"I mean I wouldn't want to die just because some Elves think I'm ugly, and - I like solving problems like that by being hard to kill, not by being beautiful or hoping people will happen to decide to be nice." Shrug. "Doesn't matter anymore, I guess."

"I'm still not sure what you mean."

"My guess is it's not something that matters but if you want me to try again anyway I can."

"Elves aren't going to kill you for being ugly. Did something I said make it sound like they might?" asks Jio.

"No. But none of the reasons they're not involve me making it inconvenient. It's just because they happen not to want to, or their extremely powerful government happens not to want them to."

"- right. It's not practical for rmost people to make killing them inconvenient, in a multiverse this big. Is that something you feel like you need to - be comfortable? Being dangerous to anyone you might meet?"

"Like I said. Doesn't matter."

"You can drop out of the program if you don't want to have this conversation but if you want to teleport at the end of the session I need to understand. I can't recommend keeping you if I don't know what I'm doing."

"I am not under the impression that I am now or will ever be something other than a bug beneath Loki's heel. I have things to do that might still matter, and dying wouldn't even help since you could get me back whenever you want. I am not under the impression that what I need to be comfortable will ever matter again." He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and focuses on making sure his breathing stays even.

"I... feel that you have misunderstood some things," says Jio, "but I'm running out of ideas for how to figure out what they are."

"If you expect they're important, I can do background reading." His voice is very even but in a way that doesn't seem effortless.

artorian:)@envoy.vn wrote:

There's a call going around for people from Sesat who are integrating well to do cultural consultancy. It pays great, if you're interested. Form is here.

Oh, are they finally getting the other slaves out? They must be getting the other slaves out! And she has unique expertise from being first!

She's getting to the point where filling out forms is almost easy, definitely easy enough to do it if it might lead to her getting more money and helping other escaped slaves.

The message gives her a digital token to take to the nearest teleporter's office for a free ride to someplace in Mîr, which is not especially suggestive of it having to do with Vanda Nossëo getting slaves out.

She's not totally sure that where things happen still matters, given teleportation. At any rate she can take her digital token and go to someplace in Mîr.

The teleporter lets her out outside the class building.

"Thank you for coming so quickly. I've got this Sesati guy enrolled in a teleporter class and I don't want to have to kick him out for flunking his surprise test but I can't figure out what his problem is and he's having some kind of anxiety attack," Jio says.

"...A teleporter class? Quick question, are we still doing the thing where we let the diplomats try their best first or did I miss the memo on doing rescues?"

"- I don't think he's a former slave, were you told this was about a former slave? I just asked for Sesati culture consultation."

"...Oh. Uh. ...If he kills me do I get a free resurrection?"

"Absolutely and also I can call back the zhop who helped administer the test if that would make you feel safer."

"If you want. I don't really care about feeling safe, I'd just feel bad if I missed work because of being dead and also feel bad if I kept your guy waiting while I warned people I might die."

"Well, I'd rather you feel safe. Magalt!" he calls.

Magalt floats over from where he was getting a shaved ice. "Yo."

"This is our cultural consultant, Fere, but she used to be a slave so she might be even more bait than you, can you watch out for her?"

"You got it."

"Nice of you. Anyway, where am I going, exactly...?"

"Just in here," says Jio, and he leads her inside to his office where he left Valan with the rule of law article.

He quit about ten paragraphs in and has been spending the time since then with his head resting on the desk feeling like Feris ought to be here criticizing everything he did wrong tonight. He hears them coming and startles and is sitting up excessively properly by the time they come in. He's had just long enough to stop being ready for more of whatever that interaction was and not long enough to get over it and he doesn't seem to be saying anything.

"Hey," says the newcomer. "I came from - you know what, turn your Allspeak off for a sec, you'll notice it yourself."

He stares at her blankly for a second because, yep, he already does notice it, everywhere else they use exactly the same pronouns for everyone from him to Loki and this person, like not very many people before her, is saying she thinks she's better than him. He answers as though he expects they're probably equals. "I can do that but it's not in the way, I hear you. I'm Valan of Leopard Hill."

"Near Iral?"

Who needs to ask that. Not someone educated like him, not someone who ought to be going around acting superior. "...Oh, is that it. Not a very good test, I'm too tired to care." He's sticking with the same pronouns he was using before catching on, though, that being an obvious test.

"What did I even do?"

"Not familiar enough with Sesat's geography for the sort of person that calls me anything but 'sir', not a serf or better because I've already given an impassioned speech about how serfs are people to someone who was confused about that, deliberately fucking with me while I'm off-balance as part of a test and there's nothing about me that's likely to be objectionable to Mîr but they'd check if I was still polite to you if they caught be off-balance and you were obnoxious - ah. That's why Magalt is an orc. Not because orcs are big. And that's why you're female."

"...Okay, I believe you that I've just stepped into something that complicated but they didn't tell me anything that'd make that comment make sense."

"...Ah. Sorry, I don't know why I imagined you'd be in on it. They want to know if I'm merciful and generous and generally going to contribute to universal flourishing."

"Okay. Well, all I know is that I got an email inviting me to do cultural consultancy for other Sesatis and then I was told they couldn't figure out what your problem was and you were having an anxiety attack."

"What's an anxiety attack?"

"No clue."

"Well, then. Can't exactly argue otherwise, I guess. What's the problem they don't know about?"

"I don't know! I was supposed to figure that out from talking to you! Are there... multiple problems? That they do know about?"

He shrugs. "Dunno. They don't like that I stabbed a guy - he'd've started it on purpose acting like that in Sesat but apparently not here - and I told them I wouldn't do it again and either they have truth magic or they don't but I don't think there's anything else I can say about it. I was doing some background reading. They're very interested in having clear rules here."

"They're weird."

"Yep. I don't have any idea what other problems I'm supposed to have. I mean, besides the obvious." Is a slave really going to pick up on his subtext? Well, he can try it and see!

"Obvious?" What, even to me? she doesn't ask.

"Don't tell me it isn't." Pretty sure you of all námor are thinking about rescues.

"Even though you're - what, a soldier?" Aren't your friends basically fine? "Did you not like Sesat?"

"I loved Sky's Night. Though someone once said to me that it only sounded like fun if everyone could be on the roof."

"Who said that?" Presumably a slave, right? Does he know how to refer to a slave the way a slave would?

"An Amentan!"

Fere blinks, reconsidering whether she got any of that right. "Amentans are the ones that had that - touchy situation where they couldn't just immediately rescue all the reds for diplomatic reasons, but they got them out safely anyway, right?"

"Of course all you'd know about Amenta is the reds. But yeah."

She switches to talking to him like an equal. "Well, yeah, fair point, I guess random grey families don't make the multiversal news so much."

Valan nods and doesn't say anything.

"I wanted to do something about Sesat," says Fere, out loud, explicitly. "But when I had a frank and open conversation about it with someone I trusted she told me not to rock the boat yet." Insofar as we don't have to keep this to subtext can be subtext it is.

Valan raises an eyebrow. "Sounds like you're really settling in, huh? Personally I'm not, I'm just a visitor and I'm going home eventually."

"Well, yeah, I don't want to have anything to do with that place ever again."

Valan laughs fondly. "Sucks, doesn't it? You know, at one point, I was considering betraying the Star-of-Stars." He glances quickly at Magalt. "Not that I'd ever consider anything like that here, it was specific to Sesat." It no longer matters what I think of the government, he doesn't say.

She's not quite sure what he's getting at. Redundancy about conveying the fact that he's still considering it? Or is he specifically conveying that he's thinking of betraying Mîr, really? That explicitly? In front of Magalt? "Not much reason to, I'm richer than the Star-of-Stars and everybody respects me."

"Yeah, and not just richer, there's all those things we couldn't've bought for any price back home..."

"Better in every way."

"They really are." It's unambiguous in Sesati that he's talking about people.

Now she's pretty sure she gets it. "...And I'm no different from you."

"Yeah. I'm no different from you either, I guess."

She pats him on the shoulder. "Delightful, huh? Look me up some time after your classes if you feel like hanging around."

"I don't think that will help for reasons that Magalt would misunderstand if I said them."

"Because I was alive back in Sesat? You want to know why that is?"

"Maybe but whether I do or not I expect you're about to tell me."

"I decided not to die, when they caught me, because I couldn't finish getting my revenge dead."

"What."

"What?"

"That's - extremely fucked up."

She laughs delightedly. "Anyway, I think I got it, how much is it okay if I try to translate?"

"If it'll help with the obvious thing you can tell them anything except the thing itself."

"Really think you should talk with them about that too."

"I'm still Sesati."

"I don't quite get that part."

"Imagine I succeed here. What's different if I'm only Sesati?"

"...Ohhh. Yeah I never worried about that back when I was a secret rebel."

"Man, if only I'd known to get in touch with you then, we could've staged a coup together and I could've been the king who met Vanda Nossëo."

"Or all died trying!"

"No shame in that. Thanks for coming, tell them whatever won't get anyone except me or you or the Star-of-Stars killed, and before you do... tell me what the fuck you're supposed to do here when someone's trying to start shit."

"Literally hasn't happened to me once since I've been here. I'm gonna ask a friend when I get home. Probably run away, no one has any right to hunt me down and I don't have to cleverly plan my revenge for years if no one can manage to actually hurt me. I guess I figured you might start shit so I got a promise to rez me and figured if anything happened to me you'd get kicked out of your thing and that's better revenge than I've gotten half the time when I've tried to do it myself so that seemed fine. Got an email address for after I ask my friend, though?"

He tells her what it is and asks for hers for redundancy in case she forgets his; she tells him hers too.

"Well," she says to Magalt, "it didn't end up helping any but thanks for coming anyway. What exactly am I supposed to do now?"