She thought that was because of mirages, but she's not going to argue. It doesn't really matter whether he's correct about the nature of his world.

"Great. So I'm guessing that your ball wobbles or spins so that in some places the sun is visible part of the time. Our ball doesn't. Lacrimos spins, and I think most of its moons spin, so it's possible on this world. Just, most planets - balls - that people like us can live on, are close enough to their sun that a complicated force I don't understand pulls them until they stop spinning." She totally understands and can work out the formulas herself, but it's not common knowledge for a child.

"...Oh. So there's no [night], because it's always [night]. That means... Oh, the drydark and drybright make sense now. That's so amazing and also kind of sad and scary. Wow, I can't believe there are plants that grow even on the edge of it. I'm gonna explore the drybright and drydark some day. I want to show everyone my home but ummmmm."

He thinks doing a permanent portal is the kind of thing done by burning some of every color and knowing exactly what you're doing. And the idea of going home is scary, even if he imagines being a legendary hero like Rulaan. 

"I can't. I don't like being a secret. But-" and he's quoting someone- "Things you don't like happen all the time, you can complain or you can be strong."

"Yeah, having to hide is awful."

Plish plish.

Plish plish phish.

"Will you take me with you? I don't know what I can be useful for, but I want to see what's in the drydark and the drybright. I want be there when you make it a nice place to live. I want the world to have so much water that frogolds can live in peace everywhere."

"...I dunno. It's probably going to be hard. And then you are going to say 'I don't care', yeah yeah... I won't stop you following I guess. I'm not going soon anyway. I need to figure out [enchantment] and make a bunch of those first."

"Fair.

Are you alright?

I mean, like, no matter what, there are plenty of frogolds to do my job, whatever that turns out to be. You're the only kaleid in the world. If anything happens to you, or even if you just have trouble building the right color to do whatever you need to do, people will be sad. I know, 'Things you don't like happen all the time, you can complain or you can be strong'. If you want to be strong, be strong. But tell me if I can help, okay?"

"...It's not supposed to be... Dad got so mad when people think he's not strong or smart. Mom was worried about what the neighbors think of me. I don't like that. I wish I was all alone forever sometimes."

"Hm." Frogolds who feel like that don't usually survive to personhood.

"So you don't actually want to be alone, you just feel like that sometimes... You want to be around people who don't want anything from you? You want to have friends who are loyal to you? Are you more worried about people you like using your feelings unfairly, or people who need you trying to make you do what they want?"

"I dunno. If someone needs my food or my magic it's still mine. I don't like it when people say you should be nice." It usually means 'give me something' or 'do this chore' or 'let us make fun of you and don't even get mad'.

"Ah, because that's a threat. If they say you're not nice often enough, you'll get hurt. They're not even saying something smart, that other people could argue about. The meaning of the word has nothing to do with actually being nice.

Frogolds have variety. Puppies like to agree on things. But if, say, a mommy wanted me to be nice, meaning that I should follow her particular rules about which taddies to feed and never pick up eggs, and I thought it was more important to be loyal to my household, I would be able to find another mommy who cared about loyalty. Something like that actually happened: My first daddy wanted me to be smart, and told me about shapes, and I could imagine the shapes in my head but he couldn't. So he didn't trust my visual thoughts and thought I was stupid to trust them myself. So I stopped hanging out with him and found my fourth daddy instead.

What does nice mean to you, if you got to decide? Suppose you make a nice place deep in the drydark. What people would you bring there? How would you decide what magic to do? Would you rather be the only kaleid so that people are afraid to say bad things about you, or would you rather there were lots of kaleids, doing lots of things for lots of reasons, and no one would want to say bad things about you?"

"Yeah. Saying I should be nice was always just saying I should do what they say. I dunno. I wouldn't bring many people. They could hurt me or mess with things... Being special is scary because everyone will be looking, but I also kind of like it... Maybe the second thing. But it's just me."

"Oh! Humans could make more of your species.

So, you know how humans made mouselings out of mice? If a human tried that with a mouseling, the result would be another mouseling, not a third new species. If a human tried that on you, there might be another kaleid because you're already a person like a mouseling, or the human magic might consider you to be a kind of animal and make something new. Or it might fail, that happens sometimes." Sometimes horribly.

"Humans are secretive about how it works exactly. You'd have to hold their hand through a hole in wall."

"...I didn't know that was how! From real mice! Green magic to look like a catfolk or a wolf or or or a mouseling or something, or an [angel], that's, some people have that, and they can hear really good, or smell really good, or fly with their real wings made of meat and feathers, but their magic doesn't change!!!"

"No one's magic changes! Not even like how you get stronger in each color as you do and feel things. After doing the secret magic part, the humans grow a baby, a totally new person, over the course of a year and a half, just like with regular human babies. They can't turn a mouse into a mouseling, or replace a mouseling with a new person in the same body, killing the old one! No. Humans don't change magic. They just copy or create it."

(Author note: At this point, Nicodemus is pretty sure that his species, and the local 'humans' that he just happens to look like are entirely different. The word the color-magic society uses for themselves, lost to time, originally meant something like 'many colors'.

Thus: Their species as a whole is called Kaleid. Kaleidic, Kaleidian, or Kaleidish. Plural Kaleids.)

"...So their magic is making new kinds of magic. I guess maybe they tried a bunch of different things to make catfolk and frogolds and everyone? It's scary that it's a secret. What if it hurts but actual mice and cats and things can't tell? What if it goes wrong? I've only heard of like... Twenty kinds of people but there's MILLIONS of kinds of animals. I think."

"I'm pretty sure it doesn't hurt, when the target is a person, because it's been done plenty of times to copy from people, sometimes against their will and they've complained about it plenty but didn't mention it hurting.

Usually rare kinds who don't get along with others of the same species, for example aasimar, or really useful ones, but also sometimes a human and a werewolf get married and use human magic to produce children who are related to both parents, which is otherwise impossible between different species.

I think it fails pretty often, and every attempt is costly. The creator of catfolk died from it.

There are still plenty of humans who would be happy to try to copy from you, out of desire to help the world or simply because they're getting paid a lot."

"They died? I don't want to talk about this any more."

He wants to throw the rock as hard as he can but temper tantrums get you in trouble so he just drops it in the pool. He hasn't been in trouble here yet and doesn't want to see what that looks like.

And no way can he maybe kill someone by accident.

Well that's just great.

Plish plish plish.

Plish plish.

Plish plish plonk.

(Author's note: Calsa's summary of all the species she knows is retconned in at https://glowfic.com/replies/2021700#reply-2021700.)

Calsa and Merta return from whatever they were off doing together in private.

slowblink

Merta nuzzles the top of her head.

"Hi kids. What do you want to do today?"

"I dunno. Maybe running. I don't want to get slow and weak and useless. Or illusions in the square. I want to make them last a whole hour before I run out."

"What's Siki been saying to you? But sure, we could run to the courthouse."