"We'll cover it. I -"

He looks around.

"- whole thing's five thou. What are you looking for -?"

"Don't want something mysteriously terrible to happen to you if I show up back at their administrative building very upset about something a girl with pink hair told me." He leans his head against the truck. "I hate this place. We can do five thousand."

"- you're not supposed to touch the truck."

"I would be hard pressed to care the slightest bit less."

"Do you want a hug?"

"Uh, if you're going to pay off the credit I'd kind of rather spend the next four years raising my daughter and not rotting in jail."

Flinch. "....I take it that you can be imprisoned for touching people?"

"I'm, y'know, untouchable."

"Yes, I got that. But if I don't care -"

"Any grey who walks by with a stick will care. Anybody who walks by can call them."

Nod. Sigh. "We'll fix it."

"Maybe try not to kill any grey babies while you're making their jobs redundant or whatever you're doing."

"I assure you we're not trying to. Are there - other problems like that -"

"How am I supposed to know?"

"It doesn't seem like anyone else knows what reds need."

"I don't know what you mean by problems like that -"

"People dying, people being mistreated, problems money can solve in general -"

"Reds are poor. My family's not even poor for a red family and we still couldn't afford a child credit on short notice."

"I will confess confusion about how anyone could need a child credit on short notice."

"We have birth control but I wasn't - expecting to need it - could have gotten an abortion but we thought we could afford it and I wanted her - and then there was a bad season right after she was born so I had to join the army -"

"I remain as confused as I was before."

"Dunno how to say it in smaller words, Elf."

"Macalaurë. Uh, the way Elves have children is they get married and then they decide that they want one and then they have sex especially for that purpose and then they spend two of your years pregnant and then the baby is born, which step sounds wrong -"