"Oh, I see. That does sound convenient, if she can mostly entertain herself."

He stares at a passing train for a few moments with a thoughtful expression, and then turns back to Traveler.

"If there are roving dog packs, are dogs kind of like bees? In that they live with people because we give them better shelter and so on, and they prefer that to living in the wild, so they don't mind doing things for the people they live with?"

Yup. Most dogs have plenty of opportunity to leave their households if they want to, just by the nature of the kinds of work Crafters ask them to do - they guard Crafters' territories and help them hunt, both of which work best if they're free to run around - but having a safe warm place to sleep and guaranteed meals and help raising their puppies is pretty valuable to them and they're plenty smart enough to realize that.

It's sort of hard to get a grasp on how intelligent different animals are, for all that it's been the topic of some debate since Traveler's arrival. Hearing that dogs are smart enough to evaluate whether staying with people is better for them is something of a relief.

"Well, it's good to hear that you've been settling in," he summarizes. "My day involved a lot of language practice, but I also found a new fiction book that I like the start of so far. It's about three people who get trapped on an island by a giant, and have to work together to survive and solve the giant's riddle."

He's charmed by the language practice and curious about the book, Crafter fiction isn't much like that at all.

"Well, it's kind of cliché, but it's well written," Kharet explains. "The giant's riddle is — if the giant gives them a non-self-intersecting polygon with N sides, how many candles would they need to place to ensure that every spot within the polygon can see at least one candle? And the book has the characters think about that, but it's spaced out with sections on survival and about how they're coping with being taken from their families and imprisoned on an island, so you have time to kind of mull on the problem as you read and try to keep ahead of the characters. And it gives them something concrete to focus on, so they can all show off their individual talents—"

And Kharet will happily detail the first third or so of the book, including how one of the characters has a crush on one of the other characters, and how they figured out a source of fresh water, and so on.

It's very interesting, and so is the puzzle. (He thinks the answer might be that you need one candle per inward-facing point to be sure of it, so half of N unless there's a way to make a polygon with more inward-facing points than outward-facing ones that he's failing to think of.)

"Well, you could make a polygon with more inward-facing points by taking a big square and then replacing one side with half of a tridecagon, for example. So you'd have four outward corners, but seven inward ones," he points out. "But I'm not sure if a shape like that would actually need more candles."

Huh, yeah. He'd want to sit down and make some drawings to get more of a feel for that class of polygons and how to light them to say more, so, not while they're walking.

"Yeah, for sure," he agrees. "It's the kind of book that makes you want to put it down and try things."

He glances at his phone to make sure they're still going the right way.

"So if that isn't what Crafter fiction is usually like, what is it usually like?"

There's usually less conflict, sort of? The situation with the giant trapping the other characters wouldn't occur in Crafter fiction, or at least not as a central part of the story, in large part because it's hard to really trap Crafters. It's just not that hard to build a ship when you've got crafting to work with. Crafter stories are usually more slice-of-life or about striving toward something, or sometimes there'll be talking animals (real species or fictional) who have problems like that and may or may not ask Crafters for help with them, but it's hard to write about that kind of lack-of-resource when you've never experienced it.

"I guess that makes sense. Do you ever get talking animals writing stories based on their experiences?"

Not writing but dictating, yeah. Elephantiforms in particular are known for it, a bit, but that's possibly just because they're more likely to have Crafters living with them in their own households than other species - their fiction tends to be a bit like the giant book, actually, interpersonal stuff in the context of some sort of struggle. They like writing the kinds of books he does, too, about observations they've made about the natural world.

It feels mildly surreal to have the fiction of his species compared to that of elephantiforms because they've both experienced scarcity. But, you know, he probably would read a book by an elephant, so fair enough.

"Is that also the kind of book you enjoy reading, or do you read stuff you wouldn't write?"

He's not that big on fiction, though he'll check out things he's been recommended sometimes and he's read a couple of elephant books, there's some pretty good ones out there. The natural science books are interesting, they have different stuff going on sensory-wise so they have a very different perspective on things.

"Oh, of course they would. How are their senses different?"

They do a lot more with hearing and smell; any time they pick something up they're also smelling it, so they notice a lot more about that just as a matter of course, and they can hear some sounds at miles and miles of distance that Crafters can't hear at all and they do some communication that way, which makes their social lives very different, they almost can't not be social with each other and they depend on that long-distance communication to make decisions about their day-to-day lives.

Kharet thinks about his phone in his sporran.

"I guess that's another similarity to Helpers — the long-distance communication for day-to-day lives thing, I mean."

He points at a building that has just come into view around the corner.

"There's the music hall."

Ooh, it's neat-looking.

Helpers have phones, yeah, and Crafters have ansibles, but he thinks those are much more similar to each other than either is to the elephants' thing - ansibles and phones are both targeted ways of communicating about complex ideas with one other person whereas the elephantiforms' thing is broadcasting simple ideas to everybody in an area, more like how Crafters might put notices up on a message board in a public space except that they don't have to go somewhere for it, either. It means they always have this background awareness of important things in their whole region, which he definitely doesn't get from ansibles, he supposes he wouldn't know if Helpers are doing something like that with their phones.

"Hmm. There are people who put together daily summaries of news of interest in different areas and share them, but not everybody reads the same ones — or reads any at all," he explains. "I read a general one for the city, for the continent, and one about new discoveries in plant biology. But those are still complex ideas, usually, so it's not quite the same thing."

As they get closer, it becomes apparent that there are two purple-uniformed people standing on either side of the doors to the music hall being obviously welcoming. This isn't usually a standard at þereminian events, but people seem to be taking it in stride.

He should look into getting in on those, they sound interesting. And the city one might be similar, yeah, but elephants also... they don't exactly socialize that way but they do keep track of each other, like, if an elephant from one household joins another the household of origin will be able to keep tabs on the new household to make sure their daughter/sister is still all right, and they'll use it to meet up with each other if they find themselves in the same area again, so it's important to their social lives even if it isn't a direct factor in them.

"I'm sure your local guide would be willing to send you a translation of the news, if you asked," he agrees.

They reach the entrance of the music hall and Kharet exchanges a few words with one of the greeters. His phone makes a complicated high-pitched warble.

The other greeter grabs a prepared whiteboard from behind herself and shows it to Traveler with a smile:

"Hello, Traveler! I'm glad to have you here. The ground floor inside this building is a public space, but if you need me to pull you into it I would be happy to."

He might need that, yeah, he appreciates the offer. (Less than he would if he hadn't been looking forward to asking Kharet to do it all day, but he's not going to share that part.)

He approaches the door, and - yup, he's going to need the explicit invitation.

Kharet huffs under his breath, and holds out an arm for Traveler to grab onto if he wants to before the greeter can.

...can he do that without a more explicit invitation...

With some effort, yes. He's not in any hurry to break contact, either.