"And the language is hard-coded in, they don't learn new ones? When you send instructions you should suggest they learn the language they're spoken to, or is that not possible?"

"They can learn languages but it would be faster for me to get you one that speaks Quenya already."

"Thanks so much."

"Here I was starting to suspect it would be more valuable to you if I took it without asking."

"I think having them remain peal property is going to be a bad idea down the road but if that's the standing policy I wouldn't dream of interfering."

"Why's it a bad idea?"

"I'm imagining some society that builds up a religion about Charps, and some other societies that treat them as valuable resources and make treaties about access and land use, and then they learn all the things the Charps can teach and get to the stars and want to, say, drop the Charps on aliens they find who we didn't visit yet, and the peal's going to go "oh we never mentioned it and it sure looked like a gift but it was a loan and no sharing'?"

"...if the one on my island told me key components of traveling to the stars I must've burned it to get out of Beach but you have a point. The things do say if asked that they have owners from elsewhere though, it wouldn't be a surprise to anyone who'd asked."

"Oh, good, that mitigates it a little. And I'm pretty sure they do teach you enough to get spaceflight, but it's probably more than you could learn in two months."

"More relevantly it's more than I could've acted on in six years so I bet on getting out of the world instead."

"Good bet. I'm - astonished they didn't think of 'a way to contact them' as a thing the Charps' need -"

"Oh yeah they've fixed that now."

"Awesome. Anyway, it'd be really valuable if their owners could spare one."

"I'm sure they can, they're really easy to make with the R&D out of the way and demons around."

"Thank you! At sixty thousand a week how long until your world's covered?"

"Couple months! There are not that many of us! But more every spring."

"Oh good! Anyone else out there with a horribly short lifespan?"

"They went and rechecked all the 'boring', next worst is somebody in Edda they can't touch right now for political reasons anyway and they live to be fifty. Unless you count species where personal continuity isn't even a thing, some individuals of those are very short-lived but they don't care at all."

"Well if they don't care I don't think we should. What're you doing once your world's all set?"

"Experimenting with interactions with songburning!"

"Cool! We'll all eagerly await the results on that."

"I'm excited." Flap.

"The wings are adorable. More people should have wings, I would point it out to Eru as a design flaw but I don't really want to get his attention."

"They're great! I learned to turn people into birds in case I meet anybody who's sad about not being able to fly, it's nice to have and I can burn the spell in an emergency."

"Do you have to have it written down for that?"