"We can accommodate each others' nudity taboos, there's probably even a charm for it."

"I'm very good at the braiding charm, you don't think I sit around all day every few months and do this by hand, do you?"

"Care to teach the rest of us? Does Cam get a pass because his hair is so short, should I just cut mine -"

"You look indecent, Cam looks disfigured, take your pick."

Miranda pulls a wand and aims it at Timothy's head and says "Plectere," and now he has a simple braid down his back.

He puts an arm protectively around Cam. "Elves. You seem okay on the prettiness and singing front so far, maybe that's literally just Michael's alts."

"I do sing, but perhaps not as much as most Elves do - nothing here is intolerably ugly - I'm sure you have some aesthetic threshold, though, it's probably just lower -"

" -I'm not sure we do? Like, aesthetic preferences, yes, aesthetic threshold, no."

"Not at all? Like - not just visually, because one can generally close one's eyes and darkness isn't so bad - really terrible noise or something -"

" - could be loud enough to be physically unpleasant? I wouldn't voluntarily listen to bad music constantly but I don't think it'd be deeply unpleasant -"

"I'd have to look it up but I think it only gets to 'illegal to inflict' with respect to Revelation if it's too loud to fall asleep."

"It's illegal to inflict excessively loud music - the future is so adorable."

"It's illegal to deprive people of sleep, including through the use of music," clarifies Cam.

"Okay, that's actually very reasonable once you adopt the premise that prisons aren't supposed to torture people."

"That is such a weird sentence."

"My world had a thing called Dementors. When they're around they make it impossible to experience happiness; when they get closer the only thing you can think about is the worst moment of your life. We had them as guards at the prison we sent people to for crimes like 'healing Muggles' and, to be fair, also 'hunting Muggles for sport'."

"...yes, that is worse, if for some reason you needed confirmation..."

"Most of them are in space now instead but I killed one."

"When I first heard about societies that would not just not actively prefer prison be torture but would make rules you couldn't torture the prisoners I was so delighted - it was really good, knowing humanity would get there eventually-"

"Yes, that is absolutely an improvement and I am very proud of the humans who implemented it and it's still a - strange concept that it's conceptually possible to imprison people without torturing them - I suppose if you just made the prison really really big -"

" - oh, humans are just pretty much okay being imprisoned. Like, we won't be happy about it, but honestly if you get food and visitors we won't be that unhappy either -"

"I believe you! It's just weird!"

"What's the essential feature of a prison - like, our school has rules about staying on the grounds without special permission until we're of age, would that be a problem -"

"It's a spectrum, not a bright line, but 'I could do this but it'll have repercussions' is better than 'I couldn't do this', more space is better than less space, prettier space is obviously better than uglier space, a specific occasion on which you can leave is better than indefinite - of those space is by far the most important consideration, so if your school's a single building that wouldn't work but if it's a campus most people'd be fine for a few months."

"Are Elves also just claustrophobic, or is being in a very small room fine as long as you could leave whenever?"