The hallway slopes up to the surface, where there's a sort of deep conversation pit. No direct sunlight, but a wide view of the sky. A huge castle floats far above and brightward. 

The ground is planted with leafy vegetables, except that back the way they came there's an abrupt thick forest along the border.

There's a werewolf and a human waiting for them.

"Welcome! It's private here - we're far enough away from the undine at the border - if you care about that. Do you have any questions or anything to say before I start on the usual speech?"

"I only started learning Elvish two cycles ago, you don't know my other languages here. So please try to say things simply."

Wow, the report was right. "Okay. We can teach you another language quickly. It will be hard to teach you more Elvish quickly, and a lot of people here don't like to speak Elvish, so I recommend learning another language. The most common language here is Sotalese.

My understanding is that you" Mirana "have unusual arrangements. But you" Rafiik and Tomas "are now people like any other. In other countries, sometimes there are people who have to stay in a place and do the work that they are told. That does not happen here. You may go to any town in the Freedom Democracy, at any time. You may leave the country and come back.

That is the Freedom to Travel. What if someone tries to prevent you from leaving a town? You may fight, if you can, but what if you can't? We solve that problem by allowing you to say that someone else is in charge of protecting your Freedom to Travel. You may still fight in any case, but you may also pick someone else to fight with you. Normally, someone in a town wants to have the job of fighting to protect people's Freedom to Travel, so they ask everyone to pick them to fight. There might be a few people like that, who do most of the fighting to protect people's Freedom to Travel.

There are ten Freedoms:

The Freedom to be Free.

The Freedom to Live.

The Freedom to be Happy.

The Freedom to Travel.

The Freedom of Association.

The Freedom to Speak.

The Freedom to Grow.

The Freedom to Work.

The Freedom to Die.

The Freedom to Choose.

Before I say more about each of those, how is your understanding so far? Any questions?"

"I only know half of the words for the freedoms, but I think I'll learn those when you talk about them. The rest is okay, thank you."

"Okay! I'm going to explain more about what each of the Freedoms means to you, first, and then how the Freedoms are protected and how you choose people to protect them, because they don't all work the same way as the Freedom to Travel.

The Freedom to be Free means that the Freedom Democracy exists and is able to protect you, and that you are able to protect your Freedoms and choose people to help you. I'll come back to this one.

The Freedom to Live means that you have food and water and no one will hurt you.

The Freedom to be Happy means a lot of things. The most important one is that no one will take your things, specifically things that you carry with you. Also that no one will hurt you, in ways not covered by the Freedom to Live, including some things that don't hurt at all but which still make people unhappy.

The Freedom to Travel means that you can leave a town and go to another at any time, and go to places outside the Freedom Democracy and come back.

The Freedom of Association means that no one can tell you not be near another person. No one, including that person, but of course you can't make them unhappy or take their things or hurt them or make them unable to live.

The Freedom to Speak means that you can speak any language you like. Including Elvish, but as I said, a lot of people don't like to speak Elvish so I think it will be easier for you if you learn another language.

The Freedom to Grow means that you can learn new things, like new kinds of work, or other things that you want to learn. It also means that you can have children.

The Freedom to Work means that you can do work that you already know how to do. A town can't stop you from working and then get angry at you for not working.

The Freedom to Die means that you can die, if you want. Some countries, such as Lei, say that a person who breaks the law has to stay in a place and do the work they are told, or they will be hurt. This is very bad, worse that dying. But people sometimes say they want to live like this, even though it would be worse than dying. In the Freedom Democracy, people who break the law die. The Freedom to Die also means that you can fight people, if you and the other person want to fight. This is separate from fighting to protect your Freedoms. This is just, if two people are angry and want to fight.

The Freedom to Choose means a lot of things. Whenever a group or a town or the whole Freedom Democracy needs to make a decision that isn't about one of the other nine Freedoms, you can say what you think they should do. I'll come back to this one too.

How are you understanding? Questions?"

He needs her to go back over 'freedom to be free' after defining 'protect', and to explain 'work', and to confirm that his guess at what 'die' means is correct. (It is, and he makes a face about it.) He's following all right, other than those.

"Do you have... I don't have the word... you die here if you break all the laws?"

"All the laws of the Freedom Democracy, yes. If a town says, don't play loud music in this room, and you do, they can't actually stop you. But if they say, this field is for growing short plants, like squash, and you grow tall plants, like sunflowers, and block the sun to another field, and so someone doesn't have enough food to live, they can fight you, or they can ask someone else to kill you to protect their Freedom to Live."

"Okay. Thank you."

"Now here's where it gets a little complicated. If you ask someone to protect your Freedom to Travel, they don't have to fight with you; they can ask another person to do the fighting, and that person can ask another person, and so on. The way it usually works is that this happens until a few people are chosen to do all the fighting to protect the Freedom to Travel for the whole Freedom Democracy. Of course, they can't do all the fighting just by themselves. They can ask some more people to do some of the fighting, who ask more people, until there's maybe one person for each town.

When you ask someone to fight for you, we say you're giving them a 'vote'. If three people ask them to fight, they have four votes, three plus their own vote that they started with.

Say a decision needs to be made, like, should we check all the rooms on level five to see if anyone is there who wants to leave and can't, and fight to protect their Freedom to Travel. Or should we check level four instead, or something else. Then the town comes together and each person says what they think and the thing that the most people think is what the town does. But! If a person has multiple votes, we count each of their votes. And if a person gave their vote to someone else, we don't count them at all.

Usually, there's someone in the town who has a lot of votes who makes the decision and no one else needs to care at all. Where did they get those votes? Maybe because everyone in the town gave their votes to this person. But it could also be because everyone in the whole Freedom Democracy gave their votes to a few people, who then gave some votes to many people. Maybe in each town, they pick a person to protect the Freedom to Travel and give them some votes.

The next part is about laws, but how are you understanding votes so far?"

He wants to go over a couple examples - ideally with physical tokens, if there are pebbles or anything around - to make sure he's got it, but he does. "The person who chooses and the person who fights are always the same person?"

"No? Can you explain your thoughts more so I might be able to see where you're misunderstanding?"

He shrugs. "I thought probably not but you didn't say. Jedi are... I am a Jedi, I didn't say that before. At home Jedi help with fighting sometimes, but we think it's bad for Jedi to make choices only because we're good at fighting. I don't know if I'll help with fighting here, but if I might, there are things I should learn."

"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."