"I know this sounds irrelevant but do people have to be taught specific unintuitive sequences of actions in order to use any magic at all where you come from?"

"For most people, yes, and not everyone can learn it. Some people are sorcerers, which … I don't know what that's like in general, the one I met could do a little bit of magic but not a lot and ey had to figure out the rest with study. If you build people you can give them built-in magic, I can turn into a regular-looking plant and turn back again. Some species are naturally magic but to do things with the magic they still need to learn? A cockatrice can turn entities it bites to stone but that isn't something it can leverage into doing other magic things."

"...I don't think being able to turn people to stone and not being able to do anything else is particularly safe but I guess if they need to bite people, that's much easier to contain. Here people are born with magic, and need to learn how to use it well, and need a lot less time to learn to use it at all and don't really need to be taught how to do simple things like, say, accidentally destroy an entire city - although now that I think about it, probably only part of the city would've been destroyed, some of it would have anti-defense wards in place..."

"I don't think people in my world are born able to destroy an entire city. Built that way, sure, but that's different. The thing where people are born with the same power of magic adults have does seem bad, but I don't understand why you solve this with slavery as opposed to commanding babies to not use magic."

"Some of the species here aren't born able to walk or talk or think about complicated things."

"…to be clear: Cockatrices are animals and can't talk or think about complicated things. And the same goes for Jubjubs, and one of those could probably destroy a town, but they're mostly very far away from all the towns I've ever been to and the one that was in the same broad geographic region as a town I visited probably rescued it and … this is unhelpful, isn't it. But if humans get enough cognitive ability to learn Hari magic at, oh, four years old, and they can handle it properly at eight, it seems like commanding them to not use magic is a much better idea than enslaving them?"

"So, uh, did you specifically come here hoping to feel me out on whether I wanted to help you end slavery and replace it with a system where some people, uh, get to control other people's actions including through the use of command magic."

"I was mostly trying to figure out how, uh, attached to slavery people were and why, and 'it's a system we use to prevent incredibly powerful magic toddlers from killing us all and the other ways of doing this would have a more complicated legal specification' seems like a pretty good explanation of that! I cannot actually put together high-quality alternative legislation in minutes, it was just the first idea I thought of. If people liked having slavery because they were really into getting to have opportunities to hurt slaves, that would be a different kind of problem and I would respond differently."

"People like that exist but not giving them what they want wouldn't destroy society, yeah."

"So, I plan to pitch your government on allying with an organization that is, in fact, opposed to slavery. They will want to work with your government on ending slavery in an orderly manner that doesn't get people assaulted by toddlers or make your legal code more confusing. They are going to be noticeably upset about the slavery and make steps towards ending it be a condition of mutual defense agreements, and such. Do you think that will be a giant problem for diplomacy?"

"I don't know. It probably depends. I could speculate but I'm not a politician or anything."

"Alright, thank you. Hmm. Is there anything that you think is a really bad idea to do here that isn't illegal? Please include really obvious answers. For example, in the city I have a house in there are some people who will stab you if you lie to them even a little bit, and so it's a bad idea to interact with people without asking them if they're like that. …I'm not one of those people, to be clear."

"Don't... go off alone in a hidden area with a random stranger without first letting people know where you'll be? Uh, read the state and city laws if you haven't yet, those matter if you're going to be building anything or selling some kinds of food or doing sex work. Oh, and if you make people uncomfortable, like if you stare at them or pee on the street - you probably don't do that anywhere, never mind - or if they don't like how you smell or something, then they might charge you more money if you have to deal with them."

"Thank you! I can't read Hari yet, the government building workers read me the imperial law but I don't know what they do and don't do, will the they be angry if I ask them to do things they don't want to do? And I don't think I have a smell here, anything that comes from me dissolves outside my bubble. …I should hire a defense mage to see if they can build me a better bubble but I don't have money yet."

"...If you want people to do things they don't already want to do, you'll have to pay them. They might be mad you asked if you distract them from trying to focus on something."

"Okay, that sounds like the norm I'm used to. Oh. Question. Do you know what the part of you that lets you feel things and remember things and such is?"

That is a bizarrely creepy question. "Yes, I do, it's one of my internal organs. How about you?"

"It's made of a different material from my organs and is able to be in the same place as the inside of my head despite there being an organ there."

"Huh! How does that work?"

"…I don't even know the word in Hari for the organ that's in people's heads that information from the body goes into. I can try to explain anyway but I think you might want to ask me again later. Or tell me lots of words, that works too."

"I don't know what organs are in your head because you're a plant, but in some local species there are eyes and ears and noses and on the inside there's a tongue and teeth and a brain. The tongue is for pronouncing things, the teeth are for biting things, and the brain is for thinking."

"My brain doesn't do the thinking, it helps with thinking and it makes information make sense for the part that feels things and remembers things, which is in my first language called the soul, which attaches to the brain at the … the base of the brain? The place where the brain attaches to, uh." Griffie runs a hand along eir spine. "This part."

"I could make you a picture but if you want to keep it it has to be your picture-making tools not mine."

"So your brainstem is the anchor for an intelligent magical construct?"

"Saying this body's brainstem anchors me in my body probably makes more sense, but yes."

"That's cool! I wonder if - um. Anyway. That's cool. Do you have any illusions up?"