"I don't mean, everybody would, but it's not a good thing to be a shren."

"Why not?"

"...people who aren't shrens or dragons don't really understand it."

"Based on historical precedent that sounds kind of like they're so horribly ableist at you that you've internalized it."

"...I'm not sure I've ever actually spoken to a dragon in my life," says Ehail thoughtfully. "Not more than a few words, anyway, not when I wouldn't have had my hair dyed..."

"Then I really don't understand why you think there's something wrong with you besides the inconvenience of nonfunctioning limbs. ...And the trauma of having put in your twenty years before I showed up to interrupt it."

"It's hard to explain."

"Can you at least give me a general category? Is it that there's some subtler inconvenience that's difficult to put in words?"

"Not, not exactly, it's - it's the word..."

"The word?"

"Shren. It's Draconic, you can't even learn Draconic."

"Why not?"

"It's unlearnable. It changes too much. We can speak it as part of the speaking all languages thing."

"Changes so much you can't naturally learn it? So it's, what, another magic thing?"

"Yes."

"So you have a magic language being ableist at you in your head."

"I guess."

"That sounds really unpleasant."

Nod.

"Do you have any idea why your magic language is horribly ableist?"

"No."

"Damn. Ugh."

Ehail shrugs and looks at her shoes.

"I wonder if I could convince it that it was being horribly ableist and should stop. That's sort of how my favorite branch of my magic works, is convincing things of things."

"...I'm not sure what's there to be convinced, but I suppose you could try it, if you can normally convince things that aren't thinking."