"The way the power shows you how to explain yourself is based on understanding their perspective. I don't think I can really untangle those parts. I did have an idea though."

A flower blooms in midair in front of Feather.

Name: The Path to Understanding - Cost: 3 ☐
When you're trying to understand another person or make yourself understood, you can always make progress towards understanding them and how sincere they're being towards you if you keep trying and keep communicating with them. The same is true of working towards finding a way to say what you want to say that they'll understand. This process goes faster if they want to understand you and be understood by you.

Oh, she likes this one! It doesn't say anything about how long it takes or how hard she has to work or even how obvious it is what she has to do. It just promises she will, eventually, reach understanding.

Maybe she won't keep at it long enough because the world is full of other things she could be doing and other people she could be trying to understand. Maybe the person she's trying to understand is busy or doesn't like her and simply won't stick around long enough, or won't talk to her, making her task too hard and drawn-out to be practical. But it will at least be possible, and easier if it's mutual, and - that's all she really wants.

"I'll take that. And - thank you. I think this is a really good power. Or - I guess I'm trying to say it's a very important power to me, and I'm glad I'll have it."

"Yay! I'm glad it's really good when powers help with the things that are important to you in ways that feel right."

Onward!

You Can Teach Better. On the one hand, of course she wants to be a better teacher. On the other hand, someone being able to learn twenty times faster than normal is fairly absurd. Also, what if someone has the same hangups about learning too quickly and easily as she does?

She expects she can get the speedup reduced if she asks for it, but - it also feels a bit silly not to speed up someone's learning as much as you could, when you're actively teaching them something and they want to learn faster.

She could ask to be able to control the speed, but it feels - like an ongoing obligation and a tiny moral hazard, having to adjust the speed of her teaching to her own understanding of how quickly the student would want to learn, which might not even be the same as what the student would choose if it were up to them, because they might not want to be able to choose. Also, what if she's teaching several people at once?

Hmm. 

She's reminded of a lesson new druids are taught. On relating to people, and keeping up ordinary relationships - friendships, family ties, even just saying hi to her neighbours - across a power gap that's only likely to grow. It can be unhealthy and harmful, if you feel you're so much more than most other people that you retreat into impersonality. Druids do need to be impersonal at times, to be proper druids, but they're also still people.

She finally learned to become an owl, but she's not an ordinary owl. She has magic and abilities, and even knowledge and understanding, that even Great Hoot doesn't. She's on track to grow in power and the people closest to her are unlikely to keep up. And so -

Some people withdraw into themselves, or keep the company of other druids, or seek out powerful creatures for companionship. Feather thinks of that as - giving up, frankly. She's not going to leave her friends and family behind.

Others try to just - ignore the issue. And this can work, especially if one also makes a clean separation between their lives as druids and their home-life. Feather's vaguely worried this won't work out for her, that she'll end up living in two worlds and half a stranger in each.

Here is a power for teaching her friends anything she has mastered, faster than she learned it so they never fall behind. Put that way, it sounds great. Except she can't (she shouldn't) teach most people to be druids, and she can't teach anyone to have Spirit-granted powers. The people who most directly gain power from knowledge are wizards, and there are no great wizards in the forest. Feather never expected or wanted to become a wizard, it sounds even more distracting for a druid than being a cleric.

Actually...

If you consider them a good friend or otherwise especially close, this applies even to forms of magic that they ordinarily shouldn't be able to learn.

"Squirrel? Could I use You Can Teach Better to teach someone these powers?"

"That's a good question. The answer isn't a clear yes or no though. The powers I can give you are at a deeper level than magic and so you can't teach people in a way that gives them those powers but with time and effort you would be able to teach people to do something like what your powers let you do. It won't be easy though."

That is indeed a very unclear answer! 

"What do you mean by 'deeper than magic'? For example, giant owls are telepathic - they're born that way. Could my giant owl friend teach me that and could I teach that to someone else? Or does it only work on normal magic, like, I could learn wizard spells very quickly even if I'm not as cunning as a real wizard?"

"If how the universe normally works and your powers conflict your powers will always win that argument.

"As for your specific question Anything You Can Do works on things that can be taught. If there's a way for people to learn how to be telepathic you could learn it though it might be harder to learn it from your friend since they didn't learn it themselves. If it can't be taught then you would need a different power to copy that ability."

There are several ways she can parse that. The most obvious one is - this is a dream, it doesn't work like the real world, why worry? 

And all the other ways to understand that sentence are indeed incredibly worrying, but they're also just impossible. She's not going to - what - be clericed in a way that breaks how the Creation normally works, that's just a contradiction. (And if she were, she wouldn't do anything to break the world. Obviously.) So she'll ignore the dream-logic.

She doesn't know anyone who learned to be telepathic, it's not a druid spell that she ever heard of. So it's probably impossible. But it works on learning, and teaching, anything people can learn, and that's still a lot of things.

She'll take the power. Despite her misgivings, it's too useful to pass up on, even if she's not at all sure yet how she'll end up using it.

Here are some more weird flowers! They don't seem to be doing mind-control, but they're definitely doing something and it's not something Feather likes the shape of.

Not Like Other Girls. Feather works hard on becoming just like other people! (In certain respects.) And it's nice not to be subject to prejudice, but it seems to be saying she'd be above the law? If somewhere has a law against druids then they'll keep other druids out but mysteriously not her? This is weird and troubling and she's going to pass.

Love Interest / Triangle / Dodeca...something...? People she loves will inevitably like her back? What, even if she tries to prevent it? - that is not the problem here, but. And then, they will leave their existing partner, or break vows of chastity? And there will be 'no serious problems', like, say, someone losing their Lawful alignment? 

Time Enough For Love. Wait, this actually seems... acceptable? You will mysteriously always have time for all your friends? It applies to you, not to them, so it's not mind control at all. She'll take it. (Carefully, and while frowning suspiciously at the 'love' part. These flowers seem to have a very Evil idea of love.)

Safe at Home. Yes please! Even if it's mind control, it's applied to people who are trying to hurt her through her family, which makes them acceptable targets.

Opting In. Wait, who counts as 'dangerous people'?

"Squirrel? What exactly does Opting In do? It says 'dangerous people', not - enemies, or people who want to harm me like Safe at Home protects from. I'm a dangerous people, when I fight someone. And what does 'making myself vulnerable to them' mean, is it about me - choosing to trust someone who's dangerous but not an enemy?"

"Opting In covers a lot of different situations. Dangerous people could mean enemies but it could also mean friends who are careless or people you care about but don't have good intentions. Making yourself vulnerable can mean trusting them but it can also mean bringing yourself to their attention or trying to fight them secretly without a guarantee you'll stay secret. At the core it means that if anyone reacts in a dangerous way to the things you do the consequences will focus on you and other people who similarly decided to take those risks."

"So if... my friend is careless and I have metaphorically chosen to make myself vulnerable by being their friend... their carelessness won't hurt other people who are not their friends?" That is so weird.

"A better way of putting it would be that if you brought your careless friend somewhere they wouldn't have otherwise gone the consequences of that will avoid people there who don't make a similar choice to risk that carelessness."

"I don't really understand how you could make that happen, though? I guess it's like the fighting powers, they also promise some things will definitely not happen. Does that mean the Spirit will be... sort of following me and intervening if my careless friend is about to hurt someone? I can imagine how someone could interfere to help me in a fight but I don't really understand it for the more - general powers."

"I can't say exactly how it'll work because it depends on the situation and a bunch of other factors. I already mentioned that your powers will manipulate coincidences and little things around you. And if you don't take nullified your powers will have the option of directly changing people's minds to make it happen."

Feather looks dubiously at the two leaves the squirrel indicates.

Incomplete: about half of people you encounter will be immune to all mind-affecting aspects of your powers, and about half of those who remain will see reduced effects. You can do nothing to change this.

Nullified (requires Incomplete): any aspects of your powers that would affect the minds of others in ways they might not like will instead not do that. This can make many of your powers less effective.

"So the only way not to mind control my friends is not to mind control my enemies either? Would that affect any of the powers I already chose?" She discarded all the mind control ones she could find, but she could have missed something. The most obvious things that might rely on mind control are the fighting powers where it's fine, and... probably Personal Space? Unless -

"Do all the powers that make me immune to something use mind control? Like Indelible - does it make my thoughts impossible to affect, or does it mind control other people into not affecting my thoughts? Does Path to Understanding mind-control people into understanding me better?"

Looking for a way everything can be done with mind control is weird. Maybe that's how people who actually use mind control think all the time.

"Indelible doesn't use mind control and neither does Path to Understanding, unless you count helping to guide your thoughts in the right direction as mind control. Certain berry powers like Personal Space might use mind control if coincidence manipulation would have to be exceptionally blatant to prevent something but under most circumstances coincidence manipulation is enough. The main exception there is Pacifist it should really have been represented by a flower, sometimes it needs to change the world in very dramatic ways to work and that can mean changing people. The flower powers tend to rely more on mind control but to differing degrees." 

"So I can avoid all powers that sometimes mind control people and not take Personal Space or Opting In. Or I could take Nullified, and then they would mostly work but fail occasionally. And they might still do mind control... a quarter of the time, if the target 'wouldn't mind it', which sounds fine if a bit suspicious."

"...are there 'mind-affecting powers' that aren't mind control? Like - an aura of fear or something? Is this about the powers where people think you're pretty or fall in love with you?"

"Personal Space and Opting In are meant as guarantees so they'll still work even if you take Nullified. They just might work in stranger ways. The way Nullified chooses whether to allow mind control is that it checks whether someone would, upon being told the complete and accurate truth about a power without being under the effects of mind control would agree to have that power change their mind. I could also make a version of Nullified and Incomplete that didn't include people you consider enemies but it wouldn't give you as many points. As for distinctions between mind control powers and mind effecting powers you didn't seem to be making a distinction like that so I'm not either. If there is a distinction like that you want to make I can try to explain where any given power lies."

This is frankly becoming too complex to keep track of, but Feather gamefully tries to re-summarize her options.

1. Don't take Personal Space, Opting In, or Nullified. 

2. Take all of them, but then there's a bit of mind control.

3. Take them with a modified version of Nullified, so there's straightforward mind control of enemies and rare, sneaky, counterfactually-consensual mind control of non-enemies.

This is once again starting to feel like an advanced Ethics class she hasn't taken yet and doesn't trust herself to answer in, but she has the rule from Ethics 101 to guide her, namely: err on the safe and simple side! 

So, option 1 it is. Unless - 

4. Don't take Personal Space or Opting In, but do take the modified version of Nullified, just in case there's some sneaky mind-control somewhere else that she misses.

This is more complex but arguably safer, so maybe she should take it?

"...I think I'll come back after I look over all the powers. In case there's something else that I really want to take with Nullified."

(This is the other rule from Ethics 101: answer all the simple exam questions before circling back to the hard ones!)

...actually the very next two flowers are about dubiously helpful mind control! Why did she think she could escape the mind control, clearly that was silly of her. Maybe she should start discarding powers more quickly instead of overthinking so much.

I Can Fix Them. Definitely mind control, and even more importantly, she doesn't love or want to love morally despicable people!! Who would ever want something like that - oh right, Shelynites.

Moving right along to -

I Can Help Them. This looks like someone was offered I Can Fix Them and said, that's great, except can you please take the mind control and explicit moral despicableness out of it? And now it's all safe and consensual except for the 'lost to darkness' bit being irritatingly vague. 

Feather considers asking the Squirrel what it means, but then she realizes - being able to redeem people by loving them would be a moral obligation to love them. And she does not want to love people who are 'lost to darkness,' or whatever other euphemism someone comes up with. She can be friends with them, maybe. But she loves admirable people, not - bad people who can only become admirable because of her.

Skipping Inspirational (blatant mind control), the next three raise a similar concern.

True Love's Kiss, Eternal Love, The Rescuer. On the one hand these are awesome. On the other hand they're kinda pressuring her into loving (or True Loving) people again? If her best friend - if Greystripe dies, would she feel obliged to develop romantic feelings for him to bring him back? What if he's 'only' cursed? 

"Squirrel? Is there a way to make some of these powers work for close friends and not only - romantic love interests? Like family love, say. I would take I Can Help Them or the Rescuer if it would work on friends but if it's only for romantic love it makes me feel - pressured to romantically love more people. I think I wouldn't be pressured to be friends with more people, because if I'm not already friends with them, I probably don't care that much about helping them."

"I Can Help Them is one of the Spirit's Favorite powers so it works pretty broadly. Generally when a power refers to love unless it specifically says True Love it means anyone you deeply care about, not just people you're pursuing a romance with. So I Can Help Them and Eternal Love already work on friends. The Rescuer is even broader than that. It works on anyone you want to return to life, as long as they would be okay with that, no matter how you feel about them. If you're only concerned with friends and family Eternal Love does everything the Rescuer does. True Love's kiss only applies to people who count as your True Love though, since it specifically says that.

"Going back to I Can Help Them, the phrase lost to darkness is also really broad. It can apply to people who are doing awful things but it can also apply to people who have gotten trapped in their sadness or in bad habits that are hurting them that they can't seem to break."

That makes all of them very tempting! She'd still have to - Truely Love someone to break curses, but - Feather thinks having it restricted to that power will make the, um, moral obligation manageable. She wouldn't take it on its own but it's a prerequisite and one she can live with.

The Rescuer having no target restrictions sounds - uncomplicatedly great? It has costs and takes a long time, so it's not as if she's going to be able to wish everyone out of the Evil afterlives and into Nirvana, and really if she can pull stuff out of her pocket that wasn't there she can just go find a powerful cleric and pay them to raise someone, but it's nice to have the guarantee that she'll succeed in - any more complicated cases. (Feather has no idea if anyone is so complicatedly dead that no cleric can raise them. Maybe someone who died very long ago? But she doesn't know anyone like that...)

She takes all four.

Providential Parenthood seems fine. (Whyyyy does it have a mind-controlling variant. Why does anyone want it for this.)

Next are four different sex powers. And it makes sense some people would want sex powers! She's not sure it's the most important thing to her, but maybe she'll change her mind after having amazing power-enhanced sex! (*)

"Squirrel? Can I take the sex powers if I have Providential Parenthood and not Planned Parenthood?"

(*) Druid society becomes very sexually permissive once people get their first Wild Shape.