"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?"

"Yes."

"Thank you." He turns back to the catfolk. "I think that's an important freedom, to be able to do something maybe bad for yourself because of something more important, and I think it's a good thing about Mirana that she's able to do it, and I think it would be very bad of me to say that because this is bad for her I will stop her. I can stop her for other reasons but I don't think I have another reason, I think it's good for me to hear what she wants to say - I think that if the Freedom Democracy is good, listening to her carefully will help me see that faster, because it will help me ask good questions."

The catfolk looks disapproving. "I've heard people propose Freedoms like that..."

"My Jedi teachers would be very upset if I didn't give people this freedom, even if it isn't the law here." That's an understatement, it's actually fairly close to a core tennet of dealing with the public, but he doesn't think it'll help to make too big of a deal of it; he shrugs, instead. "But I need help to do that and not hurt her more than the freedom needs, or hurt Freedom Democracy by trying not to hurt her." Or hurt himself, for that matter; it hasn't occurred to him that he perhaps shouldn't default to handling things in a way where most of the stress falls on him, and he's worried that he won't be able to handle that stress on top of everything else, if he's giving her as few generalized permissions as possible and handling every situation where she needs to do something as it comes up.

"There is no good choice. I think there is no good choice. Everything you do to hurt her less hurts the FD more.

...That might not be entirely true. Maybe there are two options, one where she goes anywhere and can't talk; and one where she has to either be with you or in a particular room and she can talk. I think the second option is better for her and better for the FD.

Is that the answer you need? She will be hurt less if she can do more kinds of things, and FD will be hurt less if fewer people see her or talk to her. But still, it's not a good choice. It still hurts her and us."

So it is true that they consider it a harm for her just to be here and visible; he'd thought she was wrong about that. He's going to want to look into that, it's pretty weird. This isn't the time though. "The second one sounds better to me, too." He can probably find at least a couple other people to spend time with her, that should help a lot if he can pull it off. "Mirana, what do you think? We can go back and talk more about this if you want."

"I also think that the second option is better for me and for FD. And for Lei!"

"- if you help Lei by hurting the Freedom Democracy I will be very upset with you," he says seriously. "But I will do the second thing, and maybe someone will think of something better later. Thank you," he tells the catfolk.

He still wants to check on the undine; he could meditate for it, and probably should, but it'll take a while with him this stressed and he kind of wants to leave. He'll make it up with extra meditation later, how about, in the spirit of giving himself a break today. "Can we go see the undine?"