"Why does that happen at all?"

"I mean, there're ways to get people into more debt if they're in debt and you're willing to be aggressive about it. So if you've established that's what you're going to do, some people will prefer doing it through collaborative music to doing it through being forcefed or sitting in a cage while I play at them or whatever."

"Okay, but when is that desirable as an outcome?"

"If you're trading them back to their court and want it to be expensive and the circumstances are such that their court won't be outraged by this, or if you're executing them."

"Ah."

He taps his baby grand piano, trying Beethoven on it.

"I don't actually play piano but I do know the sheet music for piano pieces involves two clefs, one for each hand."

"That makes a lot of sense but I think I'll need some practice to coordinate them like that - ideally you'd have them doing different things -"

"Yes, my understanding is that it's tricky at first."

"It's a wonderful concept for an instrument, though."

"It was considered an improvement on prior keyboards because it allowed more dynamic variation! - is volunteering fun facts like that pricey?"

"Not if I wasn't asking, for a broad definition of asking, but that I wouldn't even have thought to ask, see."

"Oh good."

"Anything where you're communicating the desire for more information counts as asking. Sharing other information is fine though if you do it in some contexts, people will think you're trying to hit on a question they'll be counted as having asked."

"I'm not doing that, I'm just clueless and generous of spirit."

"I gathered. And picky about payment, but we'll make do."

"Is that what they're calling it."

"My red-haired brother said that you make all your own material objects for yourself and the girl and you didn't want us and you asked a lot of questions but they were still rather behind."

"I also made a bunch of material objects for the court to buy the human out on account of objecting to slavery!"

"Yes, sorry, I did also hear that the piano was part of the payment for her and it's a wonderful piano and I'm glad you did. You obviously don't owe us more, it's just - inconvenient."

"I wasn't objecting on the grounds that you sounded like you were pestering me for more, I'm actually really annoyed about the thing where how much stuff I can give out is capped artificially."

"Yes, I feel similarly."

"But I think even if I were super into the indebted fairy concept it would be hard to keep up with 'arbitrary material objects'."

"If you liked the concept you could run a very wealthy court of people curated to be safe to have very deeply in your debt and then be as generous as you liked with them."

"I suppose."