Culpeper Cut doesn't get many visitors. Most of its visitors are infuriating.

"Oh no; I'm sorry to hear that, what are they doing that's so frustrating?"

They say things like 'oh, let us farm here' or 'oh, keep the coyotes away from the town' or 'oh, have you seen any monsters lately'.

"And you just want to talk about plants!  Well, keeping monsters in check is actually pretty important to making sure there's people you can talk about plants with, if your spirit neighbors aren't as excited as you are, but yeah, that's honestly rather rude of them, to just show up and ask you things like that without even doing anything nice for you in return!"

Culpeper Cut just had the most hilarious idea! It should give her magic! It would be the funniest thing it's done in a while. The Spirit Association would be so confused.

"They would, wouldn't they!  And I'll see if I can get you some better visitors, mhm?"

The coyotes start laughing again, all around.

Culpeper Cut doesn't need better visitors. It will teach her more about PLANTS if she wants. It will give her magic if she wants (because it would be funny).

"Yeah, you don't need them, but you're doing something nice for me, so I want to do something nice for you!  Beyond, of course, confusing the heck out of the Spirit Association, by showing up and," she can't help but intermix her comments with giggles too, Culpeper's laughter is contagious, "telling them you enkindled me!"

She should help it with its jokes next time it has a joke to play. One of its favorites is: Messing with the town's weather stations!

"Mmhmm?  I don't want anyone to get hurt about it, but sure!"

That sounds a lot more like the annoying things most visitors say. Culpeper Cut is no longer amused.

"Aww."

"Hmm, lemme see if I can put it a way that makes sense, and - frames the things I have lines about, rightly -

"A really good joke understands the audience it's playing to?

"And 'three dead, seven injured in surprise tornado' isn't a joke most humans would laugh at, isn't a context most humans could find humor in at all; they'd be rather miffed, and might put in effort to prevent you from pranking them more; that's the sort of thing I wouldn't want to abet for - well, anybody, really.

"Whereas making a funny face on the radar is just funny.

"Does that make sense?"

Culpeper Cut doesn't want humans to come kill it. It thinks that there are too many rules. It doesn't want to give her magic anymore. Here's some more (kind of sullen) plant facts. Chloroplasts. Yay.

"...hey.  I'm sorry.  I fucked up.  I didn't mean to imply anything like that was at all likely; I don't know if it's even possible, and I don't really believe that whatever you might have been planning would've been like that.  You didn't hurt me, and you could have.  ...And honestly, I do agree; there's too many rules, and lots of them are stupid rules made up by people who wouldn't know happiness if it bit them on the ass.  It's just that I think 'try to not actively hurt people slash make their lives worse for my presence in them' is a rule that's worth having, and if we were going to be partners...that's the sort of thing you need to know about partners, going in?  I'd love to add humor and mystery and cool plant facts to the world.  Just not suffering.  And...well, I think I just messed up on that, with the way I flubbed having this conversation with you.  I'm sorry.

"...if I could, I would offer you a hug, or something; I'm...not sure how one does that, with spirits?  But...I would like to make amends, somehow, for the emotional harm I've done to you, in my fumbling attempts at communicating meaningful things.  Or if that's just, not possible, I'll leave, if you want.  Or if you just want me to leave.  This is your land, from my perspective; I'm only here 'cause you let me be.

"So...what would you prefer?"

Culpeper Cut thinks the visitor really does not understand it and vice versa. It's confused why she thinks it thinking her thinking it would kill people would be bad. [Confusing ??neurochemistry?? details]

(A tiny little songbird lands on her head, tweeting away.)

D'aww.  She smiles fondly, albeit over a chasm of still-somewhat-worried hesitancy, at the songbird.

"It's...yes, I think you're right; neither of us are doing the best job at understanding eachother, yet."  (Her pen scritches away at the neurochemistry details.)  "Most of the conversations I have, they're with people who're as blind to the world around them as I am, or moreso, who wouldn't understand even a tithe of the neurochemistry you mentioned just now - and I have to admit that I'm also part of the group of people without understanding of neurochemistry worth mentioning.  I literally don't see the world in the same way you do.  So -

"There's a way, I think, that my having this conversation with you is surprisingly like a human talking to a genie.

"And one of the big things about genies is that they don't - move to build abstract models based off of information they have, the way a human in the genie's position might; genies think concretely or, well, almost not at all.

"So part of my apology was - about having made incorrect models of you, perhaps twice in a row, and the way the actions I took, based upon those models - which were still all I really had, at the time - hurt your feelings, regardless of my intent.

"And the inadvertent communication that I thought that you were likely to do something that hurt people more than the average prairie would, was a concrete example of an abstract failing - like I might use to try to explain to a genie.

"Because - I'm, we're, still trying to understand what you can understand, and what you want.  The only model other humans have of you, that I was able to find, was basically them throwing up their hands and saying 'we give up', whereas - your actions have a clear internal logic; I might be comparatively blind, but that shines through loud and clear, to me?  You have values you pursue in the same way I pursue trying to make people's lives better for knowing me.

"And that's something else I'm apologizing for, that I didn't live up to my own standards for my actions; you're a person, by my perhaps-broader-than-standard definition thereof, and I'm...not succeeding at bringing you joy?

"Not yet, at least.

"And I want you to be happy, to be having fun, to be satisfied with what you're doing with your life.  I value that for its own sake, the same way you think plants are the best thing to ever exist.

"Does that make sense?"

Culpeper Cut has good models of the weather and animal behavior but can't model human behavior. It can't rely on things it thinks humans think. It likes poking them and seeing the weird things that return as deviations from the model.

"Gods, I know, right?  Humans are so weeiiird.  And I have an inside view of that, so I know what I'm talking about!"

She promptly starts discursing about human psychology and neurology as best she knows humans to understand it!  She knows so many things!  Did Culpeper Cut know that in the event of a hemisphere of the human brain becoming completely detached from the other, both of those brains have people in them, and their control is basically split down the body laterally?  That's really spooky!  And then, there's the uncanny valley effect!  Humans have a specific instinct to detect things that just don't look quite human, that's actually tuned to spot things that are more subtle than, for example, detecting a 'succubus' infiltrator with, like, obvious pointy claw-nails!  Which is really weird!  People think it's probably about spotting sick or dead humans, but nobody's really sure!  And then there's, oh, what was it, she had this really cool and weird thing in mind just a minute ago - oh!  The subconscious mind, the instincts of humans, decides things before the conscious mind, but the conscious mind, the bit she's using to talk to Culpeper Cut, basically tricks itself into thinking it totally decided what it did, telling a story about it retroactively!  And maybe has a veto, apparently?  She'd be happy to get some more weird humans facts!  Weird humans facts are cool!  Kind of like PLANTS!  Oooh, has Culpeper Cut ever heard about the human language that basically installs an entire functioning compass in its humans' brains because it doesn't have relative directions?

...Culpeper Cut is pretty confused about most of these concepts. Sodium channels-brain/blood barrier-pacemaker cells?

"Ooooh, I think I see the problem you're having!  Have you ever tried zooming out?  Pretending, for a moment, that the individual cells are 'opaque', without detail, and just caring about the connections between them?"

That sounds like something that's going to take a while to make sense of.

"Mhm!  But it'll help with understanding humans!  I could bring over some textbooks?  Humans have been trying to do this for a while, and while we know we don't really understand even half of what's happening in there, we've made some progress!"

Culpeper Cut would like to be alone now.

"Alright; do you have a preference on whether and how soon I should come back?  I enjoyed talking with you."

She may come back. It doesn't really care about the timescale.