sign that we need to be more careful and learn from our experiences, not that we need to throw away the whole approach."

"Plus, I think that wishes that let us do something entirely new are more valuable precisely because we would have no other way to do those things. So refusing to use wishes like that is throwing away a lot of potential out of an abundance of caution."

"I have something .. not quite a story, I could share, that would perhaps be a useful metaphor."

"Let us imagine a mountain village, just above the treetops." The mannequin et al fade into smoke. A model village with animate dolls for 'citizens' forms.
"They have their organizer, and their blacksmith, and their loggers, and so on." Little costumes for the various dolls, the buildings specialize.
"In the center of the village, they have an ancient, magical mine." A fancy mine-entrance, complete with glowing lights.
"Each dawn, two in six of the miners of the village enter the mine. Each dusk, another two in six leave, hauling up precious gems, valuable metals, and durable stone." Animate hauling, the village sprouts a set of wooden planks with painted sun and moon symbols to indicate the time of day.
"This mine, being ancient and magical, is special.  If the miners do not keep watch and light on a mined section, then over time it will refill with stone, and occasionally ore or gem." The village is partly 'cut-away' to reveal this process. The mine is a single layer deep.
"However, this magic comes with a price. Sometimes, instead of valuable things, miners stumble into caves or caverns with monsters and magical treasures inside." Cloth dragon!
"Sometimes the monsters are friendly, sometimes they are mean. Sometimes they are cruel, or capricious, or violent. The monsters sometimes have their own magic-" The dragon breaths 'fire!' onto the miners (orange strips of cloth) "and sometimes they do not."
"The miners, as you might imagine, often do not like finding monsters, because terrible things usually happen to them, so the miners begin refusing to work."
"The village, now losing wealth, enacts a new plan. They will have the blacksmith forge armor and weapons, and they will equip these to specially trained guards- so that the miners are not weighed down by the extra material and can flee at the first sign of trouble.  The miners agree this is a good compromise, and the guards will be payed in the treasure the hostile monsters hide, and together both groups will prosper more." Now some of the miners are wearing guard outfits from the little blacksmith shop.
"This works, for a while, but now they have a new problem. The guards count as watching the mines, and so the mines no longer regenerate as much."
"The village spends six sixes of days and nights debating what to do, as their treasury slowly runs dry."
"Eventually, someone has a new idea. What if the miners dug deeper? This would spread the miners and guards out, allowing more to regenerate. After six more days and nights of debate, the proposal was accepted, and the new paths were assigned." The miners branch the mine downward.
"Not only does this work, it works very well. The deeper they mine, the richer the ground, revealing ever greater densities of valuable materials."
"However, this does not come without its own price. The deeper they mine, the more powerful, dangerous, and magical the monsters they encounter are."
"One day, a small group of the miners and guards face a monster too powerful for even their greatest treasures to defeat." A really big cloth dragon, with gemstones for eyes and rainbow scales!
"It eats several of the guards, and chases the miners out of its cavern." Associated animation.
"The other teams of miners and guards are forced to help, lest the beast escape the mine and devastate the village." A raging battle occurs!
"It is not easy, and many more are lost. Eventually, three guards combine the magic of the treasures they already have, and slay the malicious beast." A victory, but at what cost?

"The next day, the village begins debating. For they know the risks now. If they continue to mine, they may stumble on a monster so terrible it will escape the mines and utterly destroy them.. but also, if they continue to mine, they may acquire enough magical treasure to perhaps be able to hold off any monster attack. Not mining may be an option, but their treasury will run dry, and eventually the village will not be able to buy enough food.. and that is where the narrative ends, for their future is not yet written."

Gamesa strokes his chin.

"It's a well-illustrated story," he replies. "But I'm not sure the metaphor gets at the crux of our disagreement. The choices are not just to stop mining or continue mining, but rather how to mine. The miners could restrict themselves to the safest upper layers, say, or send only a single patrol with all their existing treasures, so that it is not so difficult to combine them."

He gives Eeferi a thoughtful look.

"What do you think you would do, in their situation?" he asks.

"The narrative ends before an exhaustive list of all the useful options, as such a list, if desired, would ideally be produced by some audience.. Though your point is taken."

..

"I find I somewhat do not want answer yet what I would do in that situation, for that reason. Though I do have one option in mind."

"Alright," Gamesa agrees. "Well — I do think that Eeferi has a point that we could just stop. I admit I don't like that option too much, but it is worth remembering."

"So the thing about the miner's story is — the magic isn't just useful for fighting monsters, is it, or why would they want it? And I think that's actually a fairly accurate part of the metaphor, because having more capabilities makes it easier to deal with other problems that come up. Either just because people have more free time, or because magic is useful for multiple things," Morvalha posits.

"In the story, they could hardly close up the deeper parts of the mine that they already excavated. We have already unknowingly breached the deeper levels, and we have to figure out how to live with that."

"I don't think your point about magical synergies is less true of the ... I'll call them 'cautious magics' that Gamesa would approve of, is it?" Satenag points out. "I don't really think that you're making a compelling argument for wishing for unprecedented things, which is a shame because I think that there is a good argument there."

"Unlike the miners, who find treasures at random, we can choose which treasures to get first. And we may not be able to choose the monsters, since they represent the unknown risks of wishing, but we can still aim for magics that are most useful in preventing other potential problems first. We might wish for a way to make people resistant to being cut, for example, and then conjuring a spear in a way that cuts you is less of a problem."

"One thing the miners do not know- are there other rules, to the mine? Perhaps with enough gathering of information, they can determine in advance what kinds of monsters or treasures various directions can uncover, even if they do not know what they will find in specifics."

"Yes — that's a good point, too," Satenag agrees. "We've learned at least a few ways that wishes can go wrong, and we can keep learning those ways as we go. It's just a matter of whether we can learn all the rules before a monster gets us."

"... can we ... wish for an explanation of the relevant dangers?" Morvalha wonders. "I mean, the big wish created a description for Satenag; this could be like that."

Satenag shivers.

"If we do, we should wish for a book, instead of the knowledge directly. Suddenly knowing something like that is an unnerving sensation," she answers. "But also, I'm not sure whether a wish like that is possible, actually. It seems to me like we might be able to wish for information about what wishes can do, but that the 'dangers' of wishing are really just unintended consequences, and the wish could hardly know what we intend better than ourselves."

"I suspect any enumeration of all possible dangers to be too large to fit into any usefully small book."

"Perhaps there would be value in a way to acquire summaries of what salient consequences a given Wish would have?"

There's general agreement.

"That would be valuable," Satenag agrees. "I wonder if we could have a policy of first wishing for information about what a wish would do before making it, now that we have a larger number of wishes to work with."

"Maybe we could wish to change the way wishing works, so that the warning about what it would do is built-in," Morvalha proposes.

Satenag crosses her arms.

"No! Nope. No, absolutely not. Even if that kind of wish worked, we absolutely should not wish to change how wishing works. That would be begging to get our nets tangled."