They lift their head up again.

"Things you might really want .. will you be wanting a conjuration of another similar meeting hall, or perhaps some other design?"

"I thank you for the invitation, though I do not wish to eventually impose. Ah, I should return to the ice house." A cloud of smoke billows ice-house-wards with some haste.

She considers the question.

"The meeting hall was nice," she agrees, "although I'm not sure its going to be the first thing people think of. I more meant ... so lots of people are resurrectable now, and that's great, but it was a really big change. Too big, I think. But there are still lots of things that would be nice that are ... smaller."

"Things like the, uh, portal-turtle village restructuring. Or — it's not the harvest yet, but I think everyone would love it if we didn't have to worry about food this winter. Or firewood, for that matter."

"Wishes that do as much as they can are often heavy in consequence, but would you have been satisfied, doing any less?"

From the smoke appears a new pair of models - representing yet another possible design for a portal-turtle village.

"Food and firewood .. I could harvest trees, but the resulting material could rot, and then that would have been wasteful.."

"I wouldn't have been satisfied," she quietly agrees. She studies the dust of the square for a moment.

"Ah — we do already have areas set aside for sustainably harvesting trees," she points out. "Everywhere that's not good, flat farmland for more picky crops, really. Mainly the hill. The issue isn't so much getting the wood as cutting it, transporting it, drying it, and caring for the trees afterward. It's a constant chore, because we go through a lot of firewood every winter."

And then she realizes what Eeferi is implying.

"Oh! But you don't need to help with that unless you want to. You've already done so much for us. Nobody would mind if you wanted to just laze around and talk to people for a while. If you do want to help with the firewood, though, we could take a walk up the hill and I could show you where we're coppicing from this year?"

"It sounds as though drying the wood is the step most useful for preservation- and I do not know how to personally make wood dry much faster. If your facilities to do so are already full, then perhaps I should hold off on increasing your harvest.

"Ah, that is a good idea, to speak more thoroughly with the populace. Though I am not lazing, exactly- a large portion of my focus is on the continued development of the new Genie."

From the smoke, the figure is duplicated several times- each instance traveling towards other villagers.

"I do wonder .. what do you want to do with your time? When we met, you were, as I understand it, fishing. I do not know what your regular schedule of duties or activities looks like, nor what you prefer to do when nothing else is scheduled."

"I didn't mean to—"

Satenag sighs, and leans against the fence of the garden.

"Normally, I would be out fishing with Egresta," she agrees. "But we have stores, and some other fishing boats. It's not too bad if I take a day off. We have to, to repair the nets, or on account of weather."

She glances toward Penþa's house. "And normally, if there were weather, I might find someone who needed help with something, or work on my own household chores. But I think that today I want to ... walk around and think about how our lives could be different, and talk to people about it."

"Ah, then let me ask this directly. Would you prefer if I did not spread myself out to interview the village today- as that might interfere with your opportunity to do so? Separately, would you prefer my presence during your walk, or is some other arrangement more pleasing to you?"

"Oh! I see."

She reflects on her feelings for a moment.

"I don't think it would interfere if you were to talk to everyone; multiple people can be in a conversation. And I would definitely enjoy your company on my walk, if that won't spread you too thin."

"It is not so much that multiple people can be in one conversation, as that many conversations could occur in such a pattern as to potentially interfere with plans you may have had.."

"Well!" Eeferi appears to clap their hands together. "One moment please."

They spiral upwards, conjuring a spyglass from nowhere in particular and giving the impression of taking in an observation of the whole town. Near the ground, an apparent burst of wind seems to blow some of their smoke outwards throughout the village before it recondenses.

The spiraling pillar of smokes collapses back in on itself as the spyglass fades, replaced with what appears to be a map of the village- however, many locations on the map are marked with either a dot of color, a symbol of some sort, or both.

They hold the map out horizontally towards Satenag, ensuring it's at a readable height. "How would you like to start?"

"Ooh — is this where everyone is right now?" she asks, peering at the map. "That's much easier than tracking people down. Let's see ..."

She points at a cluster of people down by the shore.

"Let's start with them," she suggests.

"It is not wholly accurate to say this is a representation of where the people in the village I'm aware of were as of the last time I checked, but it is mostly accurate! Though I suppose it doesn't necessarily align with where they are now- however large changes this quickly for humans are rather unlikely."

..

"Happily." The figure nods, then appears to head in that general direction.

Down on the beach, a loose circle of villagers are discussing the impact of potential wishes on the village's industry.

"... which is why I think it makes more sense to wish for things that will improve our ability to do work, instead of removing the need for work," Gamesa comments. "Take weaving — we could end up not needing to wear clothing. But a lot of people like clothing, and if we could do more weaving overall, perhaps people could even end up with more varied or fancier clothing," he muses, "which seems like a better outcome, at least to me."

"In at least one case, being much more capable of certain kinds of work directly leads to less need for other kinds of work."

The others think about that for a moment.

"Like ... if everyone is capable of doing something independently, then nobody needs to take on the work of organizing a communal version?" one of their interlocutors hazards. "Or do you mean something else?"

"That seems to be another example.  I was considering that, in the context of a desert civilization, if everyone were capable of lifting many times their own weight with ease, then there may be much less call for camels of burden. Ah, I've thought of another. If everyone could make themselves heard by whoever they wished to speak to at any distance, there would be little need for messengers."

That provokes another thoughtful round of nods.

"I'm not sure that applies to weaving, though," Gamesa remarks.

"Unless people were capable of producing their own cloth," Satenag suggests. "Actually, I think there are rather a lot of professions that would be rendered obsolete if people were capable of creating things from nothing. I'm not sure how feasible that is, though."

The approaching figure appears to step into the same space as the already present one.

"I see no reason Wishes could not grant a more permanent variety of what Genies can already do, though I imagine the wording to ensure the ability works exactly as desired could be quite tedious to craft." From the smoke forms a simple wooden mannequin displaying a formal dress in a foreign style. Blues and greens smoothly transition to the other, with patterns of gold thread outlining reptilian silhouettes.

"Though such a Wish runs into the danger any crafter poses- of making something dangerous, perhaps even to themselves." A stand with many spears and two swords forms. One of the spears falls, its tip nearly clipping the figure. The weapons and stand fade away quickly.

Gamesa frowns in thought.

"... and probably trying to make a Wish like that restricted to only producing harmless things would be even more complicated or difficult," he muses. "Still ­— it's not like there aren't already dangers associated with, say, metalworking. So creating things safely is probably a skill that could be learned like other crafts."

"I think there are ... limits you could put in that would not be too complicated and make it harder to hurt yourself by accident," Morvalha opines. "Like, making it so that you cannot create items suspended above yourself, or unintentionally. But I agree that it would be hard to cover all the corner cases."

"I imagine that such cases would grow in number as more Wishes are granted, as some may react unexpectedly- or even be unknown to a crafter in the future."

"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."

"How would a wish like that determine what would be salient, anyway?" Gamesa wonders. "Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I'm really not sure of what the line is between what can be done without creating a person and what can't be."

"We could include a restriction that the information-gathering Wish may not be implemented through the creation of a person, and then observe if said Wish works. If it does not, then another method would be desired."

"Well, yes. Fair enough," Gamesa agrees. "I'm fairly sure that no matter what else we decide, Penþa's going to insist that all wishes be made with that restriction, and probably a good deal more."

"Hmm. I wonder whether you could wish to be able to know whether wishes would work without actually attempting to wish them. It would save time and make it easier to learn the rules without accidentally wishing for something terrible."