"Our precog has more detailed but less deterministic precognition, back there."

"Good. It's a matter of feeling like I have agency. At most, once or twice by my choice."

"I don't really feel like I don't have agency even with deterministic precognition? I mean, physics is as far as anyone can tell deterministic."

"That sentiment is more to do with things that could be used to control me ahead of time and isn't exactly a reasoned fear."

"Control you how?"

"Read my mind, predict how I'll react to things, use the information to argue in such a way that I will probably accept whatever the thing is."

"That—doesn't sound generally possible unless they're factually correct or just plain lying?"

"That's the verbal spin I put on it to try and justify it anyway, I'm well aware that brains say whatever makes any sense when trying to put a reason on a fear."

Well he thinks he wants to hug Terel.

Sure, hug, even if this isn't a particularly huggable thing? He hugs but is vaguely confused.

"I love you," he explains, "and the thought of potential distress to you is mildly distressing to me and also it's annoying when brains do things we don't want them to do."

"I see. Hugs are an acceptable solution then. And then more learning interesting things."

"Right." Unhug. "Also I was wondering about, er, wars."

He makes a face. "...What about them?"

"Well, that's kinda my question. What about them? All I can find about them are impassioned political speeches and dry citations of numbers."

"Possibly because open, large scale land war is pretty close to the most absolutely evil thing there can possibly be. It ruins everything it touches."

"I—mostly agree, but I mean, seventy years ago my world had a war where people were systematically rounded up into closed chambers and made to breathe toxic gas so they'd die and then be burnt down to ashes and we still have a lot more detail about that than I found in several dozen books about any of your wars, here."

"Can we not- You don't talk about war, maybe that's the thing you're seeing, or not seeing, in those books."

"But—how do you prevent it from happening again, if you don't talk about it? 'Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,' that not a saying here?"

"No it's not, and what prevents it is probably how pervasive the 'war is evil' thing is? Like, it's even in the national anthem, 'Be not the aggressor nor defend thyself with violence; Peace is the path to prosperity."

"—'nor defend thyself'? Should people just surrender if someone else attacks?"

"The idea is that you should run away, or keep violence from ever starting in the first place. It seems to work pretty well on average, at least in civilized places?"

"Running away is not terribly feasible when you're a country or a kingdom," he points out.

"That's what the Navy is for. And international oversight and mediation groups like ICTFA."

"Okay, I guess. And, ah, why exactly does this cultural taboo exist? Something about destroying tiles?"