attend your shrine in lost succession

"We can do that now, yes."

"Okay, let's start with... I think that, when you asked about a person to talk to about thoughts and feelings, the human did not want her answer to make you feel bad, and did not know that you did feel bad about her answer. I don't know what you meant, and I don't know what she thought you meant, but... I should say something."

She crunches a green latke - "Mm!" - and grabs another while she watches his response to what she said.

He nods. "I don't think she meant for me to feel bad, yes. At home we have that, and - Jedi can be dangerous, yeah? Nobody wants the person who can kill everyone to get so upset that he does that. I don't think that will happen to me but it's good to talk to someone when I'm upset even if I'm less upset than that, and good for the person I talk to to be someone who knows what to say."

Right, because Jedi are random. "So you want someone who is used to working with people who might get upset and do disiniuria..." Neither werewolves nor catfolk have that tendency... actually she can't think of any species that has a violent reputation. Not even frogolds or drakes or boarks. But, of course, the scary species would be careful. And disiniuria is rare. Do, say, mouselings tend to get mad and hit each other with their claws? Not that she's heard of, but maybe some of them do. So her best idea is a mouseling slave-handler. Or a slave-handler of another species that's not considered scary.

"I don't think there's anyone like that here. There might be some in Lei.

It's a thing that Jedi do? Jedi, not people who can see the Force?"

"Not commonly, but it's very bad when it happens." He shouldn't tell her about his weaknesses, even if it's not really plausible at all that she could do anything with this one. "I said it was important to Jedi to use the Force safely, this is part of that."

Huh, so the other Force-users, the 'Sith', are not so prone to violent outbursts? Or, no, they just don't care about using the Force safely...but stay alive anyway because of the luck thing?

"I will tell you if I learn of anyone you can talk to.

So, what do I think about what they've said... none of it is new to me. I don't know what they have, that they use to make it look like they have 'undines'. I don't like that they kill so many people, and I don't like that they change their laws all the time and let people travel everywhere, because then how do they know what laws are good and what are bad? They said that some Freedoms are more important than others, but didn't say it... clearly. Anything they choose with the Freedom to be Free is what they do, like killing all the elves, or making people fight against the Lei, or killing people who they think are hurting the Freedom Democracy - not spies, just people who they don't like."

Rafiik nods along. "I can look, when we go to the catfolk place; if there's an undine I think I will be able to see them with the Force, and see that they are an undine. Do you think they kill many people because you heard that before, or because there are many laws that say they can, or because the laws that say they can are hard to not break?"

"...The first two. Lei almost never kills people, only spies and those who hurt people so much they can't be part of a town and there is nothing else you can do to make them not hurt people. If someone takes your food, we say they have to stay where we can watch them to make sure they don't take other people's food again. We don't kill them. We still let them and their family talk and groom each other."

"Most places do that, yeah. I don't know if I like the laws here but I think it's hard to make a country be very bad if the people can leave, because if it's bad they will leave and it won't be a country."

"Oh! People can leave Lei! They just can't move to a different town inside Lei, mostly. I think same as you, that it's very important that people can leave. A long time ago there were many more countries like Lei and then people left and came to Lei."

"I meant the FD, but it's good to know that people can leave the Lei."

"The Freedom to Travel lets people leave FD... Oh, you mean, you want people to have the choice to leave instead of dying, if they break a law?"

"That might be good? But it isn't what I wanted to say. It's, hm... so, maybe I stay here, and make a home, and one cycle someone decides they like me a lot, and they have freedom of association to be near me all the time, and they want that, so they do it, but I don't want it. Here, what can I do? Maybe I hurt them, and an undine sees, and someone kills me. Maybe I take them away from me, and an undine sees, and someone kills me. Or, I see, I can't do any things here to stop this person without someone killing me, but I can go to a different country, and in a different country if they stay near me when I don't want it I can take them away from me and no one will kill me, or maybe the other country's people will take them away from me for me if that is the law. So I probably don't break the law here, but I go to a different country with different laws where I don't have the problem I have here and I don't have to break any laws to get that."

"Probably most people don't go to a different country for a small problem, they want to keep their homes and their friends and their work, so countries can be a little bit bad, but for a big problem, yes."

"Yes, that is good, to be able to go to a different country.

I have heard that, here, if someone is doing that to you, you can say to everyone that they are using the law to do something bad, which hurts the law, hurts the Freedom Democracy, and then everyone can decide with Freedom to be Free to kill that person. ...I don't know if that is common or rare, or doesn't happen at all and I heard something wrong.

In Lei, you can't go to any town you want. But if you have a problem like that, you can go to a different town, a town for people who have had problems like that. It is good to have that town, because if you had a friend who also had a problem and went to that town, and now you have that problem too, you can go to that town and be with your friend again."

"If I have that problem and go to a town, probably my friends don't have the same problem, but it's good to have the choice to go, yes."

"I think if everyone can say 'this person is doing something bad, the law doesn't say it's bad but we say it's bad, this person should die' and kill them, that's bad, because people should know before they do things whether people will kill them because of it. But that's the kind of very bad thing that I think people would leave a country for - if you don't know when people will decide to kill you for doing things you can't do any things, and that's very bad - and there are people here, so probably that isn't common or doesn't happen. Or maybe the FD has a problem with many people leaving and I just don't know yet." He shrugs.

"I agree that it's bad, if the FD kills people like that! Lei agrees.

I meant that it's good that Lei has towns for people to go to if they have a problem and want to go, because if we didn't, people with problems would go many places, everywhere, and they might have to leave Lei."

He chuckles a little. "I think it's good for people to go everywhere, if they want that. But I think it because I feel it, not because I can say why it's good."

"Sometimes. I guess."

She finishes her lunch/breakfast/miscellaneous sustenance.

"Do you still want to rest here a few cycles and then go to Shelt-Li? Are you only resting now, or will you be going places and talking to people and looking at things with the Force? And what do you want from me?"

"I think there have been too many things for me, for some cycles - not just here, before I was here too. So I think I need less things for a few cycles, and mostly good things, and then I will think about what I want to do. This cycle I want to go back to the place with the catfolk and the undine, near Lei, and ask about the thing you said, and maybe I will heal some people if they want that, and I want to go up and do some Jedi things. Probably I will talk to some people - people might want to see me do the Jedi things, they're good to see - but I don't want to talk about if the FD is good. I want to ask the catfolk or maybe the human from yesterday what things they think are good or bad for you to do, I think it would be good for you and me if you can do other things while I'm here but maybe it's bad for the FD, I don't know."

"Okay. I think it would be good, and unlikely to be bad, if I went away from you and found a werewolf making soil and helped them - making small rocks that plants live in. I am already permitted to do work that most werewolves are able to do, but if you want me to do that, you should permit me to make soil, and to leave you while staying within this town. I don't know if most FD werewolves can do it. Most Lei werewolves can."

"I want to talk to someone before I say that you can go away from me with your choice. I do say that if you need something - food or sleep or healing or things that you need, not games or things that you don't need, and not food if you aren't hungry or sleep if you aren't tired or things like that - and you can't talk to me about it, you can talk to other people to get that thing, and you can go with them if you need to do that to get that thing. You should ask them to bring you back to me but if they say no you can come back to me by yourself if they say you can."

It takes her a moment to make sure she understood all that. "Okay. Thank you."

There's a different catfolk at the guardpost now. "Leaving? You don't need to answer."

"No, there was a different catfolk here earlier and I wanted to ask them some questions. I also want to do a Jedi magic thing to see the undine, do you know if that is okay with them?" He's mostly been thinking about how to handle getting mutually agreeable permissions for Mirana as he's approached, but he believes undines probably exist, and he's curious and enthusiastic about seeing what they're like.