"What a good world."

"Much of it, some of the time."

"Most faeries are happy. And there's so much that's stupid. And it can all get better and be nice, and get even better in a million years."

Wag wag.

He beams at him.

Aaaaaa faeries are weird how about Cam continues ignoring that for the time being until any of it is put into bullet points or something! How's Auda doing?

"No one bothered me. How was your - thing?"

"It went well! Faeries get really excited over food and there was good uptake of the concept in every court when I started passing it out to buy. One court had a baby for me to have a look at but it wasn't as informative as I might have hoped."

"What were you hoping for?"

"I was hoping for one that was sped up but only recently. They apparently don't consider their children people till they can talk, and say more than a few words."

"The poor things."

"Yeah, I'm considering the theory that faeries are how they are in some part because of child neglect, some unavoidable because of the speed thing and some not."

"They seem like they'd be terrible parents. - not that I have any right to -"

"No, I agree, they do seem that way, though I did also get to interview a kid yea high and he seemed pretty okay."

"Okay how?"

"He didn't seem like he was dealing with emotional problems or anything? Seemed to get along fine with his mom. Had toys and free time and stuff."

"I guess none of them have to work and they only have one at a time and that'd help."

"And they don't have to worry about where to get food for the babies because dew will do, and so on."

"My mother had eleven. Five died."

"That's the kind of thing I knew to expect abstractly but have not personally met happening in my actual life."

"It seems kind of unfair if they can do better but I guess maybe they just can. Even if they have no concept of generosity or affection for its own sake or whatever."

"More resources - or less need - can patch a lot of gaps in competence. Yeah."

Shrug. "I"m glad you had a good time."

"We'll probably do it again but not right away, we want to see how it percolates first. Might wait till after the fifteen minutes at dawn."

Nod. "And you mentioned you'd buy human slaves? If anyone had them?"