It's a universe. It's very large - lots of stars and rocks and atoms and cosmic radiation, if she's interested in that.

If she's interested in people - here's a planet with people! Circling this star over here, being circled by its moon (and various artificial satellites), has oceans and a few continents. And a few billion people.

Lots of people going about their lives - they grow food on farms, they meet with other people in tall metal and glass buildings, they walk with friends in streets and paths and marketplaces, they pump water, they launder clothes. They fight with each other. They write and read on glowing screens connected across the world. 

A smaller subset of people have something different about them. It's attached to them, part of them, like parts of their bodies are parts of them (it runs itself through their bodies.) They can use it - someone is bent over another person in a hospital and their injuries close up, someone disappears from a place with a group of others and they all appear elsewhere, a factory makes bags that hold some of the weight of their contents, someone scries at a crime scene, someone wards a building against fire. 

Actually those people... seem to stand out in more ways than that. She'll notice basically universal collars (which seem to be exerting constraints on that additional part, actually); lots of other restraints. Lots of uniforms, not all the same but with a lot of elements in common. None of them are with families; none are alone with friends. None are alone. Sometimes in groups of others like them; always with a guard or several. 

Also torture. Kind of a lot of that.

How odd. So very many of them - so very different from her dragonets - such a large, empty universe around them, rather than a single nursery -

Whoever shaped this world had a quite different design philosophy than her, and possibly quite a bit more experience using the same powers.

She isn't really bothered by the torture, though she dislikes the control.

Hm...

She should announce that they're under new management, now. Seems only polite.

She swiftly calculates the appearance of stars from their atmosphere - oh, the light's been traveling for aeons, how interesting, whoever made this world was patient -

Well, it's easier to do something localized, anyways. Less math. A beautiful, harmless light show around the edges of their solar system, tweaked so it'll be differently gorgeous as the planet swings around its sun (what an interesting set up) - and new images forming, an enormous coiled dragon apparent in the shell.

The light will take a bit of time to reach them. She settles in to observe while she waits for her announcement to propagate, figuring it's good to understand her new people.

There's a lot of control. (The torture's pretty related to the control, actually, more punishment for stepping out of line and warnings not to step out of line than whatever other reasons there could be.)

Wow! Wow!!!

Once the light reaches them, people have a lot of reactions. People call to their friends and neighbors to come look. Pictures go up all over every social media site, are sent by every means of messaging. People on the night side of the world crowd outside; people on the day side of the world stare at pictures and start looking outside as night starts coming in. (Some people in cloudy areas are very disappointed.) (Claims that this is a hoax are soon mostly buried under the amount of reporting coming in, relegated to a few conspiracy theories here and there).

Amateur astronomers publish nicer images, some with theorizing. Space agencies are soon putting up some of their own.

There's a lot of theorizing. Top theories include 'natural physical phenomenon we hadn't previously run into in this form', 'cosmic magical phenomenon!' (reading these one might gather that there is generally a lot of disagreement and not much settlement of it with respect to the nature/properties/actions of magic outside of local level), and 'aliens!'. (The first two tend to be accompanied with various notes about human tendencies toward pattern finding and how that would lead to the popular interpretation of 'dragon'.)

Reporters start putting out articles - there not being much else that can currently be said, these tend to be focused on the pictures, the social reactions, and some amount of citing of various theories and which credible or less credible people are extending and coming out in support of them.

Governments, after some flurried various-amounts-of-covert establishing that it doesn't seem like any of them are responsible for this, make various generally vague but potentially inspiring statements about science and the future (and sometimes national readiness, and sometimes reminders about various public safety guidelines and why they should still be abided by.)

(Some people do ascribe the phenomenon to the divine in one way or another. Mostly whatever divine is already their own. A few cults that got lucky in their symbolism and/or date predictions see their hits go up.

Some people are very freaked out about this sign of the end times/powerful aliens that are coming to kill everyone/dragon that will eat the planet.

Pretty much no one really arrives at the 'new management' conclusion.)

Lots of observatories and space agencies write lots of letters and grant applications about the new funding they should clearly get to look further into this phenomenon. They need more/better/adjusted observation devices and data processing / mages and mage time to improve the previous. Several organizations think this is the time to renew their argument for lots of mages and mage time for speculative scrying experiments. Various governments/foundations/individuals find these arguments and/or the giant sky dragon persuasive; lots of space agencies get funding spikes.

Various important military authorities have a lot of mostly clandestine meetings and initiate some mostly readiness-themed actions.

People process a lot of data. People do a lot of math. People write and draw a lot of imagined stories about the imagined dragon-liking aliens. People try to send messages to aliens.

Some mages who are outside at night for various reasons see the dragon; some mages in countries where mages are allowed to watch tv watch the reporting. Some mages outside at night get distract by the dragon and are punished to varying amounts depending on the mood of whatever guard is around them.

She can't directly disable the control collars. The natural laws are absolute. A bit annoying.

She knows everything happening at this moment. Figuring out how to interpret things presently stored as information in the 'cloud' takes her a short time. She then sets to knowing what people say about these mages and the collars - especially what the people controlling the collars say.

The people controlling the collars are mostly the overseers. They don't actually tend to say much about it in internet public - some of them complain about their jobs, but their complaints are schedules and coworkers and ugh-mages-are-horrible; very rarely anything about collar controls.

If she can get into private communications, she can find a lot of work-related communications mentioning it, from overseers to various supervisors/managers, sometimes from those to larger policy-decision-makers, and back. Guidelines for what permissions to give when; reports on what permissions were given. (Permissions, she can gather without much difficulty, means adjusting the collar constraints to allow some magic use from the mage).

If she can get into encrypted communications, she can find more of about the same from organizations and people with field mages, high level research mages, army mages.

(At the moment, some organizations and people are working on their plans and policies for potential alien-related matters; for the divisions who deal with mages this includes permissions planning.)

What people say about mages and their collars in general is easy to notice (if slightly less easy to find said outright - it's common knowledge, very often taken for granted. But it can be found). Mages are naturally and fundamentally terrible, treacherous, untrustworthy, dangerous. If left to their own devises they would do all sorts of awful things to the great detriment of non-mage humans and society. Collars keep a mage's power bound; collars are a central device of keeping mages contained; collars (and organization, and overseers. And torture) are how mages are kept in line and made useful for society.

Private and encrypted communications aren't any harder than the public internet. She tries to find all the literature on how the collars work.

Then she can see all these things.

Basic layman's explanations are around all over the place. Collars form an involution with a mage's magic, which is the basis for the containment. It's also why if you try to just take a collar of a mage there'll be an explosion - the mage's magic is what causes the explosion, kind of like how if two people lean back against each other and then one disappears the other one will fall over. (Everyone generally considers this to be obviously a good thing, since some random person (or some random mage!) being able to easily take off a mage's collar would be very bad.)

The basic technical idea can also be found described. Mages are not quite the only magical thing in this world. Some substances exist with magical properties. Collars use these. A very basic collar can involve taking some particular ones, shaping them, doing something like analogy-to-magnetizing them to a mage's magic, and then putting them on to form the involution. (There's even more basic things that can be done without the 'magnetizing' step, but they work better used for something like a wall than something like a collar.)

Collars have a very long history. The most basic collar just blocks a mage's power when it's on the mage. There's been a lot of technological progress over the course of history, with a lot of improvements on granularity (being able to block some of a mage's power rather than only all of it, being able to change which part), controls (how these changes are put into effect), production (these days collars are generally mass-produced), reliability (more likely to work exactly how they're meant to; less likely to stop working), and some other properties. 

Modern detailed technical descriptions are not all over the place. But they do exist.

They're generally very technical.

But if that works for her then she can read about the various magical substances with different properties that are used for modern collars, how they're exposed to magic in various ways to give them some more desired properties, how they're then put together, and various other work that goes into things like 'durability' and 'the locking mechanism'. (In some countries collars also have spells added to them by factory-working mages; other countries consider this imprudent and a bad idea.)

She institutes an afterlife system, almost off-handedly, since there's a decent chance her experiments might get people killed, and there's an awful lot of people on that planet who keep dying in a dizzying array of pointlessness. (They've probably noticed by now that she's protecting them from dying of stupid things; they can certainly still stab each other, but accidents in general have stopped being fatal or even seriously injurious. She's also figured out how to turn off individual poisons - their kids are astonishingly stupid, but the calls to poison control centers dry up once she starts detoxifying things before children can put them in their mouths. Oh and this politically unstable area, it's kind of amusing, but the whole shooting people who aren't armed thing is unsporting - non-combatants stop getting killed in war zones, too. Maybe she should just make any bombs near civilians stop going off... She's going to have to restart her research on killing pathogens since she still can't just delete them with a handwave... And making magical disease curing mist doesn't work here, which is obnoxious... Also what is this old age thing, that's bullshit... So she sets up a bunch of time-accelerated fields off in the intergalactic space where she can test treatments and preventative measures for diseases. They have a lot more diseases here so she should start being able to target the low-lying fruits soon.)

She plays around with breaking a few of the collars that currently aren't on anyone, and with various ways of subtly sabotaging the ones that aren't on anyone so they flat out don't work, then with making fake mages with collars in her testing fields and playing around with deactivating those. She can spoof the person meant to be in control of the collars, so theoretically she can just set them to 'off' then break the controls...

People getting killed does seem pretty likely. There's a lot of people; if she doesn't solve everything very quickly souls will start arriving pretty promptly.

In countries with developed medical systems dying in accidents is actually pretty rare unless it happens very quickly - EMTs have very good response times, and medical mages can stabilize people if nothing else can. Depending on details her intervention might actually make demands for medical care go slightly up (though not to any level that will cause a problem, and it will save lives). 

Hospitals and other medical offices see some changes in demand, but statistics are noisy, and they're not necessarily aware of each others' demand data; it'll take a bit for people to notice that something is up. (Poison control centers see a possibly stronger change but a similar dynamic.)

In countries with less developed medical systems her interventions will have a greater impact, but those also tend to be countries with less developed data collection, and lots of the now-survivors wouldn't have made it to hospitals in the first place. Plenty of people are alive, and not scrambling desperately for care they might not find, and shaken and grateful. Not very many people suspect anything beyond luck, or whatever else they might generally ascribe such things to.

Non-combatants don't get killed. They go home to their families and hug their loved ones and some of them pray in thanks to assorted deities and some of them tell fervent stories about their lucky charm/ritual or their own cleverness and good decisions and prowess at fighting/ducking/bluffing. Aside from aforementioned cults with lucky symbolism, it is generally not occurring to people to make connections to the recent sky dragon.

The local people actually have a lot of research on killing pathogens! One thing that kills pathogens is in fact mages, but you don't want to depend on that (because well, mages, and because even in developed-medical-system countries there aren't going to be enough medical mages to go around if you try to have them attend to everyone one-on-one). They have medications, some magic-involving, some not, and various other treatments. They're actually pretty good at cancer, though that usually does involve magic especially in the more severe cases. They don't have anything for old age at the moment, but some laboratories are working on it (they're really not anywhere near a breakthrough though). Countries with less developed medical systems have more pathogen deaths.

Information on collars can tell her that collars whose controls break generally revert to default suppression (which includes suppression of active magic). Some broken or sabotaged collars are noticed by quality control checks.

Someone puts a subtly broken collar on a mage (she's still wearing her previous one; changing collars is always done in that order if at all possible). She freezes. She reports it, careful and terrified. Her overseers get a different collar. They beat the mage, but comparatively not very much, and she's clearly acting afterwards like someone who had a close call with something very very bad, but a close call, not the thing itself.

There seems to be one or two species of mosquitoes responsible for carrying a small handful of very obnoxious pathogens. There's other mosquitoes in the area, so she thinks removing them won't cause any problems - and she can always create more mosquitoes later anyways. All members of pathogen-bearing mosquito species get individually squished.

She keeps playing with the collars in her experimental fields -

Wait.

Can she relocate her experimental collars? Teleport them somewhere non-explode-y?

...Also maybe she should get a mage cultural consultant. Since she doesn't have priests.

She starts paying attention to mages who seem especially observant and ambitious.

Squished mosquitos no longer infect people! This is actually noticed faster, though people aren't yet sure what happened or what's going on. 

She can potentially relocate the collars but that will actually do the opposite of solving her problem - collars aren't the thing that explodes, the explosion is caused by the mage's magic in the breaking of the involution. 

Ambitious mages who are obvious about it don't have a good time with that, but if she can look in people's minds she can find some mages who have managed to be sufficiently unobvious.

- Here's a field mage for the CIA. She would probably make a pretty good actual agent if she was allowed to do that. Since she is super not, she's limited to observation and internal analysis. She's very good at that. She would like to run away, and has thought through her chances of that. It would take some really particular circumstances to make a try worth it. She's looking out for them.

- Here's a mage with abilities underrated by the people doing that. This is mostly caused by her putting a lot of her effort into finding all opportunities possible to be tortured instead of other people and take them. She's pretty observant (of how well various people are doing, of what she can do for them and how she might be able to do it. Of aforementioned opportunities). She is definitely going to continue doing this as much as she possibly can for as much life as she has.

- Here's an unusually powerful mage currently being used for high level research (including for one of those aforementioned anti-aging projects). She seems to occasionally manage to get herself work she likes better than other work by being really obviously better at it than at work she doesn't like so much. Her overseers tolerate some amount of this (for values of tolerate that involve really pretty incredible amounts of torture) because she's not actually very easily replaceable, either on the magic side or in fact on the good-at-her-job side. (The consequences of this are also more torture).

She also has fond feelings about and kind of misses one of her old overseers, which is really not a common mage experience.

...Hm.

She pauses time, except for the minds of the three.

'Hello,' she whispers into their heads. 'I would like to speak with you.'

Well that's interesting. Has some other research mage with imperfect discipline actually figured out telepathy.

She tries out some basic magic sense on it - nothing that would get anyone noticing. Tries responding back. 'Hello!

Sounds great to me.'

She wonders briefly if it's Lesha. If anyone could figure out telepathy... 

She is, of course, not going to turn whoever it is in. 'Hello. I'm here.'

Conveniently she is not on a mission at the moment.

Someone is talking in her head. If she goes and kneels at the minder and reports this, as she would pretty obviously be told to do, then they will go find whoever this is and tear them apart, and probably beat her and such lest she get ideas and ask her a lot if that was all. But she'd be able to say yes, when they asked.

If she doesn't, and they find out, well - she used to work for the Authority of Mages, she knows pretty well what sorts of things happen. Not something one forgets.

If they know there's a mage out there with telepathy, and they don't know who it is. If they know that mages can have telepathy. She doesn't have convenient remembered images for that, but - nightmare is an obvious understatement.

If someone has managed to invent telepathy, and is now contacting a field mage with it - she can probably think that they have some plan there. 

There's a voice in her head. Telepathy hasn't existed in the history of the world. She can probably get a truth spell to stick on something like 'voices in your head aren't real'. People don't usually demand completely careful phrasings of the mages screaming and pleading at them. Lot of interrogation, lot of punishment. But she won't have done anything, and there aren't already rules about voices in your head.

She doesn't respond back - that would be doing something.

She clamps down on terror trying to run away with her and waits to see if anything else will happen next.

To Anica: 'Good! Did you see the star dragon?'

To Shiarl: 'I'm not Lesha. I'm the Sky-Scaled One.'

To Elvira: 'I'm sorry for scaring you. I don't really know how humans work. That's why I wanted to talk to you.'

'A bit. Heard more about it.' She'd been outside in the dark once since then. Heard a little on tv (she ends up with less breaks than most mages because of all the time she's spending being tortured, but her minders do know that mages don't end up functioning well if they don't get some of those, and there's a tv sometimes). Heard a little from research humans talking.

Does the sky dragon somehow help people figure out telepathy; that would be interesting.

That doesn't really mean much to her - she knows different countries do mage names differently, but she doesn't think there is anywhere that would allow a name like that. Could be a private name. Anyone could have that.

(And the telepathy mage is reading her mind, but that doesn't bother her, really. As long as they don't turn her in. Not for herself, but for everyone she takes blame for.)

'Do you need something? Can I help you?'

She has absolutely no ideas how there could be a mage who doesn't know how humans work. (Even if some runaway mage managed to have a mage baby and not let anyone know, presumably they would tell the baby things?) ...Amnesia, somehow?

Also in that case the telepathy mage might have to know she's scared in some way other than 'it's really obvious'. Scrying her or something? Reasonable to thing to do it you're trying telepathy. The CIA is pretty scry-warded, but if you can invent telepathy...

A mage who doesn't know how humans work and also invented telepathy is going to end extremely badly. Probably not just for the mage either.

Well. 'I heard a voice about not knowing how humans work, it was scary, I thought about reinforcement in the same way I heard it' is probably something she can try to plead at interrogators. 

She thinks, in the same way she heard the telepathy - humans are not-mages. Humans are all over the world. Humans have mages to do work for them. Humans say that mages are treacherous and dangerous and need to be controlled or else. (She'd get beaten for the 'humans say' if anyone knew she'd put it that way, but not in a way where it would surprise anyone. She's a mage, isn't she.) So that's collars and minders and rules and punishment - warnings, reprimands, reinforcement, usual punishment, special punishment. She thinks about the Authority of Mages. She thinks about what they do to mages who earn themselves special punishment.

To Anica: 'I made it to say I was here, but then humans didn't react like the dragonets would have, and that was confusing. I have been watching your planet since, and the people are very strange, and I want to learn more, including about mages, so I can help them.'

To Shiarl: 'I'm new to this world. I made the sky dragon to announce I was here, but then the humans reacted weirdly to it, and I haven't been able to figure them out just watching. I want to understand your planet's people more, including mages, so I can help them.'

To Elvira: 'I'm not a mage or a human. I'm from very far away, and I don't know how your planet works, but I don't like a lot of things about it, and I want to understand more so I can fix it for people. Mages and humans.'

Well that is not the sort of thing she was expecting to hear. Not that she was expecting to hear telepathy. (Could theoretically not be true, but it would be a bizarre thing to make up. And there is, in fact, a star dragon.) 'Don't know anything about dragonets' (are those aliens?) 'and not sure how much I count as knowing about humans, but I totally know lots about mages!' (In an interpersonal and scientific sense both, even!). And she definitely thinks that helping sounds great. 

That's - pretty incredible to her, and in more than one way. (She'd - thought about it sometimes, mostly as a child reading. Aliens in books and tv either had their own mages or agreed with humans about them when they learned humans did. But she'd - wondered if it had to be that way, really. If maybe there could be someone, someday...) 

She wants to help. There is very little she wants more. (Humans as well as mages, though she's never really had a chance for the first beyond work. She doesn't know more about how humans live than one gets from books and tv and lessons, but that's enough to know about war and murder and poverty and slavery...)

(It might not be real, there might be a lie. But she can't think of anything she could hurt too badly, if she though it was real, and tried. And if it's real - she'll burn for that chance, happily.)

'I want to help. Please.'

...Well, on the sort of bright side, if she goes and kneels at a minder and tell them she's being contacted by aliens, they'll think she's insane and probably getting above herself. So that narrows down her decision space conveniently.

...Do humans need help? Yeah they probably do, they do blow each other up and torture each other and all that. Not exactly something she's had a lot of personal concern about, but she doesn't have personal concern for about any of her missions, and that doesn't really matter very much, to her.

The idea of someone wanting to help mages is weird. Maybe it's an alien mage from somewhere where all the mages are renegade. 

This definitely sounds interesting (to say the least), and - like something she'd rather be happening with her than without her, also. If she can get that without being torn to pieces. (If it's real. But if it's not what it says it is it's still something, and really about the same applies, actually.)

She wonders, in the same way she heard the telepathy, but maybe plausibly deniably not with deliberate intent, what she might be wanted for.

To Anica: 'The dragonets were my people! I don't have a people right now. I had to step down from having the dragonets. I can ask other people about humans, I suppose. The dragonets are kind of like your lizards, but bigger, with six limbs. They like to sing and they don't have ways of talking to each other from across the planet and they don't write. They don't like big groups too much, but big groups are better at putting away food for hard winters. But even their big groups are like tiny human groups. They don't seem at all like humans or mages, so - how would you describe a mage to someone who'd never met one? Or a human?'

To Shiarl: 'Thank you. I think I need lots of help. You seem to know a lot about local problems - do you know if there's any that're really easy to fix?'

To Elvira: 'I need people to help me understand humans and mages. They're all very confusing, and nothing like the dragonets I used to watch over. I also don't know what the biggest problems are - I can see what people are dying of, and I'm working on the stuff that looks easy, but there might be something I'm missing.'

Well that's cool! Did they have mages? Or - 'empowered' or whatever humans call aliens'-and-stuff-magic-people-who-don't-count-as-mages.

Fair warning, if she asks most humans things, they'll tell her that mages are terrible and dangerous and need containment and all that. Anica actually happens to know a human who will not do that, and probably knows the normal human amount about humans, if star dragon person is interested in recommendations. 

Hm. Well, here's some biological facts! Mages are like humans biologically, they just have the magic on top of that. Here's how they have kids! (Humans have kids with each other. Mages these days come from artificial wombs.) Mages have magic. Here's a bunch of facts about mage magic. Mages have alimentation needs. Food, water, the opposite processes to those, sleep, breaks, entertainment material/opportunities, contact with other mages. Access to the outdoors is like, disagreed on. Humans also have stuff like that though they don't call them alimentation needs. She's guessing humans probably also need all of those, though she's only sure about the food, water, opposite processes, sleep part.

Mages probably spent all their lives getting tortured and threatened with torture a lot and are going to be afraid of stuff. Humans generally think mages are super awful and torturing them is a great idea. Mages can't want to die (though they can want to do stuff that will also happen to make them die). Humans can want to die, actually, though also want to not die a lot. Humans like having stuff and sometimes fight each other for it.

She's not sure if this is the right sort of description. She'd probably want to check what sorts of things whoever she was describing this to expected or knew about or might want to know about.

She knows about problems mages she's been with have, and that other mages in this country probably have the same or similar ones, and that mages in other countries have a lot of similar ones but it isn't all the same.

She knows some things about human problems, she thinks, but it's from tv and books and class, she doesn't think it'd be the same as really knowing. But she can try.

It would depend on what was easy? ...Humans can get sick and die if they drink water that isn't clean, and if she understands correctly, the same places with a lot of unclean water don't have very good medical systems. If there was a way to make all the water clean, that would probably help? Some humans are in pain all the time, and some of them can't get pain medications (most of which are magical) or get to a medical place. Is copying pain medications easy? Some mages are born with something that doesn't usually happen, like purple fingernails. They get punished for it, their entire lives. Is hiding something like that before their minders notice easy? 

...If there's a renegade mage alien trying to do something involving mages, and she's helping, and anyone finds out about it, they will absolutely tear her to pieces, and then some. They will interrogate her until they are very, very sure she has nothing left to tell them - wouldn't, couldn't keep it from them if she did - and then they will tear her apart in full renegade-attacking-people fashion, and if she's very lucky they might decide she's too dangerous to keep around long and kill her early.

(That doesn't feel lucky, right now. But she worked for the Authority of Mages, and she walked into their cells to do healing, over and over, and she could never talk but sometimes whoever she was there for could (in as much as that counted as talking). And mages can't want to die, but they can want it to just stop, please, very very badly.)

She's not seen a chance to run away and stay away, yet. But she knows what she would do if she saw one. And running away isn't as bad as actual attacking people (incentives), but staying away, by planning it, and tricking them - by using the skills they taught her - that would be almost as bad, at least. It isn't like she's never looked at a risk and decided it'd be worth it, before.

She could go kneel at a minder. But she knows, pretty much, she isn't going to do that. She could say stop talking to me. That - might not work, actually, she doesn't actually know how alien mage would feel about that. But she could. Could stop responding.

She isn't going to do that either. Whatever this is, she doesn't want it to go off and happen without her, where she can't even see it. She wants it.

Aliens talking in your head is not a thing. Games in your head are a thing, and a game in which you get above yourself with renegade mage aliens - well the field mage got ideas, and it's not like they expect that to never happen, even with all their prophylactics. She will scream and plead and they'll want to be very sure she's learned a lesson. But she can probably be sorry enough, in the end. (She runs it through her head, over again, composes again how she might say it to a truth spell).

And she thinks, 

Well, on the scale of how much mages know about humans, she is probably up there - she's had a lot of training on pretending she's a human agent, and she's been out on missions doing that, and thus, like, actually been around and interacted with humans who weren't her minders and such. Still presumably less than humans.

She doesn't know what's confusing, though she thinks she's not bad at understanding things that are, so maybe she can do something about that? And she doesn't find much of anything about mages or humans confusing per se, so.

She doesn't really know how to sort problems by bigness, or much about that. (She also has no idea what looks easy). Based on what she spends most of her time doing, the CIA thinks an important problem is terrorists or whatever else they call them, but she's not sure if that says anything about how big the problem is as opposed to it being their job. ...She knows what things their trainers thought it was important enough to make sure they were able to talk about when they were in cover? That probably has anything to do with bigness, at least from human perspective.

Uh, global climate change? Nuclear war? Some country developing a magical superweapon/superplague/something? The last two she doesn't think are problems in the sense of happening right now, more in the sense of people being worried about. Hostility to democracy and Western values? She's not sure if that's actually a problem or just something the CIA and their friends don't like. 

To Anica: the dragonets didn't have some people who could use magic and some who couldn't. She hadn't seen them being able to use magic - she would just give them magical things. It didn't actually occur to her to make any magical, though if she could have she would have made most or all of them magical.

She wouldn't mind a recommendation for a human to talk to, actually. That would be helpful.

That sort of description is actually helpful, though she's gotten a lot of it by observation. Thank you.

To Shiarl: she can do clean water, but not trivially - still, it seems like a good use of her time. (She quickly does research about what humans mean by 'clean water,' in case any of it's different from what the dragonets had, and sets about doing that more thoroughly than she'd already been. Chemicals, especially, she'd been missing those in her sweeps for pathogens.) 

Copying pain medications is, however, trivial. How would Shiarl suggest she get the pain medications to people? Would they find suddenly appearing medication alarming?

Hiding things from minders might be a bit complicated. Still, she thinks it should be doable, especially simple things like color.

To Elvira: terrorists are people who kill each other for political reasons, right? She's already been making it so that people fighting don't hurt or kill anyone not centrally in the fight. She can make it so that bullets and bombs and stuff stop hitting everyone, too, though.

What's global climate change? What's nuclear war? How would she recognize if someone was trying to make a superweapon?

She doesn't think people's values are really her business at all. She mostly cares that whoever their last divinity was, they were doing a really poor job at stuff like 'making sure people aren't dying from stupid things.' It's not divinity's business what people believe.

So is she something other than a dragonet, because it sounds like she uses magic. Both in that she just suggested so and in that telepathy.

Recommendation! Human is in another country, but she's guessing that's probably not a problem. Human's name is Eugenia Carter, she's over in the United States, she used to be in their army, she was working as a security guard last time Anica got some info but that was a bit ago. ...She's not sure what kind of locating information is needed here, she can like, give more details on when and where they were in the same place but she doesn't really have the ability to draw a picture or anything...

Sure thing!

Yeah! She's not a dragonet. She didn't make the dragonets, not really - they happened accidentally - but she made the world they live on.

She'll contact Eugenia Carter next! The mental sense of identity is enough; she doesn't really know how to explain that but she knows who Anica means.

...Wow. Very wow. Like, making the sky-dragon was already telling her there was a pretty insane power level involved here. But wow.

Is that a type of person there is, ones who go around world-making? Are more of them going to show up? What's 'happened accidentally' here?

Oh good, because she doesn't think she was going to be able to manage database access anytime soon. Well, at least on her own. 

She hasn't ever met anyone else like her, but she doesn't know how you'd get a universe with stuff in it from nothing - and this one already had Rules, which seems to be the type of thing a universe only has if it contains beings like her.

She doesn't think more will definitely show up - she was in the dragonet universe for a very long time, alone - but she doesn't know how she got here, either.

She was testing her ability to make random animals without thinking through all the design stuff and some of them turned out to be people! She'd already been trying to nudge some existing animals to be more people-y, but that hadn't worked.

She knows that! Well, sort of, they did have like, science lessons, and she's learned some more stuff for research work reasons, and she's read some books, but that's got the usual limits of 'what was in the lessons' and 'what books happened to be around'. But she can totally say things about the Big Bang and evolution and stuff! What're Rules?

...Well hopefully if more show up they won't be like, horrible, and won't try to start a fight, because that sounds like a problem. Also if there were world-making beings around already she's not sure she has a great opinion of them. Also seems like they might like mages specifically suffering for some reason. Which isn't great.

Wow! That's definitely very cool. How does she tell people from not-people?

Rules are things a being like her can't do or change! The ones here had when she arrived are: A being's mind is protected. The past is inviolate and unchangeable. The future is unpredictable and changeable. The natural laws are absolute.

She's declared new Rules in her dragonet's universe but not here, and is hesitant to try since declaring Rules around souls was what seems to have triggered her no longer being in the dragonet universe.

She definitely disapproves of any being like her who made a whole group of people just to suffer. That seems unsporting.

She can't mess with any beings' minds, but people are... Different? Even when the dragonets hadn't invented language yet, there was a something about them than non-people animals didn't have. But she's also only ever interacted with a few types of people.

Huh! She definitely didn't know that was a thing, at all. Is that like, something humans know about and she just didn't hear about it, or do humans not know either? Where do they come from, in cases where she doesn't declare them?

(And she hadn't been thinking about implications of world-making amounts of power with respect to minds - mages can't really mess with minds, so she's not used to thinking the other way - but now that it's come up, minds being protected sounds rather good to have. Of course if you didn't have it you could like, mind control humans into not doing the sorts of things they get up to. But that seems like it would probably cause problems especially for anything more complicated than 'don't torture people so much', and given the downsides there having it not a thing at all really wins out.

She hadn't been thinking about past and future changing as something that could go more than one way either, but if it can then, well, not that the past seems great but changing it seems like it would be a mess, and being able to change the future is definitely handy. Unless it was going to be really great but could be messed up, but given everything else she kind of doubts that it was going to be really great.)

Which laws are natural?

Oh, are souls a thing? She knows some humans think various stuff about that.

Well, that's good. Anica herself got a better deal than many in a bunch of ways, but that doesn't mean she's a fan of the whole thing. 

Oh, neat! And makes sense to her. (People without language for a while - alien people! - is neat/interesting to think about.) What other types of people were there?

She doesn't think humans know about them, though she also doesn't know where the Rules come from. Maybe past beings like her?

The natural laws seem to refer to things like how gravity works and how atoms work and how magic works. Physics, pretty much.

Dragonets hadn't had souls before she gave them some. Humans have souls now, though they didn't used to - at least not the kind that's relevant to her. She made them when she made the afterlife.

There weren't any other people in her nursery, yet, though she was making some planets ready for them! She's just interacted with dragonets and humans and mages, so far.

Wow. (Souls, afterlife, wow.) That's incredibly extra impressive even on top of the world-making. Wow. ...Just humans-humans, or mages too?

...She's kind of curious if there are any Rules or natural laws or anything that relate in any way to how humans think all mages are super evil for some reason. (She doesn't think all mages are super evil, but humans are really big on that, and very consistently too.)

Nursery? Was she expecting more people, to make the planets for them?

She was expecting animals! She made planets because it was fun, mostly, but she didn't expect any of the lifeforms she was playing with making to be people!

Mages have souls, too. It'd be a very incomplete afterlife without!

And there's no Rules or natural laws about mages being evil or humans thinking that, she doesn't think. Her experiments with magic have tended to explode a lot but she also doesn't know yet how magic works.

Making planets for fun totally sounds like something she might do if she could. Which she can't, on several levels. That's neat! She's pretty much never interacted with animals outside of labs, but she hears humans like them. Are alien animals different than ones around here?

That's good to know! And to have! She, uh, hopes the human' souls don't go start torturing the mages' souls?

Guess it's back to humans being like that for some reason.

Huh! She didn't know that was a thing that was likely to happen, but she supposes no one teaching them would have let them get anywhere near doing anything that might explode if they could help it. She knows a lot about how magic works, if dragonet-maker wants to know things about that? In a way other than making explosions. Though explosions do sound neat.

It's a lot of fun! She doesn't know how to give out the ability, especially not without messing things up, but she thinks she would if she could. And alien animals are differently shaped, and have some different abilities, and some of them she custom made to be very very cool, but they still do a lot of the same instinctive stuff most animals here do.

The afterlife's set up so people can't harm each other without permission! Everyone can avoid people if they want. She felt that was very important. It's a really nice afterlife, and the people in it already seem to like it.

She'd definitely like to know more about magic, even if explosions are really neat.

...She does know how to give out the ability with messing things up? Which things? Or just like, in the sense that if a lot of people had it they'd probably cause a problem? 

Neat! (She's interested in which ones are very very cool and how but she's going to actually restrain that for the moment.)

That is a really good way to do things, if you can. She agrees on importance. (There's a flick of going-off-to-other-associations at 'permission' but she's pretty sure that's not what's being meant here.) And well that's definitely very good! (She hasn't fully wrapped her head yet around this being a thing (with people in it, liking it. With more people who'll be in it and not - who knows what but probably gone), had it fully or even really partially penetrate into her world model or her feelings or the rest. But - definitely very good, she can react to that.)

Her personal main association with magical explosions is getting designated over to the army and relevant humans wanting her to make them (not the explosions directly; weapons that among other things cause some), and obviously if she does that's going to kill a lot of people, and if she doesn't they are probably going to kill her. (And torture her to death, specifically, but for herself she wasn't as concerned with that one.) (She didn't. They didn't kill her, it turned out. Did torture her a bunch.) But if she gets her thoughts away from that explosions seem neat!

Should she like, talk about magic right now? Is there some particular order to be going in?

She's not sure how to give out the ability but could probably figure it out but has no idea what that would do though it'd probably be destabilizing. Maybe interestingly so, though!

She would like to hear about magic but is unsure what order's best...

Seems likely.

Hm. ...Is the way she's doing stuff with magic like, having made herself a mage or been one to begin with, or is she using the power she has (which is clearly a different thing) and interfacing with the kind of thing mages do or trying to copy it or something?

She made a body without intelligence with mage powers and has been making that do things - she supposes she could give herself mage power, but if mage powers explode a lot she'd really rather not explode the universe.

...empty puppeted mage bodies is kind of weird to think about for multiple reasons but how about she think about that later and for now stick to the interesting things they're talking about.

She's not sure what's going on with the explosions (maybe she could figure it out with more detail?) In her experience mage training doesn't really involve explosions, but there've been mages for thousands and thousands of years and humans wouldn't really like it if mages were exploding stuff when not supposed to, so if there's some ways to learn magic that involve explosions and some that don't probably that got figured out a long time ago, and now mages all learn the non-explosion way.

She's also not really sure how power scale would work here - she's pretty powerful, for a mage, and she definitely can't explode the universe, and she doesn't know if being the kind of being that can work with the universe, and then also being a mage, would map the power level from one to the other, or not do that. For that matter she doesn't know how being not a homo sapien and also being a mage would even work, or if it works at all in reality.

Anyway, magic!

There are a lot of metaphors for magic floating around, because mages do need to talk to each other and study and stuff and if mages talk shop and humans can't understand them they get very unhappy. One metaphor that gets used is that doing magic is like crumple-folding and fastening paper into various shapes. Where the 'paper' like, coats whatever you're trying to do magic to. ...Some magic doesn't super fit under this as well, like in the moment healing, but a lot of stuff fits.

So there's some things that are pretty simple and you could usually figure out how to do them (not that anyone's allowed to do that very much, but). If you want to crumple paper into a ball, you can probably do that - it might not be the neatest ball, but it'll probably be a ball and will work for ball-like things. If you need a really specific detailed shape, you're way less likely to be able to get it without instructions, or if you do it'll probably take a while and a lot of trial and error. If you're not actually completely sure what shape you need to do what you want, then you also have to figure that out. (She's in research, so a lot of what she works on is like that.)

...Is that helpful/useful? Should she go at it from a different direction? Maybe it would help if she knew more about how dragonet-maker's magic worked, so she could do compare/contrast? Or can dragonet-maker get, like, a textbook, there are textbooks mages learn from. (She could potentially talk to a mage-teacher but that kind of has a high chance of going badly.)

The Sky-Scaled One is omnipresent! So if an explosion would come from her body, her body sort of is the universe? (She gives some more details on what's been happening with the exploding puppets).

The Sky-Scaled One usually wants things to happen - sort of by pushing on them - and then they do. Sometimes her wants aren't very clear, or she pushes a want that she hadn't thought through and doesn't actually endorse, or a thing she wants happens and then she predicted the consequences incorrectly and doesn't want the consequences, or she has two contradictory wants and can't decide between them, or a want that she thought wouldn't run afoul of the Rules actually does. Since she can't predict the future the big things she's worried about here are 'predicting consequences incorrectly' and 'not actually endorsing pushed wants.'

She can become aware of all mage textbooks and their contents and then know what they contain! Actually processing that sometimes takes time, though, but the dragonets never invented writing so it hadn't actually fully occurred to her how much goes in writing. (She nudges her conscious awareness towards the contents of every textbook on the planet, both about magic and everything else. She focuses on processing magic, history, and geopolitical textbooks first.)