"I don't think I've heard this story."

<My grandmother suffered from complications when she bore her son which left her disabled. Andalites - do not look kindly on that. The custom is to live on your own somewhere far away so you need not be shamed by interaction with others. My father snuck out to see his mother, all the time. My grandfather remarried. My grandmother killed herself. My father was distraught, and ran away and lived alone for most of his childhood, and my name Nelinfir is by ancient titling custom a name you would give the first grandchild if you only had one child - so it is a way of calling my father's half-siblings illegitimate.>

"...ah. I did piece together the disability thing. I remember deciding not to pointedly wonder aloud if everybody in the conversation was just politely ignoring the fact that out of morph I couldn't walk briskly."

<Which is a bad thing that ought to be corrected, and if one can bear a child without such disadvantages one unambiguously should, but ill-treatment of the deficient once they already exist does not improve anything.>

"I agree with you as far as that goes, maybe modulo the thing where apparently Bells all come with this problem and Bells are great and there may be other tradeoffs in that vicinity. A lot of humans take a more radical stance. I've had some juggling to do to keep tourist Andalites from offending people too much."

<Bells seem to remain great when the problem is corrected. But I can imagine it would cause some problems, yes.>

"What I mean is that we do seem to have to have it in the first place, so if you could detect it in utero..."

<I see your point. I - do not want you to imagine that the Andalite position is that the world is poorer for having you in it.>

"Well, not anymore anyway. Got a spell for it. I'm not going to miss having to treat stairs as potentially lethal."

<Stairs are fairly lethal. I have no idea how anyone does balance on only two legs.>

"With more use of stairs than Andalites get to have, obviously."

<I wonder if the grace spell would do anything for Andalites in morph.>

"Maybe. It's only designed to work on humanoids, but I don't know if the humanoid target being a morph would screw it up. Should be safe to try."

<Perhaps later. Do you prefer I announce I am back, and if so with what cover story this time? Or should we wait until the war is over and then I can 'come back' and announce that and the two can be assumed to be related?>

"How much trouble will there be with the Andalites over the jailbreak?"

<They will be embarrassed and will probably for that reason prefer not to make a fuss. Someone might meet with you privately to suggest an extradition agreement, if there is not one in place.>

"But they don't know I know you were in jail."

<The news won't reach them for a little while anyway, and by then I will probably be elsewhere trying to set up institutions for distribution of magic and promotion of competent people.>

"Are they going to want to extradite anybody else? Are the people you and Cam just resurrected going to make themselves known to the homeworld?"

<They might eventually, but none of them should be in much trouble with the homeworld - except my father, and he will not cooperate with being arrested...>

"Well, I'm not planning to arrest him."

<No, my people'd try.>

"I mean he can be elsewhere without my obstruction by the time that occurs to them."

<Would you prefer he be so elsewhere?>

"It'd probably be convenient from an interplanetary relations front but I don't otherwise have very strong feelings about it."