"And it wouldn't turn out too well for the writer, I guess? But if, like, humans wanted to ward off faeries, they could have old people write false things a bunch, save them till the person died, then tack them up everywhere."

"Well, most faeries can't read, but they could ward off my father."

"I guess you could just stop teaching people to read, yes."

"It's a moderately rare skill. You don't need it for most things you might want to do in life."

"I guess you wouldn't if you have to pay for everything you read!"

"And for learning in the first place!"

"Reading is probably an even better example than music of it being important to have some stuff too cheap to metaphorically meter."

"It sounds nice."

"It is! It's really nice!" Sigh.

Sigh. "Maybe some day I will in some bizarre contrivance save someone's life and then I can keep them and play music to them forever."

"Well. I guess that's better than some things you could do with them."

"Hmm?"

"If I found myself in possession of a faery life debt I would... have a problem, actually, since I'm way more limited in ways I can reasonably receive legible value than in ways I can dish it out, but if somebody else found themselves in possession of a faery life debt I would recommend zeroing it out and letting them go!"

"I guess if they were really really miserable about leaving wherever they'd been before?"

"I don't think people should have to work themselves up into a froth of misery to have their preference to be wherever they wanna be taken seriously!"

"Well, I feel pretty strongly about having someone I can play music to!"

"I am not unsympathetic to this plight! Slavery is just a br- metaphorical bridge too far, that means it's - it's hard to talk dramatically when I have to interrupt myself whenever I reach for a figure of speech - it's not okay to keep people as slaves just because you'd find having one very enjoyable!"

"It really seems like it is, actually? Barring some sort of odd extenuating circumstances?"

"I'm not saying the universe will smite you for it! Obviously it will not! I'm making a different kind of claim here."

"Okay."

"It takes a while for humans to work this out too and I get why it would be harder for faeries to figure out."

"I think if they were cheaper to feed most humans would be happier as faery slaves. At least more than half of them. They work and work and work until they starve or get stabbed or die young of some horrible illness."

"This is among the reasons it takes humans so long to figure it out, probably."

"I think I would frame it more as - there are lots of states people can live in and slavery's not in the top half but it's really far from the bottom. And if you happen to really want it to be in the top half that's easy to do."

"Slavery is pretty near the bottom when you have more information about how things can be and more resources to do it with. I guess except for people who do it as a kink thing but that's a minority."