"Okay so what I meant was, it's a lot of trouble to have everyone choose a person to make decisions and remember what makes a person good at making decisions and remember how to ask questions and remember what the country did wrong in the past, instead of just letting the elves make all that. But I should have said 'Lei', not 'elves'.

What do elves do, at least in Lei and places like Lei? Not make decisions. The shrines make the decisions, not the elves. The elves... Live. Observe. Talk to people. Make sure the shrines 'want' people to be happy. Travel between shrines to spread good ideas and fix bad ideas."

"Huh. That might work better than democracy, yeah. I don't know if it does, but sometimes there are things that can - the Jedi don't do democracy either, but what we do wouldn't work without the Force." That also adds some context to her horror at the FD having destroyed some shrines.

She looks only slightly smug.

"...So we were talking about the lies. I forgot about this one because I'm used to speaking in a simple way with you and sometimes using different words because of that, but breeders are actually called 'humans'. The person or people who created breeders are called 'metahuman' but different people have different ideas of what the 'metahuman' was like.

And... when you asked about the person who put the word 'apple' on the plant, I said I would tell everyone that you wanted to talk to them, and I did, but he had already been killed at that time."

"Ah." He's clearly not pleased about it.

"Tomas is a human? Tomas and I are the same species, according to the Force."

"Yeah. Huh! Have you used the Force to look at a female of your species?"

"Yeah - in detail, mostly Jedi, but I've been around non-Jedi humans too, and there shouldn't be anything that people who can't see the Force can do that we can't."

"Hm. I think it would be interesting if you looked at a female human from this planet, but i don't know if it would be important.

Is there anything else you want to talk about before going to the FD?"

"Do you know anything about Tomas? I don't think I understand him very well."

"I don't know much about him. Male humans in general are very rare, made by people who think that humans should be more important than everyone else, or people who want a diplomat, or people who just don't care if their kitten is male. Only catfolk have 'kittens', by the way; the general word is 'child', and most species have a particular word too.

We asked for a male human to do a job that required lying and speaking Elvish. Originally because we thought you were a metahuman and one of the people who think humans should be more important than other species.

This is probably close to his home."

Human men being rare is disappointing but he can figure out what to do about his sex life later. "Well, I'm not either of those, I don't think. Male humans don't have magic?"

"Yeah."

"All right, I think that's everything. Are we walking to the border from here? Can you find out how long it would take to see an apple plant first?"

"We'll have to walk the last two klicks, yeah, there isn't a sled or a place to ride a bicycle. I'll ask about the nearest apple tree."

"Thank you."

He'll go check on Tomas again.

Tomas comes down the ladder when he sees Rafiik.

"Strong be awakening, sir.

What are you planning to say about yourself in the Freedom Democracy? Would you like me to tell you words in Sotalese now?"

"I'm still thinking about it. I should probably start by telling them what a Jedi is, you could help me figure out what to say about that."

The metahuman returned. A groundling. A wizard. An angel. "A person who is strong. Mm. Can you tell me more about Jedi, sir?

"Sure. So, very rarely - more rarely than rolling twelve dice and getting all sixes - there's someone who can see a part of how things are that other people can't see, called the Force. They can learn from other people who can see it how to do things with it, like moving things without touching them or seeing what people are feeling, whether they're happy or upset or other things. We don't think of it as magic, but it's the only thing like magic at home; most people don't have magic at all and will never even meet someone who does, so they do things different ways - I can show you something made like that that looks like magic, if you want to see. Anyway, the Jedi are one group of people who can use the Force, and we think it's important to use the Force safely, and to use it to help people, and to let people decide for themselves what to do instead of telling them - Jedi like democracy, but if the Lei way of doing things is working for them and not hurting anyone then I shouldn't tell them to stop, either."

"I think they will like that you're just a person who - rolled twelve dice and got all sixes, rather than being created by someone with power to be a person with power. Obviously they'll like the freedom and democracy. Are there things that people should do, people who can't use the Force, which help with using the Force safely?

Lei hurts people but I don't think that having democracy would make them hurt people less, just different people at different times."

He nods. "Children of Jedi can usually become Jedi, too, but Jedi very rarely have children. We're not supposed to know about where we come from, so I don't know if I started from a Jedi or from someone else, but it doesn't matter, nobody did anything differently with me because of it."

"The most important thing for using the Force safely is that I should spend some time alone every day, or at least most days, to think about what I've been doing and make sure I'm not making any mistakes and to practice the ways of thinking that help me with it." That seems safe enough to share; 'also I shouldn't use the Force when angry' seems less wise, with Tomas in particular. "It's not really something that other people can help with but it's good to have a quiet place for it."

So like how the children of dons are sometimes forbidden from becoming dons themselves. He's not sure whether taking children away from their parents is bad or good...

"Does it help if other people do quiet thinking too, and tell children to do it, so that if one of them rolls twelve sixes they already know how to do quiet thinking when they are young?"

"I'm not sure - at home we have a way to tell if people can see the Force without using magic, and they use it on most of the new children, so usually we start with the Jedi right away, and I don't know if anything helps or hurts without that. I'm not sure if I know enough to teach someone to be a Jedi safely, either. But it probably doesn't matter - even on the kind of planet I'm used to at home, where the planet spins so people can use the whole thing and there are not-magic things to let a lot more people live on each part of it, there's only one person born on the whole planet who can see the Force in the whole time it takes for a human to grow old. There might not be any people like that here at all besides me, and if there are I might not ever meet them, or it might not be a good idea to teach them anything."

"Is there something we can do to make teaching the next person a good idea? If not quiet thinking, some other skill, or something that's not a skill?"

"Mm, some of the ways it's important for a Jedi to be aren't good ways for everyone to be. But having practice at thinking quietly won't do anything bad."

"Hm. Be alone, think about what you've been doing, and practice ways of thinking that help... What ways of thinking?"