"Our main trade goods are herbs and wire--rosemary picked under the light of Jupiter, creek sage, titanium, gold, et cetera. And we've got pilers, wire cutters, and a file that we're not willing to sell but will rent. Are you planning to take on balance sheet risk or just make introductions?"

"Nice toolkit, should've thought of that. I went for luxuries mostly." Is Jupiter important? His parents were kind of mediocre wizards. Best not to let that on, though. "I'm taking measured risks with people who seem sufficiently competent. Like the siblings with the neat spiders. Mostly I'm gathering information for now, though, admittedly."

"Likewise. We didn't bring anything none of us had a use for, but no harm shaking the grapevine to see if any pareto improvements fall out." Thinking in an ever-shifting mix of languages but only speaking in one does weird things to the metaphor circuit. With her enclavemates she can just say what she means and not worry about not being understood, or worse being barely understood.

He doesn't seem confused, nodding smilingly instead. He lists off more of his inventory cheerfully, though not any of the things he knows other people are offering. "And I think I might want a little titanium on hand for sheer variety. Might go for artificing, I'm not quite decided."

"Undecided, really?" she asks, managing to inflect it with "intrigued" rather than "judgemental" at the last minute. After all, maybe he just means something like her own deal. "I'm doing a mix of languages and artificing myself. Which things are you torn between?"

"Artificing and languages. I've got nonzero knack for artificing, but it's a lot riskier in some ways and mistakes set you back more when they don't kill you, I hear. Being mediocre is risky too, 'course."

"I wouldn't know." Okay that was either brilliant or moronic and she'd better not give either of them time to figure out which. "What's your affinity?"

"Light! And opals, for some reason, but mostly light. How about you?"

"Projectiles! Anything that throws things or gets thrown. What do you do with light?" She pets her dagger in its lightweight holster. It's a good dagger, yes it is, perfectly balanced for throwing and she's going to throw it so much.

"Oh, nice! I have these knives that I can pull back to me. I do a lot of seeing around corners, reveal the unseen, that sort of stuff. I can do what I call 'hardlight' and it makes for really geometric shields. And I have a nice laser spell but it's tricky to use in crowded situations without friendly fire because light's very fast, you know, and I haven't come up with a good way to make it an artifact yet."

"Knives that come back are the best." She considers pulling hers, tossing it into the air to spin six times and then catching it, but it's too likely to look like a threat. "So, I have a hypothetical question . . . " and provided he doesn't object, she asks him the one about the predicting alien and the pair of boxes.

"I mean, this is just the Prisoner's Dilemma with rewards instead of punishments and obviously you're supposed to cooperate. That's, like, the moral thing to do. But now that I've demonstrated an actual understanding of the question any claims I make about definitely acting in good faith all the time are kind of bunk. And yet my mind predicts that either I can have always been going to get both, and get three crystals, or I can have always only been going to get one, and get thirty. When choosing ways to be, you pick the way that gets you more. Not that the real world's ever so clear-cut. Still, rep is a valuable thing that I will have to work hard to build, and it's easiest when you are in fact not scamming people."

"The nice thing about the question is that if you've heard it before it's still useful, because if someone can explain why the right answer is what it is then they know it's actually the right answer. And yes, the more honestly and effectively you deal with other people the more interested we'll be in dealing with you."

"Good to know where each of us claims to stand, then! Have a lovely day, I'll keep you in mind for trade and endeavor to be consistent enough that it's evidence."