"I will go with you," she says.

"Okay."

"If she kills us all in our sleep, it's your fault."

"See, that would be a valid concern, if you ever slept."

"I'm not going to kill you! There's no one on that whole land, I would be lonely."

"If she was going to attack us she'd have done it when she had the element of surprise."

"That and one person can't sail this boat. I'm fine with her tagging along if you are. Marion is going to have a thousand questions, of course."

"Of course. We can start on them now, at least, we won't reach land for a few more hours.

Tell us more about your alucine. What kinds of people live there? What magic do they have? What do people do?"

"People have magic kinds from the flowers, if they want them," she says, gesturing with green-flower hand. "People in that alucine call themselves Yorib. They... do... people things?"

There proceeds to be a lot more miming and drawing while Tem explains concepts like "parliament", "jobs", and "money". He wants to know if the Yorib have any of those or what they have instead if not.

The other two mostly listen, except when Derron chimes in with "Tem, you know what a job is?" and Tem cracks up.

"They have jobs and money and I think they have one person, not a parliament, but I was not in Yoribua long."

"Pinehedge used to have one person, but he got lost and nobody could find the new one, so we started having a parliament instead."

He has more questions and so do the other two. Do the Yorib have agriculture? Domesticated animals? What kinds of animals? Do they have marriage and parenting and birthday parties and sowing parties and harvesting parties? Do they have printed books and musical instruments? Do they have a taboo against cannibalism? ("Seriously, Chaenath?" "It's an interspecies universal!") Do they have schools and religions and political arguments?

The Yorib have agriculture and domesticated animals which she can illustrate the same way she did the flowers. They have marriage and parenting but not birthday parties; they do have agricultural festivals. They do not have printed books because they have flowers, but gosh, what a concept! They have musical instruments. They do not eat each other.

Flowers instead of books, wow. Printed books are like this; this one in particular is a book on different kinds of plants and whether you can eat them safely. What are their laws like? What kinds of injuries and diseases do they have treatments for?

"I think magic can fix most injuries and diseases, if someone is good at it. I don't know very much about the laws of Yoribua because I did not live there, I was just traveling."

Well, now he wants to hear about all the other places she's been!

And Chaenath wants to know all the details she can give them about how magic fixes injuries! The kind of magic they have here doesn't fix injuries very well because you can't visualize what needs to happen exactly enough, but it can do things like "hold this broken bone still" and "make this person have more blood than they do right now".

"I don't know any healing magic. It would have been too many kinds."

"Too many kinds? You mean you didn't have time?"

"No, it - your magic that is not in flowers doesn't do this? It doesn't make you a different person?"

"Not any more than learning about non-magical medicine or wood-carving or singing or plants."

"Huh. Magic from flowers, if you learn it, you get different. I picked kinds that would make me different in ways I thought would be okay."

"What kinds of different are you? And what kinds of magic? The wings, and your skin, but is there anything else you haven't showed us?"

"I can do magic with flowers... when there are any. I should have brought some. I can change myself more if I want. Flowers magic makes me - lonely -" Hand-wobble, not quite the right word, "and myself changing magic makes me more interested in myself."