"...Neither Theo or I had married. And I don't think species - explicitly breed themselves for things, on purpose, on [Water]. Mostly they do it by accident. We're not all four of us female. We're not the same species- Spirits, Theo would have a [stress episode] about the idea of starting a new population if a female Dynafer had showed up- Water, fire, moving metal, and teleportation... I was just a ship pusher. I think I have an unusual personality?"

Hm! "How would you feel about starting a new population?"

"...Largely ambivalent? If I decided on that course I wound undertake it with dedication and careful preparation. Anything worth doing is worth doing your best. But motherhood neither appeals nor repulses. -Well, pregnancy does sound unpleasant but that doesn't matter much."

"Aha. So, on [Rock], species do breed themselves, probably because catfolk and werewolves, old and widespread species, have litters of several pups. If everyone did that, there wouldn't be food for them all, and eventually they'd starve or kill each other, so it's better to restrict reproduction beforehand.

Frogolds are kind of like that and kind of not. We have lots of eggs, but most of them don't hatch, and many of the taddies don't live to metamorphosize into adults. There are two problems with this.

First, well, people say that this breeds frogolds to be scheming and miserable, and this is not true, definitely not true of the frogolds I know - but I think there's a possibility that it could become true. Or we might accidentally breed ourselves for something else, like a specific artistic taste, and that would be fine! But I don't know in advance which way it will go. It might not even be predictable. We should at least come up with some standardized tests to track the things we care about. It's enough that it's possible that we could end up in a bad state, and I think we should take the idea seriously, even though the people saying it usually follow it up with 'and that's why all frogolds are thieves and miscreants'.

Second, we kill disappointing taddies without feeling bad about it because they're supposedly not people. But I remember being a taddie and I remember thinking, at the time, that I was clearly a person. Which is harder to believe: that I have an unusually good memory of that time, or that I have an unusually good memory and also that I was unusual in being a person but most taddies aren't? The fix for this is simple and we could do it right away without arguing about any details: just don't kill taddies, and eat a few more eggs instead. This would also address the concern about taddies knowing that their life depends on keeping an adult's protection, which is the main reason to worry about breeding ourselves to be manipulative in particular, rather than some other unhappy attractor.

Anyway, it seems like all four of us might tolerate, at least better than average, populating a planet in a way other than our usual sort of reproduction, and tolerate the absence of people of the same species and the other sex. So if there's a new kind of magic prepared for us, perhaps that's what it will do: make copies of people, or bud off children, or create whole new people somehow."

"...That makes at least as much sense as many of my other ideas?"

The types of plants around are changing as they progress along the path. The vegetation is much thicker. Fewer palms. Lots of variety.

"-Careful. There, tree spider. They're venomous."

It's a palm-sized fuzzy spider sitting on a random fallen piece of wood a couple feet out of the cleared path.

"What are your other ideas?"

"It looks so soft!" But she will stay away from it.

"We have partridges - birds - in a little enclosure up at our farm. They're soft too, and the eggs and meat are nice. I guess with four people it might count as a hamlet or village, not just a farm, at some point... Anyway, maybe the big guys just thought it would be funny. Maybe they set up something automated to see how people act in extremis, and then see if they're clever enough to use whatever 'reward' is in the offering. Cultivate talent. Maybe it really is just... Random, or the result of twisty magic left alone too long. Maybe this is part of turning into a Big Guy. Maybe someone wants us to build things, then take over- But then, why not communicate? I don't know. It's a lot faster to get to the farm now that I carved out this path, we're like... A third there."

"It's funny to think about something being carved through a forest that was just sitting there. At home, forests are rare and precious. Is there more that needs to be carved? I could burn through the trees, if you're watching to smother any [non-catfolk, fuel-consuming] fire. Or did you carve the trees with water?

If you knew for sure that someone took us here to build something for them, would you cooperate?"

"Theo did about half of this actually- It was a long process to make metal shovels and axes but now he can wield them with his magic, sort of mostly. Fire is useful for other things too- Cooking, drying things, and firing pots, and working metal, just to start.

...I don't know. Depends a lot on how good their explanation is, and what the 'reward' is. My spite says 'no', my reason says 'maybe?'. It's nice to have a clear goal."

"Mm."

"I would only refuse if I thought that they would have been able to tell in advance that I was going to refuse."

"My fire doesn't get hot enough to melt all metals, but I can do the other things. What kind of metal have you found here?"

"Mostly copper. -I have more thoughts on motivation and incentives if that's not - too touchy."

She glances at Lin, who seems fine. "Sure, go ahead."

"Have you heard of the concept of 'the social contract'? It means- What it is to live in a society, is an unspoken understanding with everyone around you, to follow the rules and norms, whatever that may currently be. But no single person designed the social contract, except maybe the very first one when two people said- Hey, I'm not gonna hurt you if you don't hurt me. It's - this horrible mushy mess of overlapping expectations and add-ons over time. Like hurting people with magic- That's extra special extra bad, to you? That's part of your social contract. It's not part of mine. I think the closest we got to that kind of - revulsion - is with Dracotyrants. Society has laws and customs and traditions and cultures and teachings and, and, nobody's coordinating it all, or if someone is, they can't possibly get it all- And I think a huge part of how societies work boils down to thinking about peoples' incentives. People are mostly smart, social smart, and people who have power can tell if you're planning to - remove their power, either intentionally or not, and then they do things to keep that power. And this is all very vague but I think certain ways of government do more good for more people than others because of the incentives of people in power, but if I lived in the Redscale Kingdom and a Dracotyrant offered me a very rewarding job sailing a ship that was transporting slaves- I'm not sure I wouldn't take it, on the logic that the slaves are already slaves, and someone else could drive the ship, and there's no - no coordination with other Deeplin to say 'fuck you, do without our magic' to the Redscales."

"For me, coming here to build stuff wouldn't be a 'very rewarding job'" if it meant never seeing her family again "but I see what you mean about needing to coordinate to refuse, or else refusing doesn't accomplish anything. Is that what you mean by 'social contract', the coordination? Not by an explicit agreement, but by accumulating a shared expectation that slavery is bad and the Redscales are bad and it's virtuous to refuse? I'm not quite sure how a 'social contract' is different from 'society' or 'culture'.

An example of how it goes on [Rock], so maybe you can tell what I'm missing, is that our country used to have slavery and stopped. Er, our slavery might be different from yours, if moving slaves to a different place is common on [Water]? An analogous situation for us might be refusing business dealings with a group that used slave labor. That would be pretty disruptive, so instead you still do your job but you complain to the ruler of your town, or the [senior person] of your species, and eventually enough people complain that the ruler can tell they need to change to prevent a revolt?"

"I'm imagining the lure of new magic as the 'very rewarding' part... I think that's close? The social contract is more - a term for the shared understanding of how things work. You obey the law, and the law protects you in thus and such ways. Social contract specifically means the rules of society, not the society itself."

The ground is starting to get muddy and wet, and the insects are getting really dense. They might be bothering Calsa or Lin. The path is gravel, now.

"...Our slavery might be different from yours. I do think slavery is awful. And I did mean to imply the difficulty of coordinating a change or refusal... Your context, what you think of as normal, hits really hard. Below the waves everyone, everyone was so very sure that all the surfacers were out to get them and loved nothing more than to jeer at our bedraggled selves and murder us if we went on land alone. Above, everyone was sure that I was one small slip away from going mad and killing people, that I was a spy, that I was inherently untrustworthy and shifty. And- A lot of people join the army fully believing the rhetoric about cruel surfacers who'd just as easily pincushion a Deeplin with Dynafer magic, as throw away a piece of trash. It's hard to see the problems from inside the system. It's hard to change the system because it has - inertia, people don't want to change, or they're afraid to change, or they don't know that other people would agree to change and worry about seeming rebellious-"

"Not worth it, unless I could bring it back with me and it'd be particularly useful on [Rock]."

Snack time.

Calsa smoulders to keep the insects off.

"Ah, the shared understanding of the rules, like 'surfacers will attack you' and 'if you work together with your comrades you'll keep each other safe' and 'but if you go on the surface alone don't expect help'? So you would refuse if there was a rule that we all refuse jobs that we didn't get to discuss in advance, even we happen to get a deal we personally like, so that the big guys are forced to talk first? Only if that was part of the 'context' that people really believed unquestioningly, but not if it was merely an explicit agreement, because that isn't strong enough?"

"...I think I'm confused. If it was part of the context, or part of an explicit agreement, to refuse the Redscales, I think I probably wouldn't work for them in most circumstances? But in absence of that, just thinking they're awful- Maybe. I may have lost track of my original point."

"No, you're fine, I think I get what you're saying about needing a social contract.

What social contract do you want to have for the hamlet?"

"...It seems silly to use money when there's just four people, but everyone ought to work to keep things working and well supplied. And I want us to investigate the odd sites together and try to get through them but Theo- Does not want to do that, so. I guess we don't. It was really hard at first... I think you two might sleep in the cellar until we can start building your own huts? We don't talk about each other's - thoughts about the island anymore."

"It's not obvious to me that money works better with more people, but I'm happy to forgo it.

I'll be careful to not talk about the island in front of Theo.

And we don't do big things, or things out of the ordinary, unless all of us agree? Hrm."