"Oh! You mean, is the person who chooses whether to fight the same as the person who fights. I thought you meant, is the person who chooses who to give their vote to the same as the one who fights, which is so obviously incorrect that I had no idea what you might actually be asking.

In a small town, yes, the person who chooses to fight is the person who fights. If fighting is necessary. It usually isn't, but the person needs to be able to fight.

Larger groups don't require that. A person who gets many votes might give some to many people, some people who are good at fighting and some who are good at thinking about when to fight.

Would you be interested in moving around to the places where fighting is most needed, with someone else deciding where and when?"

Usually people have the opposite question, worrying about getting drafted!

"I shouldn't do that now, now I think I can't fight people who aren't Jedi without killing them. But I can learn how to do that and maybe then I'll want to go places to help with fighting."

"Well, anyone you'd be fighting would be a criminal, so it'd be fine to kill them."

"Do you have - maybe this person did a bad thing, go and take them and bring them here, so we can talk to them and ask? At home we have that, I think it's good."

"Yeah, that seems good if you don't have undines!"

Their whole system is really relying on something. Maybe there's a species that can... see things that happened in the past?

"So, let me tell you about a few different kinds of things that can happen. 

If your job is to protect people's Freedom to Travel, then you don't need to care about things people might have done in the past. Knowing things might be useful to you, but it's not your job. If you find someone who wants to travel, you walk with them to the edge of the town. If someone stops them, you fight. If they don't, great, you did your job without fighting. 

If your job is to protect people's Freedom to Live, and someone says they don't have enough food, then the first thing to do is see what the town says. Maybe the town says, yeah they need more food. If they do but the person doesn't have food still, or if they say no, you don't fight. You ask a bigger group, maybe the whole country, to decide what to do. The only time you fight is if the country says that the person should have some particular food and then someone stops them, knowing that they are hurting a Freedom.

If a town says something, or a group of towns, that's not a Freedom. Only the whole country can say what a Freedom means, like this person needs to eat this particular food.

If you think that someone did something bad, there are three ways it could be:

If someone knows that they hurt someone's Freedom, then they'll think about it near an undine at some time. You don't need to 'bring them' anywhere, and you must not - doing that would violate their Freedom to Travel. Later, when they think about it near an undine, someone will kill them.

If someone thinks that they haven't done anything the town said not to do, but you think they hurt someone's Freedom, they are not a criminal. The problem is that the town didn't say clearly what to do. It should be very rare that someone doesn't know if they are doing what the town says or not.

The third possibility is that they did do something the town said not to do - like playing loud music in the room for sleeping - but they think they did not hurt anyone's Freedom. Then, they might be a criminal, but the whole country decides."

"Okay," he nods. "I think it will be good for me to do a different kind of work instead of that, here. The things I can do for that aren't things you need, probably, and it's not good for me to kill people even if they are criminals."

How about if they're Lei soldiers?

"No problem! I'm sure you'll find something that's good for you to do.

We talked about laws...

When the whole country decides something, they don't actually ask every person to say what they think. They just count the Freedom to Choose votes, which people give to each other like they do with the other Freedom votes.

The ten Freedoms start with Freedom to be Free, the most important, then Freedom to Live, and so on to Freedom to Choose, the least important. Sometimes two Freedoms talk about a thing and one of them has to be hurt. Then the less important one gets hurt.

To give votes to someone, go to the vote room in your town. Every town has one and everywhere in the Freedom Democracy should be a klick away from one or closer. It will have a rock like this" she points at the wall of the conversation pit, which has an inset bowl with an egg-shaped stone "and you put one into the hole here and wait. A kitsune will say something loudly when they're ready for you to say what you want to do, or open a door. Then they'll put the rock back.

The Freedom to be Free works like the Freedom to Choose, for making decisions, not fighting, unless someone tries to stop you from giving your vote or something like that. But the decisions are different: not was this thing that someone did necessary to protect a Freedom, but what laws should this town have, or how should the Freedom Democracy do things. If you want a job with the Freedom to be Free, there is more you need to know, but for most people it's not important. You can wait until you speak a language better."

"Can you say the freedom to be free thing a different way? And what magic do kitsunes have?"

"Giving someone your vote, for any Freedom, means two things: I want you to fight to protect my Freedom; and, I want you to make decisions about how to protect this Freedom for everyone.

The Freedom to Travel is mostly fighting, most of the time. Or, not actually fighting, usually, but walking around, talking to people, being ready to fight if needed. Decisions about how to protect the Freedom to Travel are like, which level do you walk on today - not big decisions.

The Freedom to Choose is more about the actual decisions you choose - should this child be with this family, and so on - not about fighting. The only time you fight is if someone can't go to the vote room, which is probably also an issue for their Freedom to Travel.

The Freedom to be Free is like that. The only time you fight is, again, if someone can't go to the vote room, or if the whole Freedom Democracy is in danger. But the decisions are important: what should the other Freedoms mean? Do we need to have an eleventh Freedom? Is there a very good reason to hurt a less important Freedom to protect the whole Freedom Democracy?

Kitsune can go from one place to another place, without walking or anything; they just are in the new place. They have to have been there before, and they can't do it if someone would see them."

So civics vs. practicalities. "I think I understand, thank you."

"So, what kinds of things are you good at, other than fighting? What kind of town do you want to live in?"

"Jedi can learn magic, so I can learn things you need, maybe. Now the best magic I know is to make myself fast and good at moving, but I can do other things and I can learn to do more other things. I can do healing, I can see a little bit what people are feeling, I can learn to do things with fire, I can learn to see what people are thinking maybe, I can see what will happen a very little bit and I can learn to do more. I can't learn everything - I probably can't learn to go places like a kitsune, I don't know any Jedi who can do that, but maybe if I look at a kitsune with the Force while they do that I can learn it that way. There are other things I know I can't learn but I don't have the words. I was learning to fight at home but I don't think I should do that here, it's not very safe if I'm the only Jedi. I was also learning - the thing where governments talk to each other - but I'm not ready to do that work. I usually like to travel but I don't want to do that right now.* Right now I need to learn your language and learn about this planet, so I should go someplace good for that."

* The Rafiik video is not cute, Raafis only do this when distressed.

"The town here is good for learning Sotalese. Which is my language, but not the language of the Freedom Democracy, since we have the Freedom to Speak. If you want to talk to people from other countries, and maybe travel, you might like a town near the border with Sient. And yes, Sotalese is a good language for that... and the town I'm thinking of can teach it to you too. Yeah. I think you should go to the town near the Sient border by sled. You can sleep on the sled if you need to." See how helpful and forthright they are, Lei?

"If you look at a kitsune with the Force, I think they won't be able to go anywhere, but I don't know. Maybe looking at the kitsune try to go will be interesting..."

He's not nearly as impressive as the report made him sound. It seems like the only thing he's really good at is fighting, and he doesn't want to do that. It would be neat, but not actually helpful to the whole country, if he learned, say, to make things cold. There would still be just one of him.

Oh.

"Would you be able to learn to look at a plant or animal - something that is alive but is not a person - and know what species a human could make from it, or even just if it is possible to make a person with that plant or animal? Or can you use the Force to somehow make a human choose a plant or animal that will make a person?" The report was not clear how that would actually work, but the demonstration with the dice made quite an impression on the Lei werewolf.

He can maybe handle another day of travel without breaking down in front of his companions but he's not nearly as sure of that as he'd like to be, the stress is really starting to get to him. "How many hours is the sled travel to Sient? And I might be able to learn to see things about human magic, yes - I will need to watch some humans do some magic and maybe watch some other people do magic too."

"It's one shift - ten hours - to the town I'm thinking of, Shelt-Li, which is close to Sient. The border is only a few minutes more. I can travel with you and do human magic on the sled. Let's see, what species haven't you seen, which are interesting... A wroth, and I'll make a wroth on the sled. What species have you looked at with the Force so far? Which ones were interesting?"

For a moment, when she starts talking about doing magic on the sled, it looks like he's about to burst into tears, though he quickly gets himself back under control without more than a slight hitch to his breath. "I think I should stay here for a few cycles, first." Or run off into the countryside, running off into the countryside would also be good.

Shrivel the Lei. "Or not! You can stay here and not do anything. Do you want to go to a room now?"

"Maybe I should, yes, thank you."

A ramp behind Neffie and her werewolf coworker goes back down, into a tangle of small rooms in which people are working and eating and playing, and then another ramp takes them further down and branches several times into nooks. "You can rest quietly anywhere here. People are sleeping if the curtains are closed. And of course you can go up to the first level if you want to find people to talk to."

It's very dim, but not completely dark; there are small spots of light on the ceiling every ten feet or so.

"Thank you. ...do you have a person here who talks to people when something bad has happened, to help them think about how to feel about it?"

"No. Never. Your thoughts and feelings are your own."

This is going to suck so much, isn't it.

"Okay. Thank you." He heads deeper into the warren of nooks, looking for more privacy; he won't stop Mirana and Tomas from following but he hopes they don't.

(Tomas slips away; Mirana follows Rafiik as far behind him as the architecture allows her to keep an ear on him, which is only like twenty feet.)

Huh, it seems like she meant that answer to be reassuring, but made Rafiik feel worse, and the weak-nosed humans didn't notice the miscommunication. Honor says Mirana should go straighten it out, but she's not allowed to leave Rafiik or say anything. Hopefully the other werewolf is handling it.