"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.

"The undine says hi. If you want to talk to her directly it's actually a bit hard to get there, and for security I don't know the way myself, but I'm sure someone can help you. The catfolk here when you arrived was Mie, who is off duty but still awake and uh Corigan here can show you to Mie's room."

A black-and-white catfolk appears from around the corner and nods at him.

"I might be able to see the undine from here with Jedi magic - or, not see exactly, but like seeing or hearing - but I don't want to do it if it will bother her. I don't know if I need to talk to Mie exactly, did Mie tell you about Mirana's oath?

"She's about ten feet from us over there" downward and away from the border "and I know about the oath, what do you want to know?"

"I want to say that Mirana can do some things - maybe do some work, maybe talk to people here about some things, maybe go a few places by herself - and I don't think I understand good enough what things would be bad to say for her to be able to do, so I want to talk to someone about that so that we can say together some things that she can do."

"If you asked the people who wrote the oath, they would say that the point is for Lei to not have control over Mirana, to not be able to do things here. So you could let her do whatever, and then it's you doing it, not Lei. Or an elected official could let her do whatever. 

I think that's idiotic and hurts the whole idea of freedom.

There are good people and there are bad people. In most countries, the common thinking is that most people are bad, so there have to be lots of complicated laws to make the bad people pretend to be good. But if you actually talk to people, rather than looking at a thousand years of memories of people doing bad things, it's clear that most people are good.

The laws of the Freedom Democracy are the simplest possible laws that keep the bad people from hurting anyone, or if they can't respect even those simple laws then we kill them, and either way they're not a problem.

Of course, sometimes good people do bad things because they're in a bad place. The Freedom Democracy is a good place, because of the Freedoms. When people come here from Lei, it's normal for them to need time to learn that this is a good place. I know what to do with people who are happy to have escaped from Lei and ready to learn what to do in FD. I don't know what to do with Mirana.

Because of the oath, she is not in a good place. Even if she wanted to learn better, she can't. But if I let her do whatever, then she's a spy. I don't like either choice.

So that's what I think, if you wanted to know. Corigan, what do you think?"

"Kill the spy, or bring her to Sient very quickly with no opportunity to learn anything or do anything."

Rafiik nods along, then turns to Mirana. "Do you want to go to Sient, or do you want to stay here with the oath and no freedom and no way to hurt the Freedom Democracy? I think I will take you to Sient or another place like Sient later, in some deci-years or years probably, I mean what do you want to do now."

How is that even a question. Years?

Hm, actually that could be a question, if she's going to be so unhappy here that she'll be a liability to Rafiik's information gathering. If he judges Lei badly by her struggle to cope with social isolation. He considers games to be something that isn't a need. What else? 

"If I'm to stay here for years, I want to be permitted to - do things that are like talking but don't use words. I mean, like, 'yes' and" she nods "are words, but" she folds her hands under her chin and leans forward attentively "is not a word."

"I think that would be good but I don't want to say by myself that you can do more things right now. I know we talked before about what you want; I want you to answer about staying or going so that they can see that it's your choice and not mine. Or if you do want to go to Sient now we can do that."

But she's not supposed to make choices? Isn't that the whole point of the oath?

"I'll stay." It's going to be awful but she can't let FD have him for years without her when Lei didn't ever get a chance at all.

He nods. "If I understand what you said before, you want to do that because you think the Freedom Democracy is bad, that they do bad things, and you think that if I only listen to Freedom Democracy people they will say incorrect things to me and I will think and do bad things too, especially to Lei, and because I'm a Jedi that would be very bad. And you want to be able to tell me correct things more than you want to be in Lei or Sient or have freedom. Am I correct?"