"Oh, go ahead if it's pertinent, there's just a lot to cover and I don't actually have in mind an order in which to do all of it."

"There's a similar puzzle on my end.  I expect you would know better than I whether this is pertinent."

"Our afterlives involve people showing up in another universe, either with one of three types of active magic powers," wave wave, "or not, depending. My parents both went to the 'not' one. It's pretty unimpressive there but people don't glom onto other people to form new hybrid people."

"Do people keep telling you your world seems lonely?"

"I think someone did say that about not having geminis but I don't think anyone's said it about not having star clouds."

"Something to look forward to, perhaps."  Teasip.  "I might as well say explicitly that my goal for today is to reach enough of an understanding with you that you don't come back in a week or a year having discovered something you feel betrayed to have not been told about, and that would motivate you to enact vengeance or justice.  But as I've said it's hard to know where to start."

"My understanding is that y'all are into creating setups for yourselves in which it is practicable to have power over other sorts of people, and there is an extremely broad range starting at 'inoffensive establishment with carefully managed consent verification protocols where patrons get really intense hand massages and stuff' and it's all downhill from there. I'm not actually sure it's constructive for me to know the details of how bad it gets unless I'm about to be looking at a huge influx of refugees released from whatever they have been doing with their lives thus far and I need to know what that was to take care of them."

"I wouldn't say that's the end of the range.  Otherwise your description seems accurate."

"Okay, yes, starting at doing weird amounts of research on what treats will be most appealing to one's brother's cat, or something."

"It's not uncommon for us to spend a relationship with a - speaking bluntly, victim - gradually giving them more resources and a stabler life, and leaving them flourishing much more than they would have been without our intervention.  It's less common, but not unheard of, for us to do this without the victimhood.  But perhaps nailing down this end of the scale isn't important either."

"Yeah. Not constructive to get into the details. I am broadly against the creation of victims."

"In that case the definition of victimhood seems the most constructive thing to get into details about.  It wouldn't do to have you come back in a week or a year having expected us to stop something we didn't realize you cared about.  And conversely it would be detrimental to future mutual understanding if there was terribly much that we avoided doing that you didn't."

"Quite. Do you have a first pass guess? I don't think my mores are all that alien."

"I suppose you don't want any drugging without carefully managed consent verification protocols.  Probably no physical harm at all.  I'm unsure about the poisons businesses; we generally try to make them too distinctive to use for purposes other than suicide.  Medical research . . . isn't my specialty; you and I might have to call in someone to go over details with, and possibly a winter solstice although I certainly can't claim to speak for them or have the power to enforce rules among them."

"Some people are into physical harm, you just need carefully managed consent protocols. You can sell suicide poisons if you want. I've got some winters in my city, do you mean some who are around here?"

"Well, how moral are your winters, by your lights?"

"I don't know but they seem awfully motivated to secure the goodwill of the extradimensional winged sort."

"You don't say.  But it might be best to track some down who've worked alongside my geminis, whether they're in this country or elsewhere, for discussion of scientific ethics."

"Cool, that goes on the to-do list." He glances at Felicity.

She doesn't appear to notice.

"I can get you the address of a local facility, if that would be convenient."

"The address would be much less useful than as-the-demon-flies directions given the givens." Is this a winged Felicity?

No, those are both in Atriama.

"That's as easily arranged."

"Felicity? Do you maybe want to wait in the shuttle, if I'm going to be flapping all over the place? I can message the shuttle systems from wherever if I need you."