"Right. No families, no food, no educations, no roads, no clothes, no buildings - just people. Wild people."

"Wow." Jisa shakes her head. "I guess I'm getting used to it and so it's seeming more normal, but your world is really weird when I actually think about it." 

"The world is?"

"How your magic works, mostly. Especially the bit where elementals show up knowing all the languages. I don't know where that would even come from. - oh, huh, Enara says Companions are born already knowing how to talk. But I think that's because a god makes them." 

"I don't think anybody claims a god made elementals quite that way where they were intentionally loading them up with useful skills, here."

"It just doesn't seem like the sort of thing that should be able to happen by accident!" 

Shrug. "I guess a god could've done it, I certainly don't know why elementals happen. It's just not a very satisfying explanation."

"- Right, since there's no explanation why a god would do it, like there is for Companions in Valdemar. Although honestly I don't know why a god answering King Valdemar's prayer to make Companions, either, people pray for things all the time  that don't happen." 

"Mostly I'm not sure there are gods. I guess if there were that could explain elementals but then you have to explain gods, right?"

"...True. I guess I assumed you'd have gods, but it's pretty obvious we do, since they do things, and there's no sign of that here." 

"People say they do things - they'll kill a sheep in exchange for rain or do a dance to make a plague go away - but it also sometimes rains when they don't do that, or if everybody's too sick to dance sometimes they still get better."

Jisa nods. "I think a lot of people in our world say their god did something like make the rain come, when probably it wasn't that. - Also sometimes priests will straight-up fake miracles, if they're mages, that was happening during the civil war in Karse, that's our neighbouring kingdom." 

"Some places it used to be common for mages to be priests, maybe they were doing that."

"Mmm, yeah, could be."

Jisa falls silent, thinking formless thoughts about whether it'd even be an improvement, from the elementals' perspectives, to have schools and houses and all those human things, or whether they'd really rather just be wild. 

Penumbra's been sitting quietly through this whole conversation. She takes a heel of bread Maurabel offers her and nibbles it. Jisa gets a sandwich.

Jisa sort of wants to ask Penumbra if she's okay, but one, it's so awkward, and two, it's kind of a stupid question - she's a slave. 

Still, it's niggling at her. 

:Is something upsetting you?: she says eventually in private Mindspeech. 

Penumbra drops her bread and jumps about a foot in the air. "Eep!"

"Penumbra?"

"She said something - wasn't expecting it -"

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to startle you..." Also she's so confused now. 

Penumbra nods. "She's jumpy," Maurabel says. "Shy. I've known her for years and she barely talks to me either."

Jisa nods. Switches to private Mindspeech again, this time with Maurabel. :I was worried something I said earlier had upset her, so I asked. ...Was she, er, treated really badly or something?: 

She is not using her Mindhealing Sight on Penumbra even though it's extremely tempting to. 

:None of them are treated especially well but they're different people so they react differently. But I think she might have been shy anyway. Since they're different people some of them will be shy:

:Mmm: Jisa isn't sure if she's literally ever met a human that shy, but she guesses humans would get more used to people sometimes asking them questions, whereas a lot of elementals' owners don't seem to really start conversations with them. 

Also her prediction about the awkwardness level was very accurate and she's so self-conscious now. She sits down again and tries to look busy by rereading her Gate notes. 

Maurabel eats her sandwich. Penumbra whispers in her ear and she nods.

Jisa is so curious but she doesn't snoop. Rereading her notes is very soporific, apparently, and she finds herself yawning again, despite having slept all afternoon. "M'better head to bed, I think. Well, under-bed." 

"I really hope you can get it in a form that doesn't wipe you out like this... you probably can't tap elementals, can you..."