"If two people are listening at the same time and they don't have a language in common do they both understand you?"

"I'd expect so but I haven't tried it."

"When you write something down, how do you know what to write?"

"I've always known how to write."

"Do you think of - the shape of the whole word all as one unit? Are you able to answer questions like "what's the first character you draw" - are you able to answer questions like "what is the first shape you make with your mouth" -"

"Yes, I suppose I do - I don't know that I write in characters - no, not really -"

"Do words have any properties, to you, that are about the sounds they make? Spoken words I mean, not signed ones like these. - can you actually see what my fingers are doing or are they just broadcasting words into your brain - how many fingers am I using for this this this this this this -"

"If I pay attention to the sounds for some reason, yes, I can tell what they are, and count your fingers too - four six one eight I missed that one it went by too fast -"

"But you can't pay attention to written characters the same way? Huh!"

"Well, I haven't, but I probably could if I were paying attention? I just don't know whether the things I write constitute characters."

"Well, when we write we write characters that correspond to the sounds the words make when they're spoken."

"Yeah, but I don't do that. Someone tried to get me to spell, back when I couldn't talk, and I couldn't make sense of it."

"Huh."

Giggle.

He glances at Lohte's door and then continues, "I have more questions but people will be annoyed if I ask them all. So you should ask me some first."

"It would be a heck of a coincidence if you are also the right person to ask about magic, which is the main thing I'm curious about lately."

"Magic! I haven't done very much because it's more of a hassle for me to be gone than for anyone else to but I've done some things, I've made a new kind of light whose frequency you can set and I'm working on a design for long-distance communicators."

"- why is it more of a hassle for you to be gone and what's that have to do with magic?"

" - so you can't do magic fast. You have to slow down. And then you have to take however long the magic takes you, which is months even for simple projects and years for complicated ones. And in a manner of speaking this is my satellite court so there are all kinds of problems when I'm gone for a while."

"Your satellite court? The main one's somewhere else?"

"Technically the main one is my consort's father's - it's kind of a long boring story really - we do diplomacy mostly independent of them though I guess they'd act if we started behaving very irresponsibly."

"Oh, I see. I think. And you have to do a lot of maintenance so you can't go - slow down, and do magic - whenever you'd like?"

"I don't have to do very much. I mostly ignore it and then sometimes my son - you met him, red hair - tells me I need to mediate some transfers of debt and I do that. He could steal it out from under me if he put enough effort into it and probably someday he will but that sort of thing takes a long time."

"...and that's okay with you?"

"Well, if I catch him at it I'd be very disappointed, that'd be practically disqualifying, but assuming he pulls it off, he'll deserve it."