"We should go fight a sea dragon right now."

"Here're the names that I want you to check."

She takes the list. "Unless anybody wants more cantaloupe or something I'm ready to go."

"Sounds good!"

Onto the carpet, up up and away.

Hagan takes his mask off and flops with his head in Mahdi's lap to sunbathe. His snake curls up on his chest.

"Where do you get a snake if you want one?"

"I found her near the road from Sothis down the coast, when I was a kid. They also sell them, but you wanna make sure you get something that likes the climate, you know? If someone imported it from the Mwangi Expanse it's going to be real pissy all the time about the weather." 

"They hard to tame?"

"Nah. Snakes have really clear body language, they'll let you know if they've got an issue with you. Just got to get to know them. ...take this with a grain of salt, I've never met an animal I couldn't talk around and I assume most people do not have this experience or they wouldn't be so bewildered by their misbehaving pets."

"I've never had one so I dunno what the baseline is."

"I think lots of people can't read their animals so they don't understand why they're behaving however they're behaving and don't know how to change it. But if you have a little bit of an instinct for it or help from someone more experienced it's easy to get, like, a snake or a working dog to a state where you're really glad you have them, and possible to get there even with animals that are stupider or more work."

"I think most people with dogs devote some time every day for a few months to training the dog."

"I knew somebody with a badger but I dunno what it was trained to do."

"Fy scouts for us, sometimes, and she can intimidate people, and she can venemously bite someone though she's never actually done it to a person and I worry it'd bother her."

"Delicate sensibilities?"

"She can't track all of what's going on, right, nothing subtle or mostly established by talking, and she's got no problem hurting anyone who's actively attacking us but if they aren't then I'd just be telling her, hey, that person standing there doing nothing wrong, and I think it'd be confusing."

"Huh. I'd expect being confused to require the same stuff as tracking what's going on..."

"I don't think so? Like, she's got some rules, like, monsters are okay, animals are okay, humanoids are right out unless she's defending herself, and then she's not gonna understand something like 'this person is threatening our life in a way that doesn't involve pulling a weapon at all' but she can understand that the rule wasn't followed."

"Huh. I guess making the rule 'only bite on command' reduces her ability to act independently in a fight."

"And makes her useless if I'm down, yeah."

"Which happens a lot."

"Two of you could ever make a friend who does melee."

"Why's that their job, why don't you make a melee friend?"

"Do I look like a friends-making kind of person?"