Still giggling.

Still giggling.

Stiiiiill giggling.

Okay there we go. "Wow," he says. "What a coincidence. —did the language come through okay?"

"Seems like it! That's very handy. So anyway yeah I'm probably one of the last two living Earth dragons and I only think it's two because my parents are both alive."

"That's incredible. —oh, up to you, but you might want to keep the mindspeech channel open by default, I cannot overstate how useful it is to be able to have fully private conversations. Elves have much better hearing than humans; I'm soundproofing this room with illusioncraft, I do that by default most of the time, but it doesn't work as well in open spaces and there's times when it would be rude or otherwise notable and times when the person I need to talk to isn't in the same room to begin with."

"Okay, that seems probably harmless. Uh, warn me if you're gonna do load-bearing magic. I can control my suppression thing but it also works without activation or feedback based on what my naive opinion of the magic would be."

"That sounds simultaneously very useful and very inconvenient. And yeah, I noticed that I couldn't put an illusion on you directly, I had to come up with a clever workaround to make you look less obviously strange and interesting on the way up here from the carriage."

"I can let you do it, if it's important, that's not hard or anything, but I didn't know you were trying, so..."

"Yet another reason why it would be useful to be able to talk to you without anyone else noticing!"

"And you can do that too, having explained it. Uh, what happened to the elf I put to sleep for trying to kidnap me?"

"He remains asleep. I'm... really not sure what to do about him when he wakes up. Possibly just tell him that he dreamed the whole thing, which would honestly be more plausible than any version of the thing that actually happened. But if he doesn't buy that he could make trouble for us."

"What about his, uh, slave, the one who did not fall asleep and did get kicked in the nuts."

"He has seen a healer and been reassured that my family doesn't blame him for any of this. He's fine for now. We might end up buying him if his current owner does decide to blame him for everything; I don't want him confirming the 'found a magic human by the side of the road' story under torture and also, you know, don't want him getting tortured in the first place."

"Naturally. This is really a very good language transfer power, it's idiomatic and everything."

"I like my magic! I wish I lived in a world where I didn't have to hide two-thirds of it!"

"Well, you know, that part could be worse."

"True. Uh, speaking of which - your options for safely existing in this world are 'we pretend you don't exist', 'we pretend we own you', or 'Mother goes to ask the dragons if you can stay with them', and I'm not at all sure the dragons will say yes. Even though you are... also in some sense a dragon. Although you're definitely in a better position that way than if you weren't. So, uh, I'm sorry about what a bad set of options that is."

"What does pretending to own me consist of?"

"I'm... not entirely sure how to answer that question, never having had to explain it before."

"To whom would you keep up this pretense and how often would I be seen thereby, what purpose would you be pretending I had qua property, what are the typical markers of property behaviorally and sartorially..."

"Well - you've met Lalaima and Asem and Vilau, and you've seen how they are with me. That's the way it is for most of the humans in this household, although the ones who are originally from outside Grandfather's lands tend to be more deferential, and you don't look local, you look more northwestern and this is the southeast. You'd have to pretend to be about like that to anyone who wasn't a member of my immediate family - even Grandfather doesn't actually know I'm a halfblood, we weren't sure enough that it would be safe to tell him. I picked those three for the expedition because I knew they'd definitely keep quiet about anything weird they saw, but I'd rather not give them any more deadly secrets to keep if I can help it, it's not fair to them."

"Uh-huh. And how would we go about pretending I don't exist?"

"We'd find you somewhere to hide - I'd probably dig out an extra basement somewhere under the castle with magic and then put permanent soundproofing and assorted other concealment illusions on it - and sneak you food and books and so on, probably by having me teleport in and conjure things once every few days."

"Can these solutions be combined with the ask-dragons option?"

"Mm, yes? And for that matter they can be combined with each other, I can dig you a place to hide and hide you there but you can come out occasionally and pretend to be one of ours who's not around often. Humans in this province have pretty good freedom of movement, at least compared to anywhere else, it wouldn't be that weird."

"Okay, a mixed strategy sounds ideal. Pretend I'm yours when I'm not introverted enough to pretend I don't exist, wait for dragons. Thank you for your hospitality."

"You're welcome. Is it weird that I'm embarrassed not to have solved interspecies relations yet? Like - I already knew it was important, but now we've got a visitor and my world is inadequate and I clearly haven't been doing enough to fix it!"