"Well, Draak are people."

We have telepathy and magic! I don't know how that could evolve.

"I'm not sure how it would've first made it into the population - there's a magic Amentan now but even if someone else introduced magic to Draak like so, that just prompts the question of where they got it - but once it got there it's a clear advantage."

My Creators said that Sun and Earth made the first Draak.

"That sounds... probably metaphorical."

Probably. They told it like a story even though they said it definitely did happen. I think they were wrong.

"It's supposed to be very serious, even unheard of, for Draak to outright lie, but maybe they didn't think about it very hard before they told you."

If you're very sure but wrong that's not really lying?

"We'd call that being mistaken. I'm not sure what line they'd have drawn themselves," says Pep.

Lying seems sneaky which is fun, but if every Draak thinks it's bad I'd better not do it or they'll think I'm bad.

I want to practice breathing fire! I could use the fireplace even if you don't put any wood there so it doesn't burn things.

"Sure!"

She strains with the effort. Her fire doesn't seem any stronger than yesterday, though. At length she happily eats dinner and absorbs more lessons before Pep and Tathsei go to sleep.

Elsewhere, Sunwind comments to his new assistant, I can only practice making camouflage ignore greenscreen material for so long before getting bored, and boredom is not good for staving off hibernation. Are there scripting sessions I can go to? Tunnels to dig or greys to fly around with? Anything productive to do in general?

"How far can you telepathically hear?"

That depends on a lot of stuff. Less far than I can regular hear usually.

"...okay, but how far can you regular hear and can you do telepathic hearing through stuff? Because if you can do it through stuff and kinda far I could just find out where they're having all the meetings."

Crest feathers twitch a bit. I don't number my abilities! I can hear a truck coming into the loading dock from here. Through stuff is hard. Even glass isn't great. It's best if I'm within... A hundred feet... Of someone to try to listen to them, maybe up to five hundred if they're being loud and it's not very crowded. Glass and drywall and wood doors all cut that down to almost nothing.

"Okay, so they'd probably have to move meetings to loop you in, or they could conference call and I could be an interpreter?"

That would be... Better than nothing. Maybe the Air-heads hanging out where we landed have artifacts that relay or boost the Song. I've heard of things like that.

"I can send an email to the conference people. And stuntgrey flights are probably very doable, they'll want to do lots of auditions to find someone of the right build for final casting whoever they wind up hiring for the green half of the role. Oh, also, they'll probably want to do a photoshoot soon, that's productive."

All good things. I still cannot be sure if I will hibernate during the Amentan winter yet. Not being sure messes up the planning, right?

"It does, yeah, especially casting because the actors can get tied up in other stuff like Shian Epechi did while you were gone."

Are they famous? It's just a name to me.

"She's not the most famous actor but she's definitely A-list. The kind who disappears into roles, just wildly different in a movie over here with an orange wig and a show over there in purple dye."

I hardly know any actors but that does sound like it would make good movies. I guess I will have to be disappointed because it means this movie might be a bit worse.