"So, what kinds of things are you good at, other than fighting? What kind of town do you want to live in?"

"Jedi can learn magic, so I can learn things you need, maybe. Now the best magic I know is to make myself fast and good at moving, but I can do other things and I can learn to do more other things. I can do healing, I can see a little bit what people are feeling, I can learn to do things with fire, I can learn to see what people are thinking maybe, I can see what will happen a very little bit and I can learn to do more. I can't learn everything - I probably can't learn to go places like a kitsune, I don't know any Jedi who can do that, but maybe if I look at a kitsune with the Force while they do that I can learn it that way. There are other things I know I can't learn but I don't have the words. I was learning to fight at home but I don't think I should do that here, it's not very safe if I'm the only Jedi. I was also learning - the thing where governments talk to each other - but I'm not ready to do that work. I usually like to travel but I don't want to do that right now.* Right now I need to learn your language and learn about this planet, so I should go someplace good for that."

* The Rafiik video is not cute, Raafis only do this when distressed.

"The town here is good for learning Sotalese. Which is my language, but not the language of the Freedom Democracy, since we have the Freedom to Speak. If you want to talk to people from other countries, and maybe travel, you might like a town near the border with Sient. And yes, Sotalese is a good language for that... and the town I'm thinking of can teach it to you too. Yeah. I think you should go to the town near the Sient border by sled. You can sleep on the sled if you need to." See how helpful and forthright they are, Lei?

"If you look at a kitsune with the Force, I think they won't be able to go anywhere, but I don't know. Maybe looking at the kitsune try to go will be interesting..."

He's not nearly as impressive as the report made him sound. It seems like the only thing he's really good at is fighting, and he doesn't want to do that. It would be neat, but not actually helpful to the whole country, if he learned, say, to make things cold. There would still be just one of him.

Oh.

"Would you be able to learn to look at a plant or animal - something that is alive but is not a person - and know what species a human could make from it, or even just if it is possible to make a person with that plant or animal? Or can you use the Force to somehow make a human choose a plant or animal that will make a person?" The report was not clear how that would actually work, but the demonstration with the dice made quite an impression on the Lei werewolf.

He can maybe handle another day of travel without breaking down in front of his companions but he's not nearly as sure of that as he'd like to be, the stress is really starting to get to him. "How many hours is the sled travel to Sient? And I might be able to learn to see things about human magic, yes - I will need to watch some humans do some magic and maybe watch some other people do magic too."

"It's one shift - ten hours - to the town I'm thinking of, Shelt-Li, which is close to Sient. The border is only a few minutes more. I can travel with you and do human magic on the sled. Let's see, what species haven't you seen, which are interesting... A wroth, and I'll make a wroth on the sled. What species have you looked at with the Force so far? Which ones were interesting?"

For a moment, when she starts talking about doing magic on the sled, it looks like he's about to burst into tears, though he quickly gets himself back under control without more than a slight hitch to his breath. "I think I should stay here for a few cycles, first." Or run off into the countryside, running off into the countryside would also be good.

Shrivel the Lei. "Or not! You can stay here and not do anything. Do you want to go to a room now?"

"Maybe I should, yes, thank you."

A ramp behind Neffie and her werewolf coworker goes back down, into a tangle of small rooms in which people are working and eating and playing, and then another ramp takes them further down and branches several times into nooks. "You can rest quietly anywhere here. People are sleeping if the curtains are closed. And of course you can go up to the first level if you want to find people to talk to."

It's very dim, but not completely dark; there are small spots of light on the ceiling every ten feet or so.

"Thank you. ...do you have a person here who talks to people when something bad has happened, to help them think about how to feel about it?"

"No. Never. Your thoughts and feelings are your own."

This is going to suck so much, isn't it.

"Okay. Thank you." He heads deeper into the warren of nooks, looking for more privacy; he won't stop Mirana and Tomas from following but he hopes they don't.

(Tomas slips away; Mirana follows Rafiik as far behind him as the architecture allows her to keep an ear on him, which is only like twenty feet.)

Huh, it seems like she meant that answer to be reassuring, but made Rafiik feel worse, and the weak-nosed humans didn't notice the miscommunication. Honor says Mirana should go straighten it out, but she's not allowed to leave Rafiik or say anything. Hopefully the other werewolf is handling it.

He eventually picks a nook, more out of a sense that he can't go on than because he finds one he's satisfied with, though by that point he's also stopped analyzing them in any meaningful way. He burrows under the blanket, sets his music player going, and breaks down into tears, as quietly as he can.

Concerning? Maybe good if it means he was just upset when he said Lei shouldn't have Jedi?

Mirana doubts there's anything she can do to comfort him, so she curls into a nearby nook and tries to nap.

He cries himself out, halfheartedly meditates for a little while to no particular effect, and falls asleep. He feels a little better when he wakes up and finds this meditation attempt a bit more useful: he doesn't do well with not having control over his life, it seems, alongside his need for travel, and this whole thing situation been a blow to that. He should be able to handle it, though, now that he knows what the problem is; he just needs to step up for himself and not let the FD or the Lei or his own habits come before what he needs to do for himself.

He gets up, then, and makes up the bed, and goes looking for Mirana; she's familiar enough by now that he should have a reasonable chance of figuring out which nook she's in without bothering anyone else.

She's awake.

He calls her name, quietly, when he's pretty sure he's found her and she is, and gestures for her to follow him back upstairs rather than talk in the sleeping area.

Hopefully he won't get lost; he really should have paid more attention to where he was going on the way in.

She follows quietly, giving him a thoughtful look.

He figures out the layout of the place after only a couple of dead ends, and gets them back upstairs. "Do you need anything, before we talk?"

She sits attentively and doesn't seem interested in the stale green-latkes or the chamber pot.

...he kriffed that right up, huh. "You can talk to me."

But not to anyone else. "Thank you. What do you want to talk about?"

"I only understood part of the thing you said to the undine earlier, and I want to go back and ask about it, but I want to hear what you think about it first, and if you want me to say you can do any things."

"They want me to not be a spy for Lei. They could have said that I can't talk to people about Lei, and can't collect information to bring home, and can't hurt anyone or break anything here. But that's not good enough to make me not Lei; just by sitting here, I am saying that Lei exists and is a country that created a person like me. Sitting here is a thing a spy would want to do. They want me to not do anything that a spy would do, which means they want me to not do anything at all, but that would make me not useful to you, and not useful to other people.

They had the idea that I can do things that a spy would do, like sit here, if I do them because someone who is clearly not Lei permits me. I don't know if that was a good idea. If someone says I can go anywhere in the town, I can choose to go someplace where people will see me and think about Lei. Maybe they know that I will not be permitted to do that? I don't know. Maybe they didn't think of it.

It's not important, anyway. I'm not going to choose to do things the way a normal spy would choose to do things, and that's what they want, I think. I will stay near you and answer your questions and be useful to you how I can.

I think that it is dangerous for me to be in the Freedom Democracy. I knew it was dangerous earlier, and I think the same thing now. But helping you learn is the most important thing I can do.

I want you to say that, if you die, I can go to Lei or to another country."