"Oh. Okay. Um. Can we have this conversation sitting down, this seems like a sitting down conversation instead of an awkwardly standing in the corridor conversation."

He sits down in the air.

She snorts. "Okay, well, good for you, but I need a physical thing to sit on, so. C'mon, float over here."

And into the room, where she sits on her bed to look at him properly. "Well, unfortunately I don't have telepathy, so uh. I didn't get any of the mind bits. Did I... not accidentally insult you by calling Rem your mom?? You were just trying to explain a concept???"

"No. Yes."

"Okay. That was not obvious to me." Possibly he needs some practice at serial reasoning because he talks to plants all day. "The point you were trying to make, uh. ... Was it about your name, and why I call you Nai instead of Knives???"

"Partly. About who I am. And who I—am," and he's frustrated again. "Now. And who you are."

".... who you are fundamentally versus the, um, persona you use and present as?"

"Yes. No. Not persona."

"I'm not saying persona as in fake I'm saying it as a sort of... aspect of yourself you are projecting because it's needed. Or am I just completely on the wrong track?"

"Not completely. I'm not projecting. I am knives." This time he summons the blades around his hand, floating in a circle. "I wasn't always knives. And I'm not Knives; I'm Nai."

"... Nature versus nuture? The, uh, way that you were and then the way that you became after interaction with the world?"

"More that. Not just that.

"I am... an instrument. A blade. A weapon. I am used. I use myself. The 'I' who uses is me, the 'I' who is used is also me. Not the same me."

".... I'm afraid I don't understand, I'm sorry."

She understands the general concept he’s pointing to, but clearly he wants her to perceive more nuance than he’s able to relate with words in order to continue his point. Apparently, it is important enough to get the nuance right that he will not accept a ‘mostly right’ gloss. And she thinks that matters, because the point he’s trying to make is… also complicated. He requires a nuanced foundation to build a nuanced argument. So: in this instance, to the degree he wants, she does not understand.

"Human language doesn't have the words. There are ways in which these things are alike. And ways in which they're not. And I can't show you. So I have to try to find them all. There are many of them.

"And there are ways in which you are like one me and not like the other. And they are ways a plant is a plant. The plants see my logic! ...they don't have an opinion on the facts. But the logic is sound!"

"Oh. You're trying to do the, the comparison thing plants do, between two similar but different concepts, to illustrate your point. And that's just not working because English does not naturally go that way."

Then she brightens. "... This looks like a job for graphs!"

Paper! Pencil! She will make a Venn diagram and explain how it works and then he can fill it out and maybe they will get somewhere?

He stares at it for a few seconds then makes more paper and more pencils, many colours, and starts filling graphs out. Many of them. Dozens of them, in fact.

He's... very good at drawing, it seems? Very precise and methodical.

That's fine!! She'll wait. Looking very pleased with herself.

(She is so SMART, yes she IS, she did not figure out what he meant, but she DID figure out a way for him to show her, which is an important part of getting there, and honestly often half the battle, and it was SO CLEVER and she got to use GRAPHS. Graphs are so great.)

He gets frustrated with the graphs at one point and shreds them into tiny pieces then looks at her. "Let's help plants. I will learn this."

Giggle. "Okay. Sure. Is it better than normal words, at least? It seemed like it was."

"Yes. Very. Thank you."

"Happy to help!" she says brightly, and she practically skips all the way to the plant room. (She's SO CLEVER.)

Then yes back to work with them. With snuggles.

He has floating paper and floating pencils and he is on a MISSION. Which does involve snuggles.

Venn diagrams don't capture the whole way his argument works, because they're sort of backwards—they're good for "here are things like X, and things like Y, and things that are both like X and like Y are Z" but not so much for "here are X and Y, these are the things in them that are like each other versus not"—but they're a good starting point for him to begin developing his own thing.

In the analogy between the wielder of a knife and him and the knife itself and also him, there are five main axes of interest: the comparison between the wielder and the first him, the knife and the second him, the wielder and the knife, the first him and the second him, and the relationship between wielder and knife and the relationship between him and him. Some are obvious, some are not.

Listing them all is possible, but probably not really feasible, and this suggests something else: expand his analogy space. Find other things that are like the way the first him and the second him are and which are different from the knife and wielder example, and then compare those. Then instead of listing everything he can list only a subset of everything for each comparison and then try to rely on common sense differences and similarities to do the rest of the work.

He is going through a lot of paper.

Yvette thinks it's very cute. And is also a bit jealous that he can just make paper and colored pencils and stuff, because she wants that superpower. ... Honestly she kind of wants all of the plant hybrid superpowers. It seems like it'd be a really nice existence, if there wasn't an ongoing shadow war over the fate and worth of humanity. That kind of puts a damper on it.

Anyway, she will leave him to his graphs, and meanwhile she'll do the boring groundwork kind of work that doesn't require narration. Not quite in the same category as scut work, because that is now firmly entwined with the kind of awful soul destroying work she did on the sand steamer as plant janitorial staff, but. Sort of in that vein. Not the most fun and interesting. Just necessary and important, especially for communicating the information to others. Which, as has just been demonstrated, is super goddamned important, actually!

The plants remind him that his human needs food. He tells them to go away he's busy. They remind him again. And again. And ag- FINE WHAT DO YOU WANT oh right human needs food.

"You need food," he says aloud.

(Wait, human... hey plants was it any of you who made her?)

([?])

(Guess not. He never managed to ask the plants back on his ship and... most of them died in the crash...)

(...it was his fault...)