"Mainly the thing that struck me was the - casual assumption that there are very few people out there worth caring about."

"Now, Crin, Alethia hardly said that. Listen to the words she says directly and don't run away with implications that may not be there."

"Yes, that's part of why I wanted to apologize and felt awkward about it. I'm just - after seeing how good you've been to me, Ishaza, I want to be able to step forward and defend the common... decency, I guess... of ordinary people."

"I'm hardly ordinary," Ishaza observes dryly. "You are speaking to a half-goat half-squid light-blessed god-touched freak. Or so they'd call me in the Empire."

"Yes, well, well enough. I just... want to believe there is good in everyone after you showed me the good in me."

Ishaza looks sideways at Alethia. 

"Perhaps we should save this topic for another time."

That thing that had untensed tenses back up.

"Oh, I- I think I actually miscommunicated something? If that even looks- potentially implied by what I said. And would actually rather not leave that as it is, if you both don't mind?"

She's used to- people taking any display of- caring any amount at all about unusual goodness or unusual sensibility as a sign that you don't care about other people. Never mind if the reason you're bringing those up is that they mean you can help people more, people who by and large don't have those traits. Never mind- everything else about what you're like as a person, everything else you've ever done. Everything you actually say. Somehow all of that just slides off, unnoticed. Forgotten.

It's why she uses it as a way to- check whether she can let her guard down around people. Check how much she can let her guard down. Most people aren't safe, really, to- care about anything strange, around. Anything that could maybe have some sort of negative gloss attached to it. Because they'll just- add that gloss, reflexively, for some reason she doesn't quite understand.

She's used to it.

It still hurts, though. And she'd really like it if it would stop.

But she doesn't know if that's what's happening here. Maybe she just flubbed her delivery, or- there's something else besides that exact pattern, happening again.

And she really does want to know.

Ishaza sighs. "I think that... people get defensive when they hear people sorted by virtue. I've gotten more than a few "who do you think you are to say what the good is" myself, and I'm an anchorite, I'm supposed to have a strong ethical education. People have strong innate felt senses of what's right or proper, and being told they might be wrong is..." 

She purses her lips. "Very few people can hear that and take it on board. And I think it's worse with people they love or care about. I've seen too many relationships where someone just kept justifying cruelty from their partner, friend, family..." 

Crin's face falls.

"Yeah," she says quietly. "I've been that person they were making justifications for."

Ishaza nods. "Yes, but unlike some you're capable of learning. I think you should take a close look at who you think you're defending."

That takes the wind out of Crin's sails. 

"... Yeah," she says. "I guess I'm just used to hearing words like "very few people are truly righteous" from the lips of... less than savory people. Witch Hunters, often." 

"I think that's your mistake, Crin. You might well dismiss me on similar grounds."

Crin reaches out and takes Ishaza's hard across the table. 

Ishaza squeezes gently and looks over at Alethia. 

"Insecure people - which, I'm afraid, Crin sometimes counts as - will take any discussion of morality as an attack. Try not to take it personally."

"You know- I am just actually going to say what I meant, because things keep getting pulled aside into other places and being clear is in fact important and the more you talk the more clear it is that I miscommunicated."

There is, now, some degree of- not quite sharpness, but focus in her tone. But after that first sentence it relaxes.

"It's- not that people in general aren't worth caring about. It's not that people aren't usually good, under their tangles of confusions. It's that they are usually confused. People who aren't- underneath any tangles of falsehoods believed, strongly, uncomplicated motivated by helping other people and also abnormally, oddly sensible are- still tremendously valuable, but if you want to help they're not as good a choice of people to work with. It's not that people who do have those traits are innately more valuable; it's that if you want to help, they're good people to team up with. Whether you have those traits doesn't determine your worth. It does determine what you do."

"I could fairly be accused of- dismissing lots of people's ability to reason clearly about what the correct thing to do is in complicated situations, I think. Or of thinking that much of the time they're not particularly trying to do so. I do hold that- well, if you're a farmer whose main concern is not starving over the winter rather than anything else you are not making any sort of mistake, there. But if you're nobility, or a powerful vampire, and you just- don't bother to think and actively scorn anyone who does and comes to an unorthodox answer, as is so common- yeah, I think you're making a mistake. Not one that means you're less valuable, but one that means that you'll help less. It's why the fact that both of you are bothering is so abnormal. People in your position usually don't, and it says something that you are. Not that you're worth more, but that working with you will give me more leverage for doing more."

"It is in fact very important that people who have my way of thinking about whether most people are sensible don't- let that lead us to trampling over people; we're aren't living their lives, we don't actually know better about their life, the vast, vast majority of the time. We just know that actually we should use Hysh to cleanse the farm fields of anyone who will let you and we don't let their disapproval stop us from offering it to their neighbours. We even maybe know that they would be better off if we used it on their field. But- you need- or most people need, probably some people are just actually so incredibly brilliant they can do without this although I wouldn't trust anyone who thought that about themselves- guard rails to stop you from- letting thinking you know better hurt people. You still need to keep in mind- all the ways you could be wrong, all the standard rules of how you should be- as nice as you can be."

"So- no, people can matter and be worth caring about without being- the kind of person to go out and and do complicated correct novel things. Everyone matters, and very few people do those things. It's- similar to the way that, if you're going to hunt a troll, working with someone good with a spear is a good idea, but that doesn't imply people who are good with spears are innately- more important, more valuable, than everyone else."

She takes a deep breath.

"Sorry for- hijacking the stage, for a moment there, but- all of that is actually quite important to me, and I felt the need to- we were going to be talking in circles and there would be things unsaid and untalked about since Crin hadn't heard me say out loud that I didn't- think the way Witch Hunters do, and- that matters. Even if- thinking like a Witch Hunter wasn't straightforwardly implied by what I said the first time- Crin shouldn't have to be- unsure about whether I do, but feel as though that uncertainty is- impolite."

She probably- stepped on Crin's toes there, some, with some of what she said. She thinks it was probably worth it. Sometimes you just need to actually say things.

Crin blinks. 

"Oh," she says after a second.

Ishaza's look at Alethia has gotten kind of - fixed. It's almost a stare.

She looks over at Crin. 

"Fuck, we could have been talking in terms of operationalized goals this whole time???"

Ishaza's shoulders shake once as she suppresses a laugh.

"You have to understand, most of the people we encounter are..."

She looks over at Ishaza.

"Less than well-educated, let's say. And what you've just said isn't even well recognized in the Empire. That's Draenei social and cognitive technology that you've just rattled off. Most people on this rock are either living very small lives or actively trying to compensate for an enemy that's trying to distort the way they think and not doing a very good job at it. Nondistorted broadly encompassing thought about clear cognition's distribution over population averages is..." 

"Rarer than hen's teeth. Not even really in our possibility space as something you'd have even as an apparently sane and well-adjusted person until you said that." 

Yeah, no, Alethia has tried relaxing and untensing once this conversation and knows that she should not do that because she is definitely still in some sort of conversational minefield where if she doesn't say things the exact right way her next compliment will cause her to be misparsed as having said the exact opposite of the thing she actually said and she will have to deliver an improvised speech about her values or be misunderstood as exactly the opposite of the kind of person she in fact is.

Maybe that's a lesson learned from back home and this was less of that than it feels like? She's not quite sure. She's tried acting as though that was the case and it in fact ended in impromptu speeches, and this is Information that she is not going to simply throw out now that people are laughing and giggling and friendly, right now.

It was only one time though.

Maybe the narrative stuff was- leaning on things to mean that she got through this area of misunderstanding quickly enough, by saying something that parsed the exact right way to be clearly within a sensible local framework?