"I'll tell you if I find one, too. And now I have a full hold so we're heading to a proper town. Probably two days."

"Did you get the same kind of food here as you did from Kar?"

"More variety. Kinds of meat, kinds of fruit and veggies, cheese - which you maybe should try only small amounts of at first - eggs, pepper, tea. I do like my tea."

"Can I try some tea? I've never had that before."

"Sure, I'll put a kettle on once we're underway. It's different than most foods. It's a drink, doesn't fill you up really, but wakes you up, and I like the taste."

They get underway. He manipulates the ship's controls adroitly, and starts a slow descent. Once they're in the open sky, he steeps some tea and eventually pours two steaming cups. "Some people like a little honey or cream in their tea."

"Well, I've never had cream, might as well try two new things today."

"Cream is in the category of dairy, so no more than a spoonful or two to see if your body reacts badly to it, I think."

He brings out the honey and cream and uses a small wooden spatula to scrape a little honey into his cup and stir.

He tries his tea, first a sip without cream and then he adds cream and tries it again. He's not sure what he thinks of it.

"You've turned cooking the diseases out of food into some kind of edible art, it's nice."

It's green tea.

"There are other varieties of tea, if you want to try those some other time." He sips his own. "And I do agree with you that cooking is something of an art form. There's even a word for it. Chefs."

"That must be nice. Do chefs make a lot?"

"I think a chef usually has a bunch of cooks and assistants to work with, but a fancy restauraunt can serve hundreds of people a night with a staff of ten or twenty? So they make a fair amount of food. And they probably make a lot of money, too, yeah."

"It might be nice to do that but it'd probably be an unconscionable waste of time. I should probably be making metal every waking moment, once we get somewhere with enough spare wood for me to make it from."

"Not necessarily every waking moment. There's only so much one can use metal for so quickly. You could totally buy cooking lessons, or just eat at nice restauraunts a lot, though."

"Restaurants! I love this place. I can't wait to see a town."

"Two days. Maybe one and a half if we're lucky. I can try to cook something slightly more elaborate than usual, give you a taste. Maybe mother-and-daughter soup. Chicken and egg being the main ingredients, hence the name."

"Morality doesn't apply to chickens, does it?"

"A few folk think it does but most people don't care about animals, no. Especially dumb ones like chickens."

"Why is there disagreement?"

"...Because people care about different things? And think different things are wrong sometimes? Ethics isn't, like, a code of laws."

"Are there books or teachers I could learn about morality from? It's starting to seem more complicated than I thought."

"I have ever heard of a book on ethics. Ethics being an attempt to formalize and think about and study morality, sort of. We can probably find something for you."

"That sounds good, it seems like this is the second most important thing in the world. And the most important thing isn't my job!"

"Oh, what is number one? Skies free of pirates and slavers?"

"Yeah! ...I guess you don't have that. And you're better than Har. ...Maybe that's second most important and morality is first."

"It might be a bit simplistic to say that one place is better in all respects than another. Some people here might prefer Har even with institutional slavery. Some people from Har might prefer here, even with the danger of pirates."