How do you determine intention?

...By asking them to account for themselves?

- they can be relied on not to lie?

The forbidden art of Lying is very, very difficult in proper Song. A Liar cannot keep up their Lies without being detected for long. And then they are shunned for abusing the sacred power of song.

Oh, I see.

I noticed the internet is different, but somehow I did not make the connection...

Draak will find being lied to upsetting. Lies of omission are annoying but permissible. Mistakes and emphasizing certain aspects or perspectives is fine... Direct falsehoods, claimed to be true? No.

It's generally not polite, and sometimes outright criminal, but it's not difficult, so Amentans sometimes do lie outright. I don't think I've lied to you.

I'm not sure if I would have noticed it in your mind, but I trust it to be true as you say it now. The closest I have come to sensing a Lie was a sense of False Sympathy that I think the sender did not truly feel, one time.

For crimes of Draak against Amentans we can ask the Draak for an accounting of the events from their perspective and continue to trust it to be true. Crimes of Amentan against Amentan, we should let you figure that out yourselves.

Our systems for that aren't perfect, but they do all right for us, I think.

And you might have heard that I started a ship-building initiative. But any more policy talk would be flapping my wings without actually going anywhere, before the Moot, even if having a picture of possible New Laws helps.

Yes, I understand nothing's set in stone yet. I'm just imagining an Amentan trying to get a good photo of Blueblight and then trying to adjudicate what "near it" means.

Hmm. I suppose we might be able to add extra definitions to the Moot laws for Amentan consumption - if the expanded versions apply to Amentans, not Draak. That feels strange to think about, though. They are not intended that way.

Do they not understand that Blueblight will kill them?

They can certainly be made to sit through a lecture on the subject before they land. We can't expect one hundred percent conservatism, and - I think a lot of Amentans would assume that if you didn't specify a perimeter it couldn't be too dangerous from moderate photo-taking distance.

Yes, before we allow Amentan visitors I will expand all our laws with more clear definitions and boundaries. Blueblight is very, very rare, thankfully. It's just dangerous enough that it must be taken as a deadly threat should so much as a suggestion of it appear. I wish I had a way to be confident it was totally eradicated.

I wish we could be confident of that too.

Yes, well. All the wishing in the world won't get you a tenth as far as hard work.

I think it might be useful to you to read at least some of the Tapai legal code, maybe with a legal yellow handy to explain things about its history and reasoning and implementation.

As good a project as any for whenever I'm bored with chatting with the marine biologists. I think I want to stay here for the whole month I intended to visit, barring ferrying Bloom and River. It's a lovely little island.

Actually, River would think it a fine adventure to take a boat instead of my ship.

I think she'd fit all right!

Properly adult Draak will have a harder time fitting into Amenta - both literally and figuratively. They're bigger because I don't think we actually ever stop growing, and more set in their ways. Being able to fly is the mark of young adulthood and she had her first flight only three seasons ago.

So they invite River to join them via boat heading back to Tapa.

She's in a better mood now. Sounds fun. She has a lot of questions about how boats work!

The boat greys can explain and what they don't know the others can look up.

Burning fuel to make something move is a neat idea. Maybe Draak can power things with their fire breath.

Caste is strange, she tells one of the boat greys. I can see differences between greys and blues but they're not even as big as between Bloom and I - Emerald and Sapphire - and you make laws about them.

- it's not about looking different, offers a grey. That's just convenient so we can tell who we're talking to.