"Man, why did that one lady decide to uplift cats in a social environment where it's still socially acceptable to drown them." Pet pet.

"I don't know!  I think I'm glad for it anyway but I can't imagine it was very well considered."  He headbutts into the pets.  "This is pretty nice but it's not that much nicer than having another cat groom you.  - Oh, some of the other cats who were watching things with me thought you should pet Fireheart.  They said that he basically asked you to and it's just that he never says anything straightforwardly.  Or, it was just commentary; they didn't ask me to pass it on but I am telling you anyway."

"...I'm not actually sure that I should take your word for it, that would be pretty rude in my culture. Also I imagine if any other cats smelled it on my hand that would be embarrassing for him."

"That makes sense.  When are you planning to nap again?"

"I don't have a schedule like that, do I need one?"

"No, just if it's going to be a while I'd want to try and think of more things to tell you than if it was sooner."

"It'll be whenever I have a few minutes and a place to lie down, I guess. Or something to tell you. Will it be really noticeable to Cricket if you give him a word? Such that I could tell him to tell me if he gets a weird one?"

"Only if it comes up.  I guess you could . . . tell him a word, but not what it means, and that he should be on the lookout for suddenly knowing what that word in particular means?"

"Okay, how about 'somnolent' for if you want me to take a nap to talk pronto?"

"Cute, I like it.  For ones you initiate yourself it really does help if it's at night, by the way, though obviously daytime's not prohibitive.  - Also probably don't tell Clan cats that I'm cool and funny and informationally-transparent; StarClanners like to keep a very serious, mysterious image."

"That's so rude of them though!"

"It really is!  I think I'm doing an okay job of working around it though, since I can't fix it.  Except by facilitating communication between all thinking creatures in a way that will hopefully eventually lead to more open-mindedness."

"I appreciate this about you."

"Thank you!  I knew you would, that's why I helped bring you here."

"Here like the dream or here like the universe?"

"Both!  Or, I gave support to the 'fire alone' people even though I was mostly not involved with the technical implementation."

"And there was some intervention on setting up a circle for him? Was it aimed at me specifically, it didn't feel like it..."

"I think they had to be really really really exceedingly precise with the timing."

"Oh, that makes sense. How does your future-seeing work?"

"Hate to say it but that's also not my department!"

"- does that mean you can't tell me anything I don't already know or just that you won't be able to answer most follow-up questions?"

"I just haven't ever worked with it directly.  It . . . lets some dead cats see the future?  You have to invest in it a lot to really get anywhere and I haven't at all."

"But ballpark how far in advance, say."

"I think it's getting farther out all the time but I don't know exactly where the frontier's at right now.  I think we first got inklings - that's also a good word - about this project around two years ago?  But that was, hm, I remember somebody describing it as a blossom of potential.  Not seeing specific courses that you would take but that you would do a lot of things, fragments of better maybe-futures, fragments of worse ones with other demons . . ."

"Huh. Does it get very - conditional, can they outcome-pump things if they keep changing stuff till the future looks how they want -"