"Who are the Sand Dusk Chanters?"

"They're this ridiculous little cult that took some specious, methodologically laughable research suggesting that the reservoir was sentient and concluded that they ought to worship it," says Kaylo, sounding like he's talking from under seven hundred pounds of weapons-grade exasperation. "I might have to actually talk to one in order to get ahold of some of their 'prayer spells' in order to let you talk to it. Although I think their best spells only convince it to give you weird colors and stuff."

"Does this," she inquires, "mean that you do not want to high-five me after all?"

"It's hardly your fault that a weird little cult happens to have extracted about half a correct guess from some solider literature," sighs Kaylo.

She grins again.

"Are you likely to be able to make anything of it if I cast one of their prayer spells on you and the reservoir makes you see colors in response to things you say?"

"I do not know. It seems unlikely to have much depth as a communication method."

"Maybe they've gotten it to do other things too, although I'm pretty sure if they'd gotten it to say anything much that'd be in the news. I'm going to have to talk to one. I'm going to have to pretend to respect their beliefs, probably. Ugh. It's worth a try," he sighs.

"It occurs to me," she says after a moment, "that unlike most species, yours has no natural settling point for the aging process. It seems potentially convenient to make the young dead able to age normally, but at what point should they stop? I assume it would not be convenient if they continued growing indefinitely."

"Uh, yeah, that would get really inconvenient after a few more thousand years. I guess we should stop no later than four thousand years. Never having exceeded twenty feet nose to tail myself I'm not sure if it should be earlier than that given the choice... could ask Mom and Dad after I fetch them, though."

"Four thousand years can be the limit for now, then."

"Yeah. Like, at minimum, the buildings on Dragon Island can handle people that big and I am pretty sure they can still do midair shifting to escape from closed-in architecture. Man, various religions are going to freak out about this entire thing. The Sand Dusk Chanters will be smug and everybody else will be running around in circles like the moon's falling out of the sky."

"That sounds... noisy. I hope that no one decides to address their complaints to me. I dislike complaints."

"I would expect them to pile up in great intractable drifts everywhere. I'm not actually sure why I was able to get in this room - I suppose Korulen and whoever she was living with moved completely out of it and you're here for long-term enough that you count as the occupant, now? Well, the door has a ward and if it thinks you live here it'll respond to you circle or no, you don't have to let shouting Thanetans and singing Aleists and outraged Kovin and - reservoir knows what else. Chanters are going to be so smug."

"Are shouting and singing common respective behaviours of Thanetans and Aleists, or was that arrangement of phrasings rhetorical?"

"They are in fact not uncommon, although I imagine the reverse also occurs. There's always Thanetan street preachers who don't know when to shut up and Aleist churches always have - reasonably pretty, I suppose - hymns wafting out the windows."

"I see. I will be pleased if none of these people succeed in complaining to me about the implications of my existence."

"Yeah... I mean if it gets really bad the school will start refusing to admit anybody but students, but some fraction of students are this or that. Pretty sure my Nanela History class has a Kovin and an Aleist in it."

"Although I suppose if I am to instantiate large numbers of valuable objects, I will have to be let out of the circle and will therefore be able to escape their attention by leaving this building if I choose."

"They don't have to let you out of the circle to take stuff you make. They could do that with a calling circle. I dunno why you haven't been let out, but needing to remove things prrrrobably won't be the deciding factor."

"I did express a lack of any strong preference over whether my time here is spent in this circle or out of it."

"Might be it, though I'd still expect it to be a pain in the neck for somebody to feed you and so on, unless you... don't... eat or anything?"

"I do not require food or other maintenance from any outside source."

"Handy-dandy, how do you do that?"