"Yeah, I'm trying to think of a good word for how it is. It's not like the Paladin coordinator's, hers is wordier."

Yeah, hers is really not words at all. Are there any namey words for 'thoughts'?

"Cognition isn't namey... hmmm... cogito ergo sum... ideas, concepts... I dunno."

Well, no rush. She can keep being Janet for a while. If anybody figures out enough stuff to make the connection they've already got a problem.

"Yup."

Anyway. If she is going to send a message back - get wings first, then do other stuff; switch to doing clothes as soon as you can; pick a theme and do all your stuff on the theme; some kind of directions to get them to Flora once they're out? Flora'll figure it out after a while but that's probably okay.

"Most people actually do basic cosmetics first - fixing their teeth and acne and any little spots that have always bothered them - and that's very low point count. Flora's a good first port of call but Winona might eventually figure out something else, at least for magical ones, that being her specialty."

She nods: Janet can figure out how to explain that, sure. Telling them to go to Flora and then changing it later is a little risky, though, it might confuse them if they remember parts of two different instructions.

"Well, if Winona figures something out it'll be a little more legal than this thing we're doing right now, so I guess Flora can just pass them on from there."

- legal?

"- where do you need me to start explaining that?"

...at the beginning?

"...okay. So, groups of people living together have rules they make so they can expect that anybody who tried to hurt them would get in trouble. It gets much, much more complicated than that. I'm legally not allowed to make any body mod or outfit changes other than reverting to my standard combat outfits from damage, while I'm deployed, because if I did something dumb while stressed out and maybe short on sleep and then I turned into a cryptid in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, or if I did something unaesthetic and my magic cut out and I fell through my force platform into the sea, my squadmates would be in big trouble. That's a really specific rule that only applies to paladins, but it's still a law, and there's a lot more things like that in all areas of life. Winona works with a lot of people who are experts on the law; we need experts because it's so complicated. Sometimes it's so complicated that they have an entire job of arguing with each other in front of a third expert exactly how some situation and some law apply to each other. Does that all make sense?"

...sort of?

"Go ahead and ask questions if you have any, I'm gonna... keep going. Some of the laws that exist are about children, and people who are dangerous to other people or to themselves, because those people might not be able to follow all the laws and keep themselves safe alone, so they need somebody who can look after them and maybe sometimes make them do things they don't want to do. Newborn babies can't say 'yes, I understand vaccines, and I want to be sure I don't get, uh, hepatitis', so their parents decide for them; some adults have brain problems that mean they can't do that either. You can't go grab a random person on the street and drag them to be vaccinated but you can do it with someone you have, it's called 'custody', over."

She doesn't know what vaccines are. Or hepatitis.

"Hoo boy. Okay, hepatitis is a liver disease. A vaccine is a shot, usually, which makes it so you won't get whatever disease it's a vaccination for."

Okay.

"The place you were probably - thinks of itself as, and maybe sometimes is - a place for people with that kind of brain problem, whose parents couldn't handle it. Since just turning them loose isn't an option, and the parents weren't able for some reason to deal with their problems."

Okay.

"So it's likely there's some kinda thing where they had custody, and that didn't change when you ran away. It was still right to run away - the law's not always right, and even when the law's right it's not always enforced right away, like, if any of what they were doing to you was against the law they weren't getting caught at it very well - but it might not have been legal and that means Flora or us or whoever helped you get to Flora could get in trouble. But Winona knows experts and she's working on it."

So laws are when you're not allowed to do stuff, and you'll get in trouble if the wrong person catches you, okay.

"Right. And sometimes that's important. If somebody goes around robbing stores, that's gonna hurt people who need that money and inventory to live on. Somebody's got to catch them and stop them. But sometimes, because things are really complicated, it's not as good, or it's harder to make it good than it should be."

It really wouldn't be that hard to make it better than it was, there.

"Hm, different kind of hard."