"I can get Quaro for you," volunteers the baby. "He is up but I can go up."

"You can! You can go up," says Lazarus. "I'm very glad you can go up."

"I can go up because miracles! Do you want Quaro now?"

"Yes, all right."

The little dragon licks him on the cheek, probably affectionately given the context, and flutters up to chase a large lazily gliding amethyst. Said large lazily gliding amethyst listens, then turns into a ptarmigan and flies down and then turns into a dwarf again. "Belthee said you wanted to see me."

"I came to give you your crystal back," he says, handing it over. "I didn't mean to interrupt your flying, but then Belthee offered to go get you and I found it very difficult to turn him down, on account of he's adorable."

Quaro laughs and takes the crystal. "Thank you." He pauses, then adds softly, "Inasotho."

"Hmm?" says Lazarus.

"Draconic. It translates to 'thank you'."

Meanwhile in Esmaar, Jensal gets off her own council crystal. "I've convinced her - that or the conversation I heard going on in the background did. I suppose all four of these are ringing to wake the dead on the council's end."

"Probably. Who did you convince of what, exactly?"

"Convinced my Dragon Council contact that there is a cure and they need to tell all the dragons and enough news outlets to notify all the adult shrens who don't live in the house and have fallen out of contact."

"Aha," she says. "Yes, that seems like a good plan."

"Yes. Of course, some shrens make themselves rather thoroughly scarce. If there are stragglers on record in a month I'll start coordinating miracle green-groups who've encountered the missing before, I suppose."

"My friend who sees magic could potentially help with that," she says. "So could wishcoins, for that matter. A model of the planet that shows little flags wherever there's a shren would only take a five."

"That would do it too; it's unclear to what extent we're being invited to impose on you."

"I'm inclined to be very helpful," she says. "So is Lazarus. Lazarus is motivated by general altruism and a fascination with new and interesting kinds of magic; I am motivated by general altruism and the potential to obtain a lot of coins from someone who won't mind producing them. If I'm magnificently lucky, somewhere in this world there could be a former or soon-to-be-former shren who'd like the idea of moving to my world to mint for me, but even the number of sevens you or Ehail could produce in five minutes would be a help."

"What do you do with them besides miracles for shrens?" inquires Jensal.

"Previously, not very much," she says. "Mostly I paid attention to see if any new mints were popping up so I could find them and make sure they were responsible people. Occasionally I gave a little bit of magic to someone who seemed like they'd use it well. But now that I've seen firsthand how much magic it's possible for one person to produce, I'm thinking of changing my approach. I don't have anything I'd describe as a plan yet, but broadly speaking, what I do is help people find things they're good at and enjoy doing and then arrange for them to do those things. I don't strictly speaking need large amounts of magic to do that, but it would still be something of a game-changer."

"Some people aren't good at good things," observes Jensal.

"On the whole, I prefer to make those kinds of arrangements for people who are. I like solving problems; I don't like creating them."