"In what way? Do you mean in - what's my range on the scale, what makes up my method for figuring it out...?"
"Hmmm... Absolute highest single number was a sixty-seven point three. It's for making the knife go away. The average person tends to rate a seven. It becomes harder and harder to get higher numbers as you get up the scale. I weigh things I find important and how important it is that they be attended to or not, or - how much they matter to me. One point is how much I care about a person who has zero personal qualities aside from being sentient. Er - you also broke my scale, I have no idea how to even begin at figuring out what number you are."
"Oh, yeah, it's working out fine. You're just - sort of my mental number equivalent of 999999, I'm sort of working around it because it's rather bewildering."
"I guess that makes sense. I don't do it with numbers like that. Just - rankings, relative ones, felt out rather than calculated."
"None, yet," he sighs. "I think I need the Dean to give me more information for them to be willing to risk touching a strange artifact. Even to get rid of the knife."
If he doesn't, the odds that Zevaia won't have died of dehydration start to go way, way down.
"It has a vested interest in keeping her alive. We know it makes them drink rain water...."
"Me, too," he sighs. "I - think she should have been the one to find the necklace, honestly. She's better at the sort of crisis that involves hitting things. I'm - not."