"Who wouldn't even look at you?" asks Jio.

"Some linguist I talked to who worked on Allspeak. It wasn't like not being willing to look me in the eye, she looked right at me and then shut her eyes."

"Elf?" wonders Magalt wryly.

"I think so, yeah."

"Well, I won't say it's not insulting, but it's not about being insulting," Magalt says. "Elves hate anything that isn't stunningly pretty and you aren't stunningly pretty."

"Should've dressed up after all, I guess. But it isn't a way of conveying how much they don't think you've got any value besides as a source of interesting facts about your language, and you don't expect basically anything to be that, and if anything were that you wouldn't expect it to lead to anything else because basically none of the common social moves here end with blades being drawn or anything. For some unclear reason. Is that about right?"

"It's not wrong," allows Jio. "But also - what do you think would happen, if you... went and mugged an information booth worker."

"Maybe it'd turn out that when they gave their money out under duress it vanished by the following dawn."

"You'd get arrested," says Jio. "Even people who are inclined to harm each other often don't because they will be caught, usually within a couple of hours, and the judges have truth magic and the prisons might be cushy but you can live twice as well on basic on any of a hundred planets without having to work if that's what you want out of life."

"Oh." That is not an adequate explanation but it sort of doesn't matter because now apparently his first priority has to be trying not to get arrested. Over them provoking him. On purpose. He's so tired.

Jio rubs his eyes. "Look, I don't have to kick you out over this but if I keep you I have to have a solid understanding of what went awry and how it's not going to again."

"I sincerely did not come here intending to stab people for no reason. I have a strong preference to not stab people who don't understand themselves to be doing the kinds of things that would make all their friends shrug and say, 'well, you kind of brought that on yourself, huh?' I am willing to also not stab people who do understand themselves to be doing those kinds of things, if not stabbing them is a good way to achieve my goals, and I think it is. I'm - pretty glad that happened with someone who had healing and was expecting it. I would find our shared goals here easier to achieve if - hm. So you say not to escalate things but there are approximately infinite things I could do instead and I could act paradigmatically cowardly or impersonate a serf but I expect those not to be exactly what you want."

"Well, what would those look like?"

"Tonight if I were a coward I'd have... been somewhere else, not flying, and I'd've - well. Not been here at all. But I guess I'd've apologized even though I wasn't the one in the wrong, and I'd've done that even if I thought someone else might be at risk, and if I was asked to do something in particular to get away, like agree to help someone cheat at a test somehow, I guess I'd probably go along with it. If I were a serf I'd have also apologized even though I didn't do anything, on the general theory that if I was bothering someone I must have done something wrong - or, wait, I think that might not even be true, if I thought I should act like random people in this area were also serfs. I wouldn't complain about anything I knew was officially sanctioned and I'd be using different words to address you. If somehow we got to that point I'd identify my mistake tonight as 'I didn't realize anyone around me could secretly be an important person with the right to do anything they want, looking for an excuse to fuck with me, which of course I should allow.' And neither of those seems like it actually - helps universal flourishing? If anything they both seem worse."

"Magalt doesn't have the right to do anything he wants. You signed up for surprise testing, that doesn't mean he could, I don't know, abduct you and turn your skull into a conversation piece," says Jio. "It is in fact often good practice to apologize phatically even when you are pretty sure you haven't done anything wrong - sometimes you're wrong, after all, or it isn't worth anyone's effort to figure it out definitively and it at least clarifies that you didn't set out to offend. In general if you're asked to do something else like cheat on a test or something like that, you can get help, from someone who, like Magalt, doesn't need to worry about random people escalating to stabbings. I... notice you keep worrying about the social status of the people around you and we mostly aren't doing that, if that helps you triangulate a strategy here."

"It doesn't although I did notice something was weird about that here... I think I might actually know what you want and I really hope I'm wrong - what would you personally have done tonight and why specifically would those actions have achieved your goals?"

"If I got on a bus and someone stepped on my foot and called me an asshole? I probably would've said 'excuse me' and stood aside to let them get on the bus and then gotten off and told my friends that I encountered a jerk on the bus," shrugs Jio.

"Well, that's not what I was afraid of. Why would you do that as opposed to... burst into song, write about your annoyance in fruit juice on his forehead, I don't know, there's lots of actions you wouldn't take."

"I'd say 'excuse me' and get out of the way because it would demonstrate that I didn't want to have a fight with the guy and let him have a clear path to never interacting with me again so we could both move on with our lives," says Jio.

"That makes sense. I think I can probably behave in ways that don't make you wish I were in prison."

"The question is whether you can behave in ways that make me glad you can teleport."

"Were you concerned about anything less than killing people?"

"Yes. You can't nonlethally stab people either. You - what were you afraid of, when you asked what I would have done?"

"That you'd scream. That it'd be because you - only have one way people act in Vanda Nossëo, if they're not specifically hired to do something else, and it's the one where you're mostly good at convincing other people to keep you around, not making them."

"...I would not, personally, scream as a first line. But it wouldn't be unreasonable to shout for someone to call emergency services, or something, if they were frightened," says Jio. "I'm not sure I understand what you mean with that last sentence."