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take a dip
first visit to cefax
Permalink Mark Unread

And he assembles a trade delegation and the flat Valar, who can pretty much carry on a normal conversation at this point, open a portal. They put the portal in the star system but not attached to Godspring's inhabited planet. 

And through the trade delegation goes. 

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There is a decent-for-human-architecture palace in the capital of Cefax.

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There are suddenly spaceships hovering over the palace in the capital of Cefax! Lightleapers generally have smaller shuttles attached but he summoned a fairy as a bodyguard and the fairy can just float them down palace-wards.

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The palace guards are surprisingly calm about this.

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Hopefully they didn't have a goldmage jump back just to verify it'd turn out fine. He has a rudimentary but chip-aided grasp of the language. "Hello. We are from a star very far from here. We are interested in meeting your people. Would that be possible?"

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He is asked to wait and then admitted to see the Queen.

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It is a very short wait compared to Elven negotiations. He introduces himself to the Queen as Nelyafinwë Maitimo, prince of the Noldor - "I apologize for not writing ahead."

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"Liatsi, Queen of Cefax," she says. "Think nothing of it." She's a very plump person, pretty for a human and made up on top of that. "What do you mean when you say you are from a star?"

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"Every star in the sky is a sun like your sun; many of them light worlds like your world. Some of those other worlds have people on them. My world is called Valinor, and my people are called Quendi, and we learned how to build ships that go between the stars."

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"I see. What can Cefax do for the Noldor?"

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"We have seeds that grow into crops with much better yields than yours, and do not fail in conditions of drought, and are not blighted by worms or locusts or disease, and we would like to give them to you. We have inventions that can move people and things very fast around your world, and other inventions that can produce food and clothes and shelter with little labor so no one need go without them, and we want to teach you those. We do not have godsprings, or mages."

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"I see. Do you want to hire existing mages, or get access to the springs?"

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"At the moment neither; we are working on developing and testing an invention that would make use of mages - compatible with some cultural concerns of ours. It is possible that in the future we would be interested in trading for access to the springs."

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"May I inquire about the nature of the cultural concerns?"

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"We are an immortal people. As a result, anyone who became disabled by use of their magic would remain that way for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. As such we are not very willing to let people try it, even voluntarily, and it would have to be voluntary because we also hold it wrong to put someone in a situation where they have no meaningful choice but to take actions that alter their own mind. We are not here to enforce our sensibilities, though it would make us very happy if a society by virtue of becoming wealthier had more affordance for them."

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"I believe the only mages whose power use is involuntary are redmages, and Cefax's godsprings are the only ones which throw that result. Why here, or should I expect word from my husband in Niohain that he's been visited too?"

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"We will eventually stop everywhere that will have us, but goldmages are the most potentially interesting to an immortal people."

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"That makes sense. We're probably also the least likely to panic at the overture, as if something disastrous were going to happen we could expect to have received warning," Liatsi remarks. "May I suggest that we serve as go-betweens for further introductions?"

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"We would appreciate it tremendously."

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She smiles a little. "Your inventions sound very impressive. How do they function?"

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He is qualified to explain chemistry and germ theory and electricity and Nossëan mechanics and with a little consultation of his computer rocketry and computing and genetics.

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Liatsi would like some ministers of this and that to listen in if that's all right.

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"Of course!"

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They are fascinated.

This goes on long enough that lunch is brought in.

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He will eat local food!

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It's not bad!

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He is very complimentary!

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And will the aliens be needing guest accommodations? The servants would like some warning if so.

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"We can head back up to the ship if that's more convenient; it is designed for extended habitation."

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"We're perfectly happy to prepare you guest rooms," Liatsi says.

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"Then by all means give the servants as much notice as possible."

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So notice is given.

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"And at some point would it perhaps be possible to visit your temple-guild?"

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"Do you have a preference?" inquires Liatsi.

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"Not at all, whichever is convenient."

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"I occasionally visit the one where my former redmage lives; he retired to raise a family due to an incident early in his career but I try to go at least once a year."

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"That would be lovely. Thank you."

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"Unless you'd prefer to make more advanced travel arrangements it will take a day to get there; we can leave in the morning."

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"Does flying look fun and will it prematurely age your bodyguards?"

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She raises an eyebrow. "I didn't see you fly in. My bodyguard is a goldmage and will be able to do his job regardless of the means of my endangerment."

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"Then we can make the trip in a minute or so."

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"That sounds like an experience worth having."

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So the next morning he asks the fairy to take the two of them and respective entourages to the temple-guild in question - that direction, once they're in the air Elf eyes can pick it out -

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It's on a hill, quite visible.

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Off they go. It's less than a minute.

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Liatsi is a little dizzy when they land but presently recovers and talks to the servant at the gate and brings Maitimo in.

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And he looks around, fascinated.

 

They'd further debated disabling the fountains. The argument for doing so is that this entire coercive microeconomy is terrible and more children shouldn't be forced into it. The argument against is that absolutely no one seems to want that, and it seems to set a bad precedent, tinkering for the sake of people who don't agree with you about what their own interests are. They might all be fewer than eight Years old but they aren't children, he reminds himself -

- although the temple-guild is in fact full of children, they're adorable -

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Yup, kids running around - just the servants' kids and the mages in gold and green and blue; the white and red play less hazardous games.

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He introduces himself - to kids, to one of their minders who comes over to ask what is going on. His explanation about the stars invites some skepticism. That he arrived with the Queen is more interesting. He sings them a song from Tirion and they all fall quiet, stunned.

And he asks how they like it here, if people ever leave, what they want from their lives...

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People leave sometimes. Mostly not white and red, of course. They want to pension off their dwindled relatives and pay back their debt to the guild and serve the Queen (she visits her retired redmage, and brings his kids presents; everyone here likes her a lot).

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She seems exceptionally likable. What was the accident with her redmage? She mentioned it but he hadn't wanted to pry.

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Well, he doesn't remember. His wife knew but mostly didn't like to talk about it and now she's dead. Whatever it was it involved him getting stuck in a brothel and dwindled a lot really fast.

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Ah.

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The Revel House is super not allowed to have redmages. His minder lets his old clients visit him for the usual per sitting fee though. He loves them, after all.

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Yeah, he'd read that it worked that way. 


He thanks them.

He goes around to find and talk to more people.

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There are lots. He can even talk to Liatsi's old redmage's minder, who is giving him and the Queen privacy.

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He really likes talking to people! He tries not to be rudely inquisitive about the quality of life and how people feel about dwindling and so on.

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Iamica is perfectly chatty about everything. Yes the servants here are paid well and could leave for other jobs if they wanted except not the minders for reds and blues whose mages can't replace them (but those are assigned by personal closeness and would generally not want to leave their charges). Yes they have birth control, the mages all take it, they adopt all their children, they pick healthy smart ones who won't die or dwindle to nonfunctionality as quickly. No she hasn't heard of eugenics why do you ask.

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It's really good about the birth control. Is that available to the population at large...

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She assumes the apothecaries sell it to everyone. The brothels have it, definitely.

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Elves don't have brothels, are they - popular.

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Yeah, most people can't afford redmages.

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He thanks her for her time. 

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He's welcome.

 

There's somebody out of uniform over there, mid-teens if Bright can judge human ages. "What're you so curious about everything for?" he asks.

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"There are no mages in my home world, and we are trying to learn about this society and how it works for the people living in it."

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"Come to any conclusions?"

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"It is delightful to see how highly the people think of their Queen. She seems very capable." Human hearing can't be so bad they're out of earshot of other humans right now, can it? "My hope is that when your world has more - plenty - peoples' lives will be easier."

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"Mages are sorta economically delicate."

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"Yeah. Do you have any ideas on how to make things better for mages?"

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"Which kinds?"

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"We might have a fix for goldmages, we are at a loss with respect to everyone else."

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"Being a redmage would be better if they didn't pile on the clients as much as they do, but the money for the servants and everything has to come from somewhere."

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"We could maybe just pay them not to give redmages too many clients."

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"You have that kind of money?"

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"You can assume money is not an obstacle at all, does that change the proposed solutions?"

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"You could pension everybody off real early. Drive up the prices. The Temple-Guilds would take fewer kids though."

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"Is that a bad thing?"

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"Kids usually want to come, it's better than the other places they go."

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"So we pension everyone off really early in conjunction with making better other places for kids to go -"

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"If you do enough of that the Temple-Guilds probably shrink a lot, I don't know about disappear, people really want to be able to hire mages if they're sick or lonely or can't get their work done or need bodyguards or want to spy on people."

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Nod. "Thank you. I'm Maitimo."

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"Cir," says the kid, and he reaches for Maitimo's hand.

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At the last second he realizes, freezes -

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- too late.

Cir smiles apologetically at him.

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The briefing had just said not to touch a red mage, and why. It didn't mention there was a feeling associated. There is a feeling associated, soft and warm and rolling across him and leaving utter bliss (and his skin is on fire but not in a bad way) - if there are blessings that good he wouldn't know he's never - 

 

- he gasps -

" - ah," he says, a bit fuzzily - Cir loves him, Cir Knows him and loves him, it is unmistakable, it is magically obvious and all around him and all humans are children in a sense but this human is a child in a much more concrete sense - "why -"

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"There are thirty people on my waiting list," says Cir. "I'm almost old enough, they're going to start showing up in a couple weeks. It's too many and you can afford to outbid them all, you have an excuse not to wait till you can do it for everybody now, please."

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"Of course," he says instantly, and then steps back, reeling. But only for a couple seconds. "Yeah - fuck - I can take you back with me and no one'll ever touch you -"

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Smile.

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He wants to hug him again. He doesn't do that. "Will you be in trouble -"

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"Worst case scenario I would've had to account for you as personal discretion, maybe not picked up the kid my parents adopt this year."

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Shiver -

- he takes his hand again, it feels so lovely - 

- "I'm not - you still remember everything okay?"

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"I keep a diary and I remember my siblings' names and stuff, I'm forgetful but I'm not incapacitated -"

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"Okay. I just - I don't magically know everything about you and if I'm taking you away I don't want to do wrong by you along the way - would you rather stay here I could arrange that if it's preferable -"

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"You can bring me, I'd just want to visit."

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"Of course. You can probably get a door right here."

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"A door?"

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"From our palace in Tirion, there's a magic door which for you will probably open right here, so you can visit whenever you like if you're very careful about having someone hold the door. I'll explain everything in a little bit -" hand-squeeze - "this is very distracting -"

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"I know," smirks Cir.

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And a little while later he goes off to find the Queen.

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She has emerged from her erstwhile redmage's house and is now talking to one of his kids, but she stops when Maitimo approaches.

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"Hey! I have a question but it's not urgent, I do not mean to interrupt."

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"What is it about?" asks Liatsi.

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"I was speaking to someone out of uniform about supplementing pensions to make the workload easier on mages. He's a red mage. We shook hands - I apologize deeply for breaking whatever the customs are for this -"

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"- ah, you'd want to talk with his scheduler about that, I don't involve myself in the Temple-Guild's allocations," says Liatsi.

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"I don't have any of your world's currency, and assume it'd be terribly discourteous to counterfeit some."

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"A bit, yes. I'm sure we can come to some arrangement for the sum and I do have a redmage's initial fee in liquid form."

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"I am fairly confident we have a great deal of value to trade, but it hardly seems fair to his scheduler to be in a position of trying to assess that.  - I don't want the initial fee, I'd like him exclusively -"

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...Liatsi raises an eyebrow. "I have a lifetime fee in liquid form, too. You will at least have to notify his scheduler."

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"Of course. Thank you."

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"You're welcome."

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He stands there uncertainly.

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She thinks, he pipes up helpfully from a hundred miles up, that you're buying sex with a child and she's judging you. Not reading her mind, just yours.

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- thank you -

 

" - there's a cultural disconnect here, can I somehow reassure you -"

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"Hm?" says Liatsi mildly.

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"I - he asked me for help, he was scared of his schedule. I have every desire to respect your customs and find ways to make them compatible with the wellbeing of the people participating in them, but if someone asks - if he wants to stay here and never see me again in his life that's fine, he asked me for help -"

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"Why wouldn't he want to see you again? He loves you," says Liatsi politely, shooing the child she was talking to. "There's nothing uncustomary about it, although most people can't afford an exclusive redmage."

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"I don't want you to think we came here to trade you food and medicine for - teenagers who won't say no -"

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"I assure you that as long as the money reaches the Temple-Guild no one will think twice about it."

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He flinches. 

"I very much appreciated the chance to meet and speak with the people here."

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"If you're all through here I'm ready to return to the palace at any time."

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Fairy can take them back.

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And they can work out what he owes Liatsi for his thirty one million riaxi fee to bring home his very own redmage.

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He asks Midnight to summon a demon on the ship to make seeds and textbooks-that'll-require-translation and medicine and models of various technologies and working steam engines - "and you should start drawing up plans for railroads, we can lay them for you very easily if you clear the relevant space."

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Liatsi's relevant advisors have lots of train opinions. She delegates.

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He has a lovely time. It gets late. 

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The guest room is still available. Liatsi has drawn up a promissory note to the relevant Temple-Guild if he wants to convey it to them and pick up his redmage sooner than later.

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Sure, he will fairy back on over.

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Cir has apparently notified his family and his prospective minder already and started packing.

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He hands him the promissory note. "Who needs to get this?"

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"Tse Witwex. I can take it to her." He darts forward to give him a little kiss and then runs off.

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He stands there blinking. 

 

 

He needs - more information about what being redmaged does to the redmage. To start out. Can Iamica be found -

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Iamica is findable. She is in her house making lunch for the kids.

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He shouldn't interrupt. Why is this so hard. 

He rehearses ways of phrasing the question, in his head -

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One of the kids comes out to look at him. She is in (red) uniform complete with gloves and probably is not going to grab him.

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He backs away slightly just in case. "Hi."

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"Hi. Do you need something?"

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"I wanted to talk to your mom but it can wait, if she's busy."

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"Ma's dead."

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"Sorry. Iamica. I would like to talk to Iamica."

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The little redmage goes inside and presently Iamica comes out.

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"Hi. Sorry, I can come back later if it's a bad time."

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"It's all right, Tsira can stir. How can I help you?"

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"I bought out Cir's contracts. He asked me to. He didn't want to dwindle and that seemed like - a reasonable thing to want - I am not clear on what he is expecting from me or how to do right by him or what exactly it means that redmages love you or - I really won't touch him if that's not what's best for him and everyone seems set on reassuring me I won't face particular social opprobrium if I just take at face value that he is my redmage and loves me but that's really not the point -"

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"...what is the point?"

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"To give everyone in the universe plenty and safety and happiness and freedom!"

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"...well, you don't have to touch him to buy out his contract, if you don't want to and haven't already..."

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"No, he shook my hand before I knew, I think he thought I wouldn't, otherwise, I just need to know what to do now."

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"Oh, it won't dwindle him more if the same person touches him again," Iamica says.

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"Yes, I know that. I just don't know how to make sure it's - what he wants -"

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"You... could ask him?"

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"The being-in-love thing doesn't mess with his judgment, or ability to express it, or anything like that?"

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"I mean, he loves you, won't want to upset you, and can guess pretty much perfectly what would upset you..."

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"Okay. And there aren't - cultural things I'll step on if I ask him a lot of personal questions -"

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"I... guess I don't know what kind of personal questions you mean -?"

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"I want to understand how the love thing works and what it means and what it's like from the other end."

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"I don't see why that would bother him but I don't know him personally."

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"Okay. Thank you very much." And back to where Cir was packing.

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Here he is explaining where he's going to small siblings.

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"Are you sure you don't want to stay here at least until they're grown up -"

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"My parents are just going to keep adopting more and if I'm not taking clients I will wind up touching every single one sooner or later."

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"Okay. I can ask Deronica to help you pack, if you'd like."

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"I'm almost done, I don't have much, it just took a while to find my other shoes. Deronica?"

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"My bodyguard." Gesture. Unless that's outside human sight range, he's not actually clear on human sight except that it's terrible. "Fairies can move things. Very fast, if they want."

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Cir squints. "Oh. Well, I'm almost done anyway, Ma just wanted to pack me some snacks."

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"Of course."

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And eventually Cir's greenmage ma comes out and gives him a box of snacks and hugs him goodbye - he's changed into his uniform and has gloves on but she puts her hand on his neck with incidental hair contact that would be inappropriate if they were Elves.

His littlest brother collects a last hug too.

And then he goes over to Maitimo and smiles up at him.

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He smiles back at him. "Okay. Deronica can fly us back to the palace, unless there's anywhere you've always wanted to go which we can visit first."

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"Reasons I shouldn't go to the beach still apply," sighs Cir.

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"We could find a deserted beach?"

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"If you can find one and it's not out of your way..."

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"Fairies kind of obviate the concept of out-of-the-way... Deronica, can we get in the air, look for deserted beaches along the shoreline?"

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They can! There's one. Cir goes swimming in the nude until he gets too cold.

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Awwww. Then they can head back to the palace.

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Cir likes flying.

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"It's pretty great, isn't it? If I could be a daeva I'd definitely be a fairy. When we have more free time we can go up above the atmosphere, see the stars more clearly."

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"There's something in the way of the stars?"

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"The air. They look much clearer when you're up above it."

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"Cool."

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Palace.

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Liatsi is there, of course. Will the redmage be wanting his own guest room.

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Yes please.

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Liatsi is mildly surprised but doesn't comment and has one made up for him. Cir isn't surprised at all.

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Good. It'd be worse if Cir thought he'd been - purchased for fun.

 

He goes to his room and watches a movie on his computer and sings quietly all night.

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There is breakfast. There's a seat next to Maitimo for his redmage.

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How is his redmage doing?

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His redmage slept fine and enjoys breakfast and keeps smiling at Maitimo all the time.

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Oh good. He shouldn't surround himself with people he personally rescued who adore him for magical reasons, it'll probably distort his judgment or something, but it really is wonderfully flattering.

 

What is Liatsi's agenda for today?

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She wants to figure out how to deploy those crops without angering the keystones of the existing agricultural economy.

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That sounds like lots of fun! He can offer distribution options and clarifications on things about the crops and so on.

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Liatsi isn't as gleeful about it but she's very good at her job.

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Excellent. After a while of planning he will ask about introductions to the other nations of her world.

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She is married to the king of, and technically queen consort of, Niohain; it's just lucky that he caught her while she was in her own capital. She is on reasonable terms with Caplare after cleaning up from the incident a few years back. She has civil relations with Mocorne and other, farther countries. Here is a map. Here are facts about their politics and their godsprings.

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He is fascinated, and starts drawing up plans for future visits. 

"Wars with sufficiently advanced technology can be very disruptive. The last time my people went to war, hundreds of millions of people died and a world were left uninhabitable. I worry about having a destabilizing effect on your world, even though we're not trading weaponry directly."

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"We're not a warlike country," Liatsi says, "even though we're the only one with godsprings that produce goldmages."

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"I am glad. We are considering a policy that we will come to any nation's aid in ending a war in which they were aggressed against, but after aggressively checking that we have not been mislead on that front, and with the aim of bringing about peace and prewar borders as swiftly as possible."

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"That seems like it requires you to form advance opinions about claims to any disputed territory and what the correct prewar borders are. Cefax has none, it helps that we're an island, but some locations are the subjects of ongoing tussles."

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"Hopefully the participants will prove bribable into a settlement."

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"That seems like it will incentivize muddying the waters about any conceivably disputed territory."

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"If we refuse to trade with anyone having an ongoing dispute, and have lots of presents for everyone who isn't?"

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"I suppose that could get people to give up territory with only small and practical value. It will be harder to convince them if they value it for other reasons."

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"Are there a lot of disputes of that type?"

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"Several."

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"Can you point me at some people equipped to give an overview?"

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The minister of diplomats would be happy to discuss it with him.

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Oh good!

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And eventually another day has gone by. Days do that.

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Very fast, in places other than Valinor. There is a trade agreement and a treaty being drawn up and they are lovely!

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And literally everybody assumes that Cir is sneaking to his room at night!

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Why would they assume that he has been repeatedly assured that they don't care so if he wanted that why would he even bother with subterfuge why are humans so terrible - is Cir keeping himself occupied, is he happy, does he want anything, does he want to go up to the ship and familiarize himself with computers or anything -

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Sometimes foreigners are weird about redmages, especially foreigners with same-sex redmage preferences. The Cefaxi understand - even the Cefaxi who would look down upon same-sex relations not involving a redmage, which is many of them - but it would be par for the course if Maitimo were embarrassed.

"I'm fine but going up to the ship sounds like fun," says Cir. Smiling at him adoringly.

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"Great, let's do that." Sigh. Fairy-flight into geosynchronous orbit. It is of course an exceptionally pretty ship.

"So," he says, "one thing you should know is that I have an alt on this ship. An alt is - uh, sometimes worlds have the same people on them, they look alike and think alike except for the differences in circumstances. If you see a person who looks like me check before you hug him or something, it might be Midnight and I doubt the redmagery thing would count us as the same person."

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"- Oh. Okay, if I can't tell I'll make sure I ask."

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"Thank you. I'm actually going to ask him over here now, he has a magic necklace that improves his memory and I'm curious if it'll do anything for you."

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Cir beams at him.

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" - does it bother you that everyone thinks -"

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"Not on my behalf? I'd tell them they were wrong but they wouldn't believe me."

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"Does the thing give you - a clear read on my reasons or just on what I want -"

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"It gives me - lots of clues to guess with."

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Hug.

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And here is another him. This one looks amused. 

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"You can stop now, there are no greenmages around."

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"You are of course welcome to shut me out." He takes off a necklace and gives it to Bright to hand to his redmage.

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He does.

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Cir takes it but is delayed in putting it on by squinting confusedly between Maitimos. "...I think I could tell you apart."

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"Oh good, that's easier. We should also probably all settle on distinguishing braids."

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Cir puts the necklace on. "- whoa."

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"Helps?"

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"Yeah - a lot -"

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"Awesome. I'm commissioning one," he says to Midnight. 

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"Of course. I might fetch and teach some people from Mingling's, rather than open my door."

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"Sounds good."

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"Should I take it off -?"

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"Yeah, sorry, we don't have enough of them yet. They'll work one up as soon as they can."

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Cir hands it back.

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"Thank you," he says.

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"Want me to set you up with a computer?"

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"I don't actually know what that is."

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"...flat piece of glass that can look like the pages of a book, any book."

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"Oooh."

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So he sets him up, with among other things a more accurate description of what computers are though the translation isn't fantastic. "Are you okay? Do you need anything?"

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"I'm great," smiles Cir, and he catches Maitimo's hand and kisses it.

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"You would tell me if you needed anything?"

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"Of course."

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"Thank you."

 

And with his redmage on a ship in orbit from which he is obviously not sneaking down to be coerced into sex he will continue treaty and trade agreement work!

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People wonder where his redmage has gone but seem to find it reasonable that he'd be up on Maitimo's ship.

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Good.

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And there are no other distractions from diplomacy and trade stuff.

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Things are productive and fun. 

 

And eventually he goes back to his ship and heads back out to to the portal and from there to Valinor and from there to Tirion.

 

He is rather hoping his redmage will like Tirion. It is his city, after all, and he worked very hard on it.

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His redmage thinks it is beautiful!

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Oh good. And to the palace, which has been converted for secure access to the location of the Milliways door, and they write a note requesting that someone in the bar open the door for them.

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Mirelótë gets it. "- hello, who's this?"

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"Cir, this is a family friend of mine, Ambela, Ambela - did you get from the briefings on Godspring that they pretty much practice a very tidy kind of sexual slavery because I did not interpret it properly at all!"

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"Uh, they have prostitution for money in a scarcity economy - that's pretty common in human societies -"

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"I don't like human societies!!!!! Also I think usually they don't get picked when they are four and it doesn't steal their memories and capacity to form new ones."

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"- the redmages? Are -? Oh that's obvious in retrospect."

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"Yes it is but it was not obvious until in retrospect!!!"

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"...okay. So what happened -"

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He sends the conversation he had with Cir and how it ended.

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"- ah. Well. Welcome to Milliways, Cir, I'll make sure everybody knows to give you space."

"Thanks," says Cir.

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He closes the door behind them. "If you open the door it should open to your home," he tells Cir.

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Cir tries it and sure enough it leads to his house. His little sister is startled.

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"Oh good! So you should be careful not to let it close with you on the other side - wouldn't be a disaster or anything, but we don't have anyone else who can open it to there for you - and then you can see them whenever. I will get you a room and then I want to talk, if that's okay -"

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"Of course!" Cir says, waving at his sister and shutting the door.

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And he asks Bar for a room.

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Here's a key!

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Upstairs they go.

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Follow follow.

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Here is room #39000. "Will this do okay?"

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"It looks nice..." He peers into the ensuite. "...if I can figure this stuff out..."

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Plumbing: here is how it works.

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"Okay, that makes sense."

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He sits down. "Okay. I - know you know a lot about me, but I don't know much of anything about you, and I would like to. Especially because we're going to want to make some decisions - do you want to be immortal, do you want to play a role in diplomacy stuff, do you need - more physical contact than I've been offering you - are there other things like the memory aid that'd be helpful - you must have a lot of questions -"

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"...being immortal sounds probably nice? Especially if I can have one of those necklaces because being immortal would be a lot of chances to accidentally bump into people. I don't know that I'd be any good at diplomacy stuff without redmaging them and that doesn't always work, Tse Simfane tried it and that was a disaster. I'm pretty sure you'll get used to me and it's okay if you're not touchy in the meantime. How many people who look like you are there?"

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"...hundreds of millions but you aren't going to run into most of them, hopefully. Of the ones who are around, Timothy's like me but human, Midnight you met, Mingling is like me but - the equivalent of a human four-year-old, Dawn is me but a thousand four hundred years older and married with children..."

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"Huh. ...Kids aren't always good about keeping back from redmages, do I need to worry about that?"

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"He's pretty mature for a kid but I can make sure there's someone with him until he has demonstrated non-impulsivity. Also we don't control who walks through the magic door so you might not want to spend too much time in the main bar - or I can ask Cam about making you some kind of impenetrable clothing solution -"

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"It doesn't have to be impenetrable unless there are people with claws around. ...are there?"

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"When I say we have no control over who walks through the door that should be taken very broadly indeed. Also some daeva might have claws, i guess."

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"Okay... I'll probably just mostly steer clear of there then."

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Nod. "I can arrange for people to come here and hang out with you so you're not lonely.

 

- on - getting used to you - I'm very sure I will but that's not my main reason for avoiding you in the first place -"

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"I will also get older."

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"I was going to ask Timothy at what age to treat humans as adults, he's seventeen in your world's years..."

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"I'm fifteen."

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Nod. "There is also the thing where - does the magic even let you not want me - if you didn't, would you say so -"

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"...if you didn't like the idea at all then I wouldn't either. But. You do."

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" -okay but - imagine you met someone and decided to touch him or her and then the two of you decided to marry and be exclusively monogamous. Or say you got the flu and were really not feeling up for sex. Or say I did something to annoy you, which I presume is possible, and you didn't really want to until we'd talked it over, would you say no."

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"Mages - I mean mages in general not just red ones - mostly don't - do monogamy? I'm also pretty sure you would not be super into it if I had the flu or if I were annoyed with you..."

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" - no. But it is important to me that you believe yourself entitled to refuse sex not just when because I care about your wellbeing it isn't what I want but just when it isn't what you want."

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"I know, but the specific hypotheticals don't work. I'm not sure if there are hypotheticals that do."

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"Great." Sigh. "What's it like?"

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"I think you do something sort of like it, actually - which is really interesting - just, faster and - more."

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"And I continue having my own preferences." He would kind of like a hug.

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Hug. "Yeah, that too."

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"Did you have a - best-case scenario - in mind before you shook my hand? What was it?"

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"I wasn't expecting the magic door or computers or the twins thing. But you seemed like you would want to help and I wasn't sure if you'd do it otherwise before I had to start seeing so many clients, or if you'd, like, get around to it but not in a few weeks - and people understand if you make sentimental exceptions for your redmage. I didn't know in advance if you liked boys or not - but sometimes people think they don't till they get a redmage anyway... and you seemed nice and are not thirty people."

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"Would it have been preferable if I had not liked boys."

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"You might be less awkward about it in the short term but not especially."

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"I am making things unpleasant for you by being awkward around it?"

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"It doesn't seem like there's anything I can do except wait, which is a little uncomfortable," admits Cir, "but the entire thing is my fault in the first place."

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"The entire thing is the fault of the system that gave you that choice in the first place. It's not - I just - I'll talk to Timothy.

 

Elves do monogamy. Elves are usually really serious about things, we court one person and marry and have children and stay together forever. Do you want - that, or would you rather be together for a hundred years and then figure something out when I'm ready to start looking for that, or is it not fair to ask humans what they want to do in a hundred years -"

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"...I have no idea what I'll want in a hundred years but I'll love you forever. I could do monogamy, I wasn't sleeping with the girl who was going to be my attendant, I didn't even touch her yet."

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"I - feel better about having you as my boyfriend than having you as my expensive personal indulgence. It's not culturally legible as coercive even if we still have to figure out how to actually not be coercive."

(This is technically true but he is super turned on by having his redmage as a personal indulgence! There are absolutely no visual cues that this is the case.)

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There are maybe visual cues that something is being left out. Cir squints at him.

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"You know, this is really frustrating, usually I'm great at lying to people."

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"...sorry."

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"Really, really not your fault. Anyway. I meant that, even if it's more complicated."

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"More complicated how?"

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"I think I should talk to Timothy."

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"Okay."

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And he goes over to Timothy's room.

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Cam answers the door.

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"Hi. Can I talk with Timothy - or you too, I guess, I mostly need expertise on humans."

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"I have technically spent more time human than Timothy has."

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"I accidentally acquired a human teenager who will do whatever I want except have preferences."

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"...gosh."

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"Also I tried to explain to the humans that I found this a fairly horrifying state of affairs and they were all like 'sure, he can have his own guest room, wink wink, some people are shy about it' and I was there to do diplomacy so I couldn't tell them their whole civilization was evil and should die in a fire but that's really a pretty secondary complaint here."

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"Redmage, I presume? Yeah, in retrospect the literature was very coy about those and someone should have read between the lines for you."

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"He's fifteen. In a couple weeks his appointments would start and there were thirty people scheduled and before he was sixteen he wouldn't remember his sisters' names."

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"Yeah, they start them early so they can spend longer collecting fees, it's pretty gross."

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"Trying to get a feel for whether the guild'sll just take more kids if I subsidize them to keep everyone's workload tolerable. But anyway, this one grabbed me and begged me for help and so I took him away with me and now I have. A human teenager. - also I can't lie to him. Like, my default mode of handling this would just be to say 'I am completely uninterested in sex with you and I want you to go to university in Tirion and load up on memory blessings and be fine' but I am not completely immune to - the redmage thing - and he can tell if I'm pretending to be - what's the Elf equivalent of fifteen -"

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"Fortyish, I think. For whatever it's worth I think the Temple-Guild economies are not set up to expand their capacity if subsidies appear - but that just means they'll raise their prices instead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That seems like much less of a problem. And was his guess, too. I will make overtures about doing that, then. Fortyish."

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"I think, I'm not sure. Same age as Theodore or Fredrick."

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"Thank you." Sigh. "Is Timothy around?"

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"In the shower, should be out any minute."

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"Okay. 

 

 

I asked him if he would turn me down, ever, under any circumstances, and - the answer is no, though he wouldn't actually put it that way."

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"How would he put it?"

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"I wouldn't want to force him and he wouldn't want to do anything I don't want so therefore it wouldn't come up."

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"Okay, did you try asking him what would happen if instead you were horrible?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is rumored that people can in fact be so so terrible that a redmage doesn't fall in love with them but merely being a rapist definitely wouldn't do it and once they're in love with you they want to give you what you want."

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"Sure, but the question you want answered isn't 'would you still love me if I was a rapist', it's 'would you be capable of shooing me if I wanted sex and you didn't', it just happens to be the case that you are the sort of person who comes pre-shooed in those cases as opposed to the sort of person who might go for it unless they actually heard a refusal."

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"The question I want answered is 'how do I do right by him'. But - yeah, okay, fair point. I'll ask. I would just, like, not deal with it for a couple Years but he indicated that the current situation was - not indefinitely satisfactory and for humans a couple Years is kind of the same as indefinitely."

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"It kind of is. Pity we don't know how to control the time dilation."

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"I could shoo him through his door and close the portal."

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"You could, yeah."

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"Or if necklaces patch it maybe I can just send him off to university in Tirion."

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"He doesn't speak the language."

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"Once he's picked it up."

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"Fun facts about humans," he says, coming out in a towel, "We don't just pick languages up. Demon, will you clothe me -"

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"I ought to put you in pink bunny slippers," says Cam, but Timothy is now in robes. "It is true! Humans do not just pick languages up! It takes years! Of intensive study that a lot of people actually hate!"

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He sighs. "I really hate humans. You really shouldn't exist."

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"Well, the singing gets obnoxious occasionally too. What'd humans do to you -"

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"He didn't do anything, he's a good kid, I don't blame him at all, I just don't appreciate being the only safe form of physical contact for a teenager who is magically in love with me and the system that was going to fuck him up is objectively pretty terrible."

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"You could send him back to his family if you can't deal."

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"I asked him what he'd rather and he said he'd come. Given that getting preferences from him is like getting music from a moss..."

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"You, uh, don't actually have to keep him just because he asked you to."

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"The whole source of my distress here is that I am uncertain how to do right by him."

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"He wants him," he translates for Cam, sighing, "at least once he's older. And he's perfectly aware that 'keep an adoring redmage boyfriend/slash/whatever-I-think-he's-unwilling-to-commit-to-a-relationship-until-more-personality-is-displayed - magic unconditional devotion is fun but not really the stuff eternal Elf marriages are built on' - anyway, he's pretty sure that this is a satisfactory outcome for the redmage who is in love with him and he'd find it personally satisfying if and only if it happens to be the actual best thing he can do for the redmage, and horrible otherwise. Also he is very deeply viscerally upset about all of the people in the human world assuming he -"

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"'Came to their planet to trade them food and medicine for teenagers who won't say no', is I think how I phrased it. And I don't know if I want him, I was planning to be responsible and wait for marriage and I have no idea what - else -"

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" - this is off topic but 'be responsible and wait for marriage' is a thing among humans because babies, and diseases, why is it even a thing among Elves."

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" - well. Because Eru said so but by the time we learned Eru was an evil overeager stage director it'd accumulated social cruft? Anyway I think it's reasonable to care about not being perceived as taking advantage of a child quite separately from it being important to figure out how to not take advantage of the child."

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"Sure. ...Were you planning on factoring in that most humans would find lives of celibacy objectionable?"

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"He can have whoever he wants."

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"He just deteriorates every time he touches someone new."

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"Yes, I know. It is a consideration in favor of having sex with the fifteen-year-old I purchased from a foreign planet. The consideration against is the entire rest of the sentence."

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"I don't think the foreign planet part is hurting you here."

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" - it means he can have less accurate expectations? This is less of a problem because he knows me near-perfectly and so I don't have to figure out how to credibly signal that my peers would prevent me from abusing him or whatever - but still, teenagers kidnapped from foreign planets by Elf princes will probably assume they have pretty much zero social power -"

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"Fair enough. In my native culture the age of consent was 16 or 18 depending on where one was if that's a useful data point."

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"The only lines that make a ton of sense to me objectively are 'old enough to be the person who is best at deciding what he wants' and 'old enough there's no power imbalance'. And he's the first thing and will probably never be the second thing."

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"I dunno, he seems to have leveraged his magic power pretty effectively."

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" - yeah. I don't think I'd have handled being in his position as gracefully."

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"If he knows you so well does he have an idea about what you're going to do?"

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"He thinks I will get over my discomfort around the situation."

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"Would that be a disaster?"

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"I expect we could make each other quite happy. Everyone on that planet will continue to think - but I guess it's silly to make decisions off that -"

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"A little. If you're going to worry about that maybe worry about his immediate family, don't worry about the cultural zeitgeist."

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"Thank you. I think that's - all I wanted to ask about."

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"Good skill."

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He goes back up to Cir's room, and knocks.

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Cir opens the door. "Did you forget something?"

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"No, I went and talked with Timothy and Cam."

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"...you were gone for five seconds."

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"Milliways does that. If I'm ever gone for a week or something you should come downstairs, it's probably not that I've abandoned you and it's probably that it's been three minutes. Anyway, I talked with them. They both think you're - perfectly capable of knowing what you want and it's not very fair of me to treat you otherwise."

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Smile.

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"So I apologize for that."

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"It's okay, you were just trying to be good to me."

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"We're going to be trying to fix the whole universe. If we don't help people I don't think it will mean much to plead pure intentions."

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Cir hugs him. "I think it matters that I could tell."

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"Yeah, that bit's been saving me repeatedly - the manifest ways I can mess up don't include leaving you in doubt about whether you're safe with me -"

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Smile.

Kiss.

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Kiss. 

" - do at least want to sit down and have a very serious consent talk, though, if you'll put up with me that far -"

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"I don't mind."

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Snuggle. Sit. "Cam suggested I ask - if it wasn't inherently the case that I wouldn't want to do anything that harmed you - can you tell me no -"

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"Yeah. If we couldn't do that they'd have to screen more carefully, or the sharing between thirty people would get to be a problem."

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Nod. "It is possible for what I want to conflict with what you want, right?"

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"It'd get harder if I were dwindled more but yeah."

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"Okay. So - nothing about your access to resources is because you are my redmage. You can order anything you want at Bar - she does food and drinks and books and most medium-sized objects - you can go anywhere you want - with a fairy to make sure no one touches you if you like - if anyone harms you or takes something of yours there will be remediation, if you get hurt you will be healed, if you want to bring your family through the same applies to them. All of those things would remain true if you now announced that you really can't stand redheads and never want to be in the same room as me again. If you would like to be my redmage I would like that very much but everything I have to offer you is yours anyway. Does that make sense?"

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"Would you have actually special cased me, if I hadn't grabbed your hand?" wonders Cir.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"I think so, if you'd explained why. I would definitely have dithered over it a lot more."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd never actually seen someone with red hair before, it's strange but I think it's pretty."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm glad you don't find it a horribly obnoxious color. Elves have a thing about hair, I would have warned you not to touch anyone's except -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hair actually doesn't count, just skin, but I usually wouldn't risk it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Continue not to risk it with Elf hair. Relatedly Elves don't have a taboo on nudity but we do avoid having our hair loose."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I did notice you had a thing about it but I couldn't tell exactly what it was, is that the right analogy -?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's the best analogy anyone's come up with so far. It was based off nudity taboos among a different set of humans, though. I think humans vary in strength of nudity taboos - you went swimming unclothed -"

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"It's fine for swimming. You wouldn't just walk around like that."

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"Elves mostly wouldn't swim with their hair loose if they're older than children."

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Nod. "I don't think my family would want to come through. Most of them. Maybe Ruviri."

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"Who's that?"

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"Next oldest after me. She's a redmage too. She hasn't really thought it all through yet. She'd want to bring her attendant if she came. ...This would not make you look less like you're just really into redmages."

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"I don't mind it looking like I'm really into redmages, I mind - everyone was surprised I wanted you to have a separate room. Everyone asked me in the first place where I wanted you sleeping, instead of asking you. When there are thirty customers it's grossly coercive to you but at least - you are taking customers, if a customer is misbehaving you can send them away, if a customer gets off on beating you up they will be prevented from doing this - this arrangement is exactly as horrible as I am personally inclined to be and no one cared - went out of their way to assure me I wouldn't lose any social standing for being horrible -"

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"You are a frighteningly powerful foreign diplomat," Cir points out. "There might have been more raised eyebrows if you were just some guy who found a few million riaxi in a cave."

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"...fair. I also don't really want to have a diplomatic reputation for - having extremely questionable character but who would call me on it when I can mention casually that wars where I'm from destroy worlds?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not sure what to do about that part. I can't really help, I'm not an unbiased source of information on you unless somebody kidnaps a member of my family to make it even."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know. Sorry. - would that in fact extend as far as the 'gets off on beating people up' thing, can your family assume you'd say if you were being outright abused -"

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"Ruviri would know."

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"But you wouldn't say?"

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"It might depend, I don't know, nobody's ever beaten me up before, but even if I couldn't she'd know."

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"All right. I will worry about my diplomatic reputation later, it looks like what I actually do won't have much to do with it. What will make you happy?"

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Snuggle. "I could start listing my hobbies but I think I have a very multiversally unrefined palate. I want to try things. And kiss you whenever you're in a mood where it'll be more nice than weird."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would like that. By all means try things - do you want a fairy bodyguard so you can go places without worrying anyone'll touch you -"

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"Maybe? I'm not totally clear on what the deal is with fairies."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - this is a secret from your world for the time being, because we are unsure how it interacts with mages. It is possible to summon daeva - magical beings - from their respective worlds to yours, under a binding that keeps them from killing everyone. Then you make a deal with them for their help with something. People who summon daeva become daeva when they die, except Elves because we can't die. Fairies can move things. Angels can change things. Demons can make things."

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"...do they normally want to kill everyone. I don't want to be followed around by somebody who wants to kill everyone."

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"They're like humans. Some are nice, some are self-interested, occasionally you get one who is kind of terrible. But they're all indestructible, and used to everyone around them being indestructible, so they might do things like poison a whole area not realizing that poison kills people. And with demons, ones you summon are disproportionately looking to cause trouble. I'd have no problem finding you a fairy who wants to have a new stereo set or something instead of wanting to kill anyone."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What's a stereo set?"

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"Plays music."

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"Cool!"

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"If you like music you should go outside, we're usually out there singing. Or I could sing you something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would love you to sing me something."

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"Oh good. It's a good idea anyway - it'll clear my head -" 

 

And he sings. Something sweet and happy and inane about visiting a meadow you'd played in as a child.

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Cir snuggles up and smiles.

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Snuggle. Singing.

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And that nice warm adoring feeling.

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Yes, it's very nice and warm and magical. He can see why people would spend so much even to get it from a coerced child who doesn't remember his name anymore.

 

Is that necklace in progress?

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Shot Cam a message asking for the notes. 

 

He is lying in bed staring at the ceiling. His boyfriend is watching him worriedly.

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Thanks!

 

The song concludes.

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"That was beautiful."

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"Elves like singing. Singing and surrounding ourselves with pretty things."

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"Am I pretty enough?" wonders Cir teasingly.

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"You are very pretty and so I have swept you up and taken you away to keep forever. Other humans should be warned, lest an Elf do this to them."

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Cir laughs and kisses him.

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It's nice. 

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Have you spoken with Midnight recently?

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I was just about to; why?

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He's in a mood, I'm not sure why.

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I have a guess. I'll be up soon.

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It's not a problem or anything. 

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I was going to anyway. He didn't say anything?

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He did not.

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And she reaches their room and knocks.

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Come in.

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In she goes.

"So that must have been interesting."

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"Informative, yes. Findekáno, leave."

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He does.

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"Why send him out?" wonders Ambela.

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"He'll worry about the kid."

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Nod. "Informative?"

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"About where exactly the differences are - I, as I'm sure you guessed, would have arranged to acquire him more gracefully but then delightedly squirrelled him off, once I had him - his default is to assume he's doing something horribly wrong, perhaps redeemable with enough caution, and I stopped caring about that a long time ago -"

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"You did use to?"

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"Of course! I spent a millenium viciously hating myself for who I was just like the rest of them."

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"...I don't think Bright hates himself but I admittedly have never taken advantage of unrestricted access to his thoughts."

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"Okay, those of us who grew up in the worlds with a stigma on wanting men."

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"So there's obviously a compromise option, which hopefully is not quite that path-dependent."

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"I don't really want to be him? He spent a few days beating himself up over wanting the kid, and there's nothing wrong with it."

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"He is quite young even for a human, but sure, you could say that's a false positive and that the interim of a few days would have been uncalled for regardless."

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"I just don't want to go back by being governed by a back-and-forth between want and self-loathing."

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"Is that all he was doing?"

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"No. The rest is stuff I'd do, though."

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"...That surprises me."

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"...oh?"

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"You said you would have delightedly squirreled him off and I wouldn't expect Bright to be refraining solely out of a desire to avoid self-loathing. Maybe I read too much into the phrase?"

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"He was mostly refraining because he thought it was wrong, what other reason would he have?"

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"One can think things are wrong and be motivated by that without self-loathing entering the picture at all; I don't know if it's in everyone's repertoire but it's possible in principle. Moreover one can think things are right and be motivated by that without self-loathing entering the picture at all, which is what I would anticipate he'd be concerned with when trying to find a responsible way to handle his surprise dependent."

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"...that was different from how I'd have done it, but less so? I'd have done it by giving the kid presents and arranging for his family to be looked after, not by panicking about how to take care of a human - I thought the difference there was just that he didn't know anything about humans -"

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"He also is more ignorant of humans than you are, yes, that's probably at least some of the discrepancy."

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"I wouldn't have spent as much time worrying how to do right by the human but I would have seen to it that his family was taken care of and so on. I don't think the difference there is as significant as the difference in - negative emotions -"

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"Hm?"

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"He was - not going to make any effort at all to keep the mage, if he'd shown any inclination towards leaving. He didn't feel like he'd gotten lucky at all. He was just scared."

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"He probably has higher ambitions than being somebody's least bad option."

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"Yeah."

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"Let alone not optional."

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"This has occurred to me."

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"Sounds like it was convenient he turned out to be okay with mindreading for you-compatible reasons."

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"I can't just start over after four hundred years how do I - he got what he wanted anyway, he was silly and too careful and ignorant and didn't even want it and he got it anyway -"

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"Why can't you?"

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"Do what, say - 'oh, Findekáno, I don't dare admit to myself that I want you so I'm just going to be vaguely awkward in your presence and have dreams and blush whenever anyone asks if we're sharing a room, do you want to go on my ship and learn about computers and eventually get an extended lecture about how much effort I will go to to make sure you are in no way inconvenienced by choosing not to fuck me -"

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"I don't think you're engaging very sincerely with the hypothetical."

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"I'm a bit overwhelmed by it. If you suggest concrete things I'll listen."

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"Overwhelmed?"

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"I have to do it all in one step and it'll be irrevocable and I don't know how he'll take it."

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"Why do you have to do it all in one step?"

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"- once I tell him I'm not going to give him orders anymore, if I don't also announce intent to stop mistreating him in any other way he'll just leave. I tried just - tapering off mistreatment while leaving the orders in place but it hasn't really advanced our relationship any - he appreciates it, but he still hates me..."

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"Was the tapering accompanied by an announcement?"

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"No."

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"Is there a reason I'm missing why that couldn't help?"

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"I'm not sure yet what I'm comfortable committing to, and I don't want to tell him something and then realize it's not going to work."

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"You could tell him it's an experiment, although that does sort of violate the spirit."

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"What I'd like to do is get everything lined up and then - apologize, tell him I'm releasing him, tell him the terms on which I'd want to continue a relationship, tell him to come back if he ever wants that. But that'll require having all that sorted out in my head, first."

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"And you're not sure what your terms are?"

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"Yes. Or how to apologize."

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"It's easy to overthink apologies."

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"Most apologies are for smaller wrongs."

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"That's true. The basic principle of identifying what you're apologizing for and signaling regret and a willingness to make amends should still hold."

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"I'll get there. Within a Year or so probably."

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"It's a substantial shift and I know you're having trouble with it but you do need to consider how long it will be before someone notices."

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"How did you notice -"

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"Mingling noticed Findekáno made up his head injury. I'm pretty sure the other people there assumed it was an innocuous fib to avoid some embarrassing but unincriminating explanation. It does cut down on what else they could notice without wondering, and it's only a matter of time before someone looks into Bar's resources from your Arda cluster more deeply."

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"The latter would be a problem even if Findekáno and I have reconciled."

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"I think you'll get a better reception if you are discovered only after you can credibly swear that it's all over."

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"With the time dilation it's not exactly as if rushing myself makes much difference."

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"We have never observed that dramatic and long-term a mismatch."

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"Who is in all the other rooms?"

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"Bar won't say if they're occupied at all. Miranda knocked on a bunch and got no answers."

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"I will be more careful."

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"And maybe faster. Between coming down or finding Cam for food and people usually being in the bar, you can't get too far off."

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"We can stop doing that."

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"I suppose you could stockpile if you so chose, yes. You'd still sync up whenever someone sent you a message."

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"True." Sigh.

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"I don't suppose it would help at all to put him back in your world while you think."

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"He might want me to step in while he thinks, once I offer. But I don't think losing him would help me at all."

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"Would you if he asks?"

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"Of course."

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"Any other insights from the trip to Godspring?"

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"I don't want anyone else."

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"Not tempted to go bump into a redmage and squirrel him away?"

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"Not at all. Findekáno is brilliant and sensible and interesting and I want him magically in love with me but I don't want anyone else."

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"This is a new insight?"

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"Not really, just brought into focus. If I thought there could be anyone else I'd have let him go in the first place."

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Nod.

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"Thank you for visiting."

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"Anytime."

And she leaves him be.

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He sings to himself for a couple hours. 

 

He calls Findekáno in. Lie down. Do not make any voluntary movements, including speaking. Don't osanwë anybody other than me. Let me read your mind.

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He spends a moment making sure that he is properly complying. Muscle by muscle, relaxed and then detached from his control. No voluntary movements. He wonders what Maitimo wants. He decides not to worry about it. He wonders what Ambela said. Maybe someone else found out? Maybe there's some new magic -

- no point in guessing -

 

- he thinks about Maitimo, because Maitimo usually likes that. Maitimo is trembling. Maitimo is waiting - maybe for some cue from Findekáno, maybe for something else - he can't check now if they're alone, though he can't hear another set of breathing - and someone could always come in - 

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Remember the first time I asked this of you?

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He did. At first he had not regarded this sort of thing as a conscionable order; but there was not really any debating that 'do not attempt to hurt the guards who have been ordered to restrain you' was a conscionable order, and then Maitimo could get here anyway, and it had not taken him too long to realize that Maitimo was not just testing the limits of his power but actually wanted this reliably, and then he'd been willing enough to leave other people out of it. By now the oath considered this order a perfectly enforceable one. 

 

 

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I want another try. I want to - pretend I'd said -

 

He takes his hand.

 

"I owe you an apology. Not for the obvious thing, we'll get to that in a little, I - owe you an apology because I could have stopped the war a week earlier and saved a thousand lives and I didn't. You would have. I thought I was the sort of person who would have. I was reaching for it, all week, and falling short, and I hadn't known that about myself, I hadn't known that I wouldn't be able to do it. And maybe that'd be forgivable if I was just categorically the kind of person who couldn't assassinate people I love for the sake of peace but I am that kind of person, I did it, I just didn't do it soon enough, I'm so sorry."

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- why is it exactly that you don't want me to move -

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I was getting all distracted by how you'd react and I realized I was going to take a Year to get around to it and - this way you can't react and I don't have to plan for reactions, problem solved.

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You're appallingly bad at problem-solving.

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"I love you. That's - couldn't say it if you were going to be able to make faces at me, and I wanted to say it, I do think it matters - this was specifically and individually about you, I wanted you so badly that I compromised everything else I wanted to have as firm a grasp on you as I could, and then I wanted to spend forever understanding you better, poking things to see which ones held other ones up, holding you to the fire to see at what temperature you burned. - I am appallingly bad at problem-solving and I got what I wanted anyway and I was thinking of that as 'well, I'm good enough at it' but if I'd been actually good at it you could have had things you wanted, too - Findekáno, I'm sorry -

 

- and it's not very meaningful - if I'm not going to change anything - I'm done beating you because it's fascinating and I'm done with the mind control and so I guess I could coherently apologize just for those but that seems kind of pathetic. So it seemed like it had to be all or nothing, give it all up so I can give you an apology for all of it or - just - limp - on -

- and back before there were other considerations in the mix, an empire and a war, but now that these are the only considerations I am not sure what it means to say 'I love you' if not that I'll give it all away so that I can tell you I'm sorry, and so that you can be safe.

I've been trying to - arrange my head without you. So that you don't have to worry about keeping me functional. I am not there, but I'll get there, in less than three hundred fifty years, and we don't have to open the door until I do. All the things that matter to you are going to be fine and I love you and I won't give you orders anymore and you can blame Ambela for this being so disorganized, I wanted to wait until I had a way to do it gracefully but I wasn't generating ways to do it gracefully, just running headfirst into reminders that - 

- that I could have been someone you loved -"

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You were someone I loved.

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And now I'm someone else. You're free to go.

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He packs his computer and his pencils and a change of clothes.

 

Promise you won't hurt anyone else.

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"I swear I won't have relationships with anyone which, fully informed, you'd want to interfere in."

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He shakes his head.

He leaves his things.

 


He goes outside and sings.

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Ambela finds him a bit later and sits down.

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Hello. Need anything?

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I'm fine. How are you?

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A bit at loose ends. I miss my family but it's not worth having the door open that long.

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If we figure out a goldmage cheat maybe they can go fetch people. I suppose my versions wouldn't do it.

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It's not quite the same, but - kind of you.

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Do let me know if there's anything I can do for you.

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Does that extend to 'lock him in his room for a century'?

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You may feel free to tell me about this desire but I can't promise to accomplish it.

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I want - something to happen such that afterwards we can say 'all right, you did a bad thing and you suffered the consequences of it and now that's done'. I think he'd agree to that, if it's what I wanted. But I don't have any talent for or any particular comfort with inflicting misery on people.

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What would be the added value of inflicting consequences beyond what's already happened?

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I just said. It would mean we could move past it.

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I'm just not clear on how it contributes to the result.

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Do you think I should have already forgiven him?

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I don't have a strong opinion on that and still wouldn't if you locked him in his room for a hundred years.

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Well, I think it would be useful to forgive him but I can't forgive him something that he cannot set right and has not experienced any consequences for, it's not how that works for me. 

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I see. I'm not sure how to productively address that. Sooner or later his alts will probably find out and be appalled but perhaps that isn't what you had in mind.

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That won't help anything. 'everyone hates him' isn't a very constructive consequence, he's worse when everyone hates him. Being trapped and alone for a very long time is - related to the actual problem - and then there's no complications about getting back to his life. 

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Is it to get him to empathize better with what you went through...?

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- it's - he says he really wants to make it right, and I don't quite believe him about that, and then I would. And one of the laws in our kingdom is that if someone is convicted of a crime and serves their sentence then you don't get to raise it with them. You can of course still not want to interact with them on that basis, but you can't not hire them and you can't bring it up. I think it's good for everybody, that that's the law. It means there's a point where you can say - enough, I did a wrong thing but it should not be held against me for all eternity. I guess if people were virtuous enough that point could be 'the instant it is established they won't do it again, by any means including external magic', but that's not - psychologically realistic - I think it is fair to ask people that there be a point at which it's like it didn't happen, I don't think it ought to be instantly...

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So you want to sentence him to something.

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I don't have that power. But I think he'd agree.

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Nod.

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Since you asked what I wanted.

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I did, yes.

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Singing.

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Singing.

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He is not supposed to meet Cir because Cir prefers not to be around small children who might forget they can't touch redmages. This makes sense but it means there is someone around he shouldn't meet and that's weird. Hi! he sends Cir, because that isn't touching.

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...hi?

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I'm Mingling, the small Maitimo. I'm telepathic. I wanted to meet you but I'm not supposed to go near you so I'm doing this. Nice to meet you!

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Oh, hi, I'm Cir. Yeah, it'd be bad if anybody touched me so I'm being careful about, uh, kids.

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Bright said. I won't come near, promise. But I like knowing who everybody is. Do you like it here?

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It's really interesting, yeah!

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What's the place you're from like?

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It has a lot of mages and mage attendants in it and it's up on a hill.

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Why did you come here?

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I didn't want to work for lots of different people.

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My alt is very proud of you but also worried.

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I know. He'll get less worried.

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What is loving a person like?

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You love people, right?

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I don't know! I can't compare to what other people mean when they say that. 

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...why would I be easier to compare with?

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Everyone agrees that the thing you experience is love, right?

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Yes, but magical and different.

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Is it nice?

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It's really nice, especially with my sister Ruviri who's a redmage too.

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I kind of want to dunk in the fountain.

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The Temple-Guild doesn't let people do that unless they're going to be adopted in.

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If it was a good idea we could probably pay them a lot of money to do it.

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I actually think there might not be an amount of money they'd take for that.

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Why not?

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It's sacred.

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What does that mean?

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Um, being a mage means being more like one of the gods and they want to be able to raise mages to take that seriously.

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Oh, I didn't know your world had gods.Where do they live?

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They watch the springs but they don't live anywhere specific.

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Do they need help getting more competent? There's a set of Valar who are explaining to how the other Valar how to do a good job at being gods.

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Competent at what?

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Uh, it sounds like your world still has death and suffering? Competent gods make that not happen. It's sort of the point of gods.

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I don't remember most of my theology classes. Nobody knows why bad things still happen since Tsi shouldn't want them to. The others might not care much.

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Maybe Tsi can't stop them and the Valar could help.

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Maybe.

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He walks in, reading through something on his computer. "What're you up to?"

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"Telepathying with your kid alt. He thinks the Valar could put Tsi in charge of the other gods on my world or something."

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" - possibly. Is that a good idea? If your worlds' gods are mostly noninterventionist we might just leave them that way - especially if the results of the summoning tests we set up come back encouraging -"

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"Oh, they don't do anything except the godsprings. Tsi's the red god, though, it's supposed to love everyone."

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"How do people know what attributes they have?"

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"Being a mage moves people - godward. It's worked out from that. But I don't remember most of my theology lessons."

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"Midnight's working on the necklace."

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"I'm not sure I'd remember them anyway, I think they were boring."

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Giggle. "You're going to have to meet my world's gods if you decide you want to be immortal. They are not very boring."

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"What are they like?"

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"There are fifteen. One was evil and so now he's not allowed to be around people though you can pilot an avatar in his VR setup if you want. The other fourteen are - they used to be thoughtless because they didn't understand what it was like not to be a god, but they learned and now they're better. They have domains - Manwë is the airs, Yavanna the plants, Varda the stars, Aulë stone and metal and invention - but they can do things outside those, too. They mostly do things like make us easier to resurrect and protect our world from harmful magic. It's possible they could do something like a little force field so anyone who tries to touch you would instead come just short, depending how redmage magic interprets 'touching', and then you could turn it on and off..."

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"Skin to skin contact," says Cir. "What's a VR setup?"

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"You put special lenses in your eyes and go into a specially designed room - tank, if you're really serious - and technology makes it look and feel like you are walking around inside a world that some other person created and shared. Usually they make a story - there's a wildfire and you have to rescue people, or you're a shark swimming in the ocean and you have to catch food, or you're trying to complete a mystic quest to win the heart of your one true love."

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"Are you into mystic quests?" wonders Cir, smiling.

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"I've actually never played one, they were invented after the time I'm forked from."

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"You never explained that."

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"So it's possible to make a copy of people from my world. But obviously making a copy of someone isn't a very nice thing to do, so the Valar decided to change that. And a long time ago - a thousand, four hundred years ago - they did magic to make us uncopyable. 

 

And then recently there was a horrible disaster somewhere. And they found the place with the magic door, and they knew my world's gods were good at their jobs and would help, and they needed someone from my world to open the magic door so they could go get my gods for help. And they tried copying me, but it didn't work because of the magic. 

So then they tried copying me-before-I-was-made-uncopyable. And that's how I - came into existence. And it turned out that in the - years I missed - I had gotten married and had children."

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Hug.

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Hug. "It's okay. It's good for there to be two of me right now because there's lots to do that requires my attention and Elves don't work while they have children."

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"Why not?"

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"When you know you're going to exist forever, time-when-your-children-are-young is one of the only really scarce things. You can never, ever have it back. Everything else you can do as much as you like and at whatever pace you like, but their childhoods will run out and be over and if you spent them working..."

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Nod.

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"We also don't have children in troubled times."

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"Because then their childhoods would be troubled?"

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"Yeah. It's like - why would you pick any moment to have kids other than the moment that'll give them the best possible lives. I don't know if humans'll feel that way once you're immortal."

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"If my parents were immortal I am literally not sure they would ever stop taking in kids."

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"There are a lot of kids to take in. If that's what makes them happy..."

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"Yeah, it is."

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"Then I hope they can do it for all eternity. They wouldn't mind not bearing the kids, right..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They don't, mages almost never do, we're all adopted."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So being daeva would be fine, then. - we're checking if and how you daevafy, we need to know that to figure out how to help your mortality situation..."

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"I wonder what I'd be."

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"It's supposed to go off affinity for the magic, but I don't know what precisely that means. Most people are fairies."

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"That'd be neat. I'm not sure the wings would suit me."

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"I don't think ex-summoner humans grow the wings automatically, and I know you can make part of you go away by not considering it part of you. What we really want are whitemage daeva, daeva can't get sick or injured."

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"Two of my siblings are whitemages."

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"What we want to avoid are dwindled bluemage and greenmage and redmage daeva, they'd be horribly confused and could take a summons and be even more confused and they'd be in general surrounded by people who have no idea how to work with them. And goldmage daeva would have ...interesting results."

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"...yeah. They couldn't kill their jumped selves."

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"No they couldn't. Anyway, it might be that when people daevafy they stop being mages, there are other kinds of magic which work that way. We'll know soon. If they do keep being mages, we might go offer trustworthy whitemages the chance right away, so they can heal without limits."

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"That'd... I'm not sure what that'd do to the economy but at least they wouldn't be sick all the time."

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"I am not sure either but I think it would be worth it."

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Nod.

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"You can decide if you want to daevafy, once we have results back."

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"...there are drawbacks to being a redmage but I could never ever stand not knowing the people I already know."

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"Okay. So no if it makes you not a mage, maybe otherwise?"

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"Yeah."

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"Don't summon until we know, then - if you summon then if you ever die even if it's ten thousand years from now you probably daevafy."

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Nod.

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"On the other hand if you don't summon then if you die that's it, far as we know. If your world has an afterlife we weren't able to detect it."

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"I don't think we do. Can you usually detect them?"

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"If people actually physically exist somewhere we can detect that."

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"If we did have an afterlife I would assume it would just have disembodied souls."

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"Those we can't detect."

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"How would it be an afterlife if someone just... moves?"

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"Dwarves in soul Ardas and humans in Revelation appear in a different place when they die, naked and in good health and as young adults if they died as adults - still children if they died as children - and we can detect those kind of arrangements."

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"Huh."

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"We're checking other kinds of people who die in Revelation, in case we should just terraform some planets there and then take immigrants."

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"Everything here is very... big."

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"- yeah, I guess our plans and ambitions are on kind of a different scale than what you're used to. Is it annoying when I tell you about policy details you're probably going to forget -"

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"It's not annoying. A little confusing."

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"I don't expect you to keep track of it all, I just - I would be doing you an injustice by behaving as if it is my job to go fix the multiverse and your job to stay in my rooms and keep me cuddled -"

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"The thing they say when they don't want to say 'redmages are the ones you have sex with' is 'confidante', but that's usually a little less political."

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"I'd rather being a redmage have as much or as little to do with your role in things as you please."

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"Well, if I'm good at anything useful that I didn't become magically good at when I was five I don't know about it yet."

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"You do not have to manifest it right away." It is not that he objects to keeping Cir in his room all the time if only it were ethical. 

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- Cir laughs a little.

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He pets him. "Hmm?"

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"It's just, it's funny how - you would be having a lot more fun with me a lot faster if you weren't so good, but you are, and I love you."

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" - I'm really not unusually good - or, well, I aspire to be, but by the standards of my society 'do not have sex with children or with people who believe their continued wellbeing depends on you wanting them for sex' is not unusually good it's on par with 'don't murder people'."

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"I don't believe that my continued wellbeing etcetera," Cir points out. "It would be pretty hard to believe that. I could tell if you were lying about it."

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"- yeah, I know. But it's sort of built into the whole system, isn't it?"

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"Yeah, which I got out of, because of you."

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Snuggle. "It really actually wouldn't be okay if I did whatever I wanted, even without that." 

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"I didn't say it would. It just made me laugh the exact - way you aren't."

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"I am glad it doesn't - alarm you - this is so disconcerting is this is what I am like to everyone all the time -"

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Kiss. "Maybe a little."

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"I should tone it down." He has not initiated any kisses with his redmage but he will very much kiss him back.

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It's cute. "Should I tone it down? I could pretend that I think you really wholeheartedly want me to go to Tirion with a fairy bodyguard/translator and try to catch up on botany."

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"And I could pretend that you are convincingly lying and you could pretend to think I'm convinced and - 

- just do what you want, okay? As long as you're willing to ignore whatever - read - you're getting off me,  I don't mind that you notice it -"

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"...can't ignore, can - neglect? Mostly? I don't have to attempt to seduce you but I can't stop thinking it's lovely."

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"Is it."

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"It is," insists Cir. "It's - sort of - cozy -? I'm not very good at putting this stuff into words, when Ruviri's around we just hold hands and keep saying 'you know that thing' 'oh yes that thing'."

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"I really wish I were the mindreading kind of Elf." He couldn't ask his redmage not to keep thoughts private from him, what an appalling thing to ask, but if his redmage came up with the idea -

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"- the look on your face would be amazing, if there's a way to do that definitely tell me, but you'd have to stop when I was around my family unless they said it was okay."

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"Sadly chips don't work on humans - if you wanted specific concepts you could bounce them through Mingling or Midnight but it wouldn't work for the general thing -" squeeze - "it is entirely all right to not want to share your thoughts with anyone -"

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"...My favorite thing in the entire world is sitting with Ruviri making facial expressions at each other, that's half of why I might want to invite her here, I don't see why I wouldn't want to be able to get better detail than that with you."

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"Maybe someone'll eventually figure out how to necklace it. How old is Ruviri, how long before she - gets assignments -"

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"She's fourteen. Late next year. She thinks she has a crush on Lord Ivex and she doesn't actually and I keep telling her..."

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"That's a - potential client?"

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"Yeah. He came by to meet her first, brought her a present, was nice to her attendant - Ava."

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"Better than not that but not necessarily the stuff of true love."

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"Yeah. And he's one of them."

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"I mean, if you thought he was exceptionally suitable and he's her hangup about leaving we could give him the money to pay for her to not take other clients. But - I suppose it's appallingly hypocritical to think poorly of people for using redmages -"

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"You weren't planning on me. Anyway, I don't know anything about him except that he was polite, and picky between the crop of redmages available that year."

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"I wasn't planning on you but I haven't sent you to Tirion with a bodyguard and translator, have I. They're not going to increase the workload for the other redmages, right..?"

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"No, if we get past a certain point we're really hard to take care of. The waiting list will just get longer and the price will go up for anyone new who wants one."

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"If we distributed the memory necklaces once we have a way to produce them faster, would they compensate for that with more clients..."

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"...Maybe. I'm not sure most of us would object, mind."

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"Because they like knowing lots of people in itself, or because they want to repay their debt to the guild..."

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"Well, both. They couldn't overdo it too much though because then the clients start having trouble booking appointments when they want them."

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"And we're not letting people use Milliways to run a convenient paid sex business." Sigh. "I wonder how ending material scarcity'll affect all of this."

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"Material scarcity doesn't directly address any of the reasons people want mages. We don't exactly condense gold from vapor."

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"Yeah, it's not as straightforward as 'we can make the demand go away', not at all. Might even go up, because everyone can afford mages. Mages wouldn't start out in debt to the temple-guild, though - the idea that you can be in debt for meals you ate as a child -"

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"It's mostly not about the food, more the attendants and the education and the personal discretion uses of magic."

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"Could you turn all those down and not be in debt?"

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"If you don't want to make that trade you don't interview with the mages when they come by the orphanage in the first place."

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"When you are four."

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"Five. But yeah."

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"Ending scarcity might mean fewer orphaned children."

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"Yeah, they might have to make it sound more appealing at that point instead of comparing with 'get kicked out of the orphanage when you're ten and go work in the mines or something'."

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"And assuming you daevafy, children won't be parentless in the first place." Shiver.

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...Nod.

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"...am I missing something?"

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"I can't remember a single thing about my birth parents and have no idea if they were any good."

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"That's. Going to be a hard thing about dealing with human worlds."

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"Elves are never bad parents?"

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"Elves never have children by accident, and never want for any resources with which to raise the children, and sometimes they still manage to be bad parents but - not as bad, and not very often, very rarely bad enough that the solution isn't just to give them extra help and teach them better..."

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Nod. "My adoptive parents are great. I'm not just saying that for magical reasons, my siblings think so too."

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Can't greenmages make people think so? he doesn't ask. "It's good that they like it so much and are so good at it, I'm sure there'll always be need."

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"...they're very retired, if they do more magic they will stop breathing in their sleep."

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"I didn't -" Sigh. Giggle. "Greenmages might actually be okay as daeva, they wouldn't need to breathe or eat or sleep or anything."

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"They might lose more stuff that would be inconvenient if they just kept going."

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"And also if any of them were not well-intentioned they would be extraordinarily dangerous. Might have to ask them if they're okay with agreeing not to do any more magic."

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"What if they changed their minds?"

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"We could have them summoned under a binding that wouldn't let them. We'd really have to, because otherwise they could get their summoners to snap a binding - not to mention tampering with people in the daeva realms -"

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Nod. "I think they're usually not that attached to their magic."

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"I really don't like giving people a choice between dying and losing their magic but mind control is hard to counter or be prepared for or handle if it's happened."

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"Greenmages can counter other greenmagic if they know what was done."

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"That helps but doesn't solve the snap-a-binding problem."

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Nod.

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"I'm going to go back soon, visit a few more countries. Do you want to come?"

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"Foreigners are weird about redmages..."

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"Weird as in 'won't be cheerfully tolerant of what they think I'm doing' because I think I approve, if so -"

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"Uh, not so much that and more they'd equate me with an outright prostitute?"

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Why are humans terrible. 

"So you'd sooner stay here?"

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"Yeah, going out of mage robes would be worse."

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"Okay. Should I arrange for people to visit, I'd be lonely stuck here for a couple weeks..."

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"I'll ask Ruviri in. Ava can run us food and watch our backs if we go downstairs. But people can visit me if they'd want to."

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"I'll let them know. ...also, you should probably just avoid Kib. He does not make himself hard to avoid or anything."

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"Okay... why?"

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"Believes that everything around him is a maliciously orchestrated hallucination by the people who tortured him for several decades."

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"Are you sure he doesn't need a redmage. We're very convincing. Not necessarily me."

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"I can ask him but my guess is that any additional capabilities we demonstrate having are just terrifying."

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"Oh."

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Hug.

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Snuggle.

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He drops Ambela a note asking if he's right about Kib's reaction to redmages. He asks his alts to check in on Cir occasionally. He heads back out. 

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(Ambela thinks he's right.)

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He tells Kib what happened anyway, the next time he and Midnight are visiting Kib and playing a strategy game. Midnight is sad for some reason so he is the only not-sad person and it's a little distracting. "Bright got a boyfriend," he tells Kib. "He bought him from the mage world and no one else can touch him."

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"It's not anything bad and if it were you wouldn't be expected to get involved," he says hastily to Kib. "Kiddo -"

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"It's not bad at all," he agrees. "Cir's very happy."

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"Bright consulted Timothy and Cam for help on humans. And he's not even in this dimension right now. You really really don't need to worry about it."

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"I like Cir, I think he's clever."

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"Yes, he's great."

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"Exactly how did the ultra naive version of Maitimo not get the memo on buying people. Half the city-states on my world have figured that out by now."

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"Did you get an overview on Godspring yet?"

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"No."

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"Do you want one or do you just want reassurance that if the kid wanted a daeva bodyguard/translator and an education he would have that and if he wanted to go home to his family he would have that and everything is fine?"

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"I'm trying to follow the plot, and apparently it involves Bright buying a boyfriend, what do I need to make that make sense."

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"Godspring has magic fountains. Being dunked in them before age five gives you magic abilities. They're named after the colors of the waters of the godspring, and there are different ones in different places but the ones in Cefax give you gold, red, blue, green, white. The magic abilities come with drawbacks. Whitemages are healers, but their immune system and ability to heal their own injuries gets worse and worse over time and they can die of a cold. Greenmages can suppress addictions, implant compulsions, alter preferences - there aren't any in Milliways and none will be allowed in Milliways, don't worry - and they lose their own instincts when they use their magic, they don't get hungry or cold and eventually they stop breathing. Goldmages can stop time or travel back in it, but doing it takes years off their lives. Bluemages can do remote viewing or pastviewing, and with excessive use they lose theory of mind. 

Redmages do - when they touch people they understand those people, very deeply and with magic intensity, and with very few exceptions they fall in love with them, and the more people they touch the worse their memories and capacity to form new memories gets.

Mages are all adopted from orphanages at age five, screened for being smart and healthy so they'll last longer, and then raised in these places called temple-guilds to be put to intensive use starting in their mid-teens. They're scheduled to do magic until it gets to the point where more magic would kill them - or make them impossible to take care of - and then they retire to be taken care of in the temple-guild and mind the next generation. Main use of redmages is sex, obviously, I don't think Bright realized. 

So Bright is visiting a temple-guild and trying to get a feel for whether we can buy out everyone's contracts or whether that'll just increase demand, how badly they'd take it if we break their godsprings, how disruptive it'd be to daevafy everyone, that kind of thing. And a redmage kid who is fifteen and a few weeks from his first thirty appointments, which will basically wipe out all his own memories, decides this is his ticket out and grabs him.

It's - touching a redmage is being bathed in magic certainty that someone understands you perfectly and loves you for it, it's fairly overwhelming. The kid asks Bright to buy out the rest of his appointments and keep him exclusively, which he agrees to immediately, and he pays the temple-guild off and takes the kid home and offers repeatedly to send him away but the kid hasn't taken him up on it."

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"Okay."

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"Mingling when you just say the short version people'll think something bad is going on."

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"Temple-guilds are very bad."

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"Mmhm."

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"Cir doesn't want to meet me because if you're a redmage you don't want to be around people who might do something unpredictable and small children might. But we talk and he's happy. He is trying to convince his redmage sister to leave too but she doesn't want to because she likes one of the people she's supposed to touch soon."

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"What?"

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"This is all very detailed."

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"I'm getting pretty good at reading and I read the whole trade deal!"

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"Congratulations."

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"There are gonna be forty more of them, Godspring has a lot of countries and Bright is visiting all of them."

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"And I should not expect him to purchase additional boyfriends."

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"Cefax is the only place where the godsprings give you redmages."

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"Though there is probably a risk of Elves becoming known in human societies as very easily persuaded to throw around a great deal of money and magic if you come up to them with a sufficiently desperate plight."

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"Sitting on a street corner feeding stray cats for a few decades."

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"Hmm?"

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"I explained stray cats to Maitimo once a long time ago and he said it wouldn't be a good idea to go do nothing but feed them for decades."

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"Awww. - it's hard. Like, on the one hand, Bright spent thirty million riaxi rescuing Cir, and I expect that much money thoughtfully spent could have saved hundreds of lives, and a virtue fairly essential to running an empire is the ability to look at someone who is asking you for help and say 'sorry, but all the people not right here personally asking me for help deserve it too'.

But on the other hand I'd have helped Cir too."

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He finishes his strategy game with Mingling. 

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"Anyway you can do both. Save Cir and all the other people."

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"Sometimes you can do that."

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"All the time. We have Milliways. We never ever have to choose again."

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He hugs him.

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Aww.

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They leave.

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Miranda is pretty darn sure she is subjectively fourteen now! She dresses up and solicits refreshments from Cam and invites people who seem like they might want to come have an excuse to have a party. She does not notice the way Karen is looking at her.

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(Even though she's doing it a lot.)

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Parties are fun! He asks Amriac for materials and makes Miranda lots of showy little magic presents.

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He's been working on wood computer cases that let them work in Hogwarts and they're almost done but not in time for the party which is terrible. At Timothy's suggestion he instead gets her one of the books he was using for the computer case work, on the Hogwarts warding, annotated with notes he conjured from the founders themselves.

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And Timothy gets her an expanding and collapsible floating three-dimensional map of the current multiverse, with a simple set of rules to add new worlds and portals between worlds and a cool zoom effect that lets you make out details on buildings in any given world.

(It took a lot of work. Milliways's time dilation was terribly generous to him.)

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Karen has been reading up on wand lore and since one of Miranda's wands has semipermanently changed hands Karen has made her one custom. She nabbed some wand core items during the potion ingredient run and now there is a cherry wand to replace the pine that Cam is using.

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It likes her and she likes it! And all her other stuff!

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"Happy fourteenth! Are you going to get the Valar to tinker with the slowed aging or not until we're at the point of opening the door?"

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"I think I can safely look fourteen but maybe not more than that. I don't want to be unnecessary amounts of stagnant."

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"Makes sense. I wouldn't have really been thrilled to drag out puberty. Maybe the summoning rollout in Godspring will be informative for back home and we can get moving on it sooner rather than later."

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"That'd be good. Although the fact that daeva can be wizards is complicated in different ways even if mages can be daeva-mage combos too."

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"I'm not in general confident in any of our plans that run on 'don't let the daeva learn about this' but the fact they can be wizards might be an exception, that one is legitimately hard to figure out and you'd have to take a summons and get a wand."

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"It didn't take Cam long to figure out."

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"Okay, anyone who was formerly a summoner and therefore has genes, and knows enough genetics to identify the wizard gene and figure out how to splice it in, and is willing to do lots of gruesome transplants on themselves, can get it in a week and still can't check whether they've got it because no wand."

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"Yes. Exactly."

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"So, even if someone publishes in whatever is Hell's widest-read paper that it works, it works for only a tiny fraction of daeva, they have to learn a ton of science to have any hope of getting it to work, they have to put themselves through a ton of unpleasantness, they still don't have a wand, and it lasts until they get distracted."

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"I'm not actually sure a naturally occurring daeva couldn't get themselves a genome if they wanted to, copying some wizard's wholesale even. They don't naturally occur with horns either and those are popular. Cam is not even a genetics specialist, he guessed-and-checked and could maintain the thing off science he'd learned by the time he was my age. And if you're going to pay them in magic items they will eventually wind up with something that could work as a core."

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"Wandmaking's pretty specialized. I don't recommend publishing that it works in Hell's widest-read paper but if we don't do that I think it's pretty unlikely - I mean, to us Hazel is salient, getting wizarding in particular working is really important. If you're a daeva who stays very very apprised of events you are now aware of the existence of five new worlds and three new magic systems, you've got no particular reason to check 'can I acquire a genome and by that means be a wizard' as opposed to 'can I give myself an Elf brain and thereby get chips to work' or 'can I give myself Elf blood and thereby get osanwë and artifact magic working' or 'can I figure out how to compose magic songs' or 'can I make myself into a goldmage'. It happens it looks like exactly one of those is actually genetic, but it'd surprise me if there are that many people systemic enough to try all that stuff for every single new magic system they're introduced to when we're throwing dozens at them, and by the time Hazel gets up and running we're going to be throwing dozens at them."

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"I think there are probably demons who don't have anything better to do."

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"I guess we'll see. Like I said I'm not happy about security-through-obscurity in general, at all, but if I had to identify things that are probably safe that way, 'doesn't work naively, there are a lot of complicated things that might make it work, only one of them does, and it's temporary and all but impossible to test that you got it working' are the more promising ones. We can have people conjuring for wands, get a sense of whether anyone's attempting it."

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"Okay."

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"Maybe I'll suggest to Cam that the textbooks we distribute in Godspring teach bindings that prevent wizards and mages from making trouble."

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"That sounds like a good idea."

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"Anyway, happy birthday. May the next year be as exciting as this one."

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"I think most things that would be this exciting would be bad."

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"Okay, true."

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Elsewhere at the party: "So you didn't bring the boyfriend you bought from the mage world who nobody's allowed to touch?"

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"Who told you that?"

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"Um, I can tell you didn't bring him because he is not here but Mingling told me he existed."

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Sigh. "Cir doesn't do parties and doesn't like the main bar much, someone might touch him. That's a hell of a phrasing for the situation."

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"Yeah, you should probably tell Mingling to describe it differently."

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"I don't know, if he's going around telling everyone that and absolutely no one has bothered confronting me about it that's sort of informative."

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"I have no idea how many people he's told that."

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"Everyone in Godspring thinks it too. Charming, humans."

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"Hey!"

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"I know, I know, I'm being horrifically uncharitable. Not quite as uncharitable as 'bought a boyfriend from the mage world who no one's allowed to touch' but close."

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"I was repeating what Mingling said and he's an Elf and five times my age even if that isn't very old for an Elf."

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"And his excuse for believing that and not doing anything about it is that he has no idea what it means. Everyone else does not get to use that excuse - or, well, the entire population of Sanity might, but at some point our ignorance would be culpabably negligent - I am not actually getting a kick out of everyone thinking this is anything other than horrible -"

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"...what, was I supposed to corner you and Stun you? So I could do - what?"

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"If you thought that was true? Yes!!! So you could make sure that I was not setting policy for a world with hundreds of millions of people in it!"

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"I mean, I figured it had got garbled somewhere. You're a Timothy."

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He takes a deep breath. "...sorry. I'm really not being fair. Everyone in Godspring went out of their way to be nonjudgmental and it was very upsetting but there are lots of reasons for it beyond 'they're horrible and don't care' and here there are even more reasons. Did you in fact get the real story?"

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"Not as such but Miranda said Ambela had it."

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"His magic system makes him lose memories whenever people touch him, and by law he was supposed to do it a lot anyway to earn money for the - collective - that raised him, and the only politically nondestructive way to extract him was to pay them the money. He doesn't belong to me."

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"...is he your boyfriend?"

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"He's fifteen and even if he weren't it would be kind of inappropriate under the circumstances."

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"So why's it getting passed around like that?"

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"The specific thing that happens when they touch people is they fall in love with them. And you feel this magic certainty they're in love with you thing and it's very pleasant, thus lots of people paying his collective lots of money for the right to touch him. And he touched me. To get my attention."

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"Oh."

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"I didn't actually realize what people were assuming until Midnight explained. And Cir wasn't assuming because he understands me. I tried telling the humans that that was not the case and not acceptable where I was from and they all hurried to reassure me that it was entirely acceptable there. Yay."

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"Maybe you had diplomatic immunity."

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"Cir pointed that out when I complained to him about it. I guess once they're daeva we can see if they are less tolerant."

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"...I don't think not dying's what diplomatic immunity is for."

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"It's more than the physical safety. If once they have a not-us source of everything they could need they continue to be cheerful and encouraging about us buying their children for sex then I will judge them."

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"Yeah, okay."

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"We've had a couple people die in the cohort of very old trustworthy mages we taught summoning. Results inconclusive. Hopefully after another few countries of diplomacy-ing things'll be clearer."

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"Inconclusive?"

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"Three people have died, they all daevafied, one kept their magic one didn't and one is unwilling to check."

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"What kinds were they?"

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"Blue gold green respectively."

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"...huh."

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"White's the one we really want. You'd think the whitemages would be likeliest to die on us but they haven't so far."

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"If they're sure they'll daevafy couldn't they just do a whole lot of healing and die pretty quick?"

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"Maybe now that we have some example daeva in hand we can convince them."

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Nod.

...Karen is distracted by Miranda existing again.

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Awwww.

 

 

He slips upstairs after a while to bring Cir snacks from the party.

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Cir thinks the snacks are delicious.

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"My tiny alt has gone around telling everyone that I bought a boyfriend in Godspring and no one is allowed to touch him."

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"You're my client, not my owner."

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"I am very aware. I have told him to cut it out."

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Hug.

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"You don't owe me anything."

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"I know you're not going to suddenly make demands of me. It's okay."

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"It's not just the factual point that I'm not going to make demands of you it's also that you don't owe me anything." Hug.

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Snuggle. "Do I need to pick up a habit you find mildly annoying to reassure you about how secure I am in my understanding of that?"

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"I don't know about annoying habits but if you told me not to do things, occasionally, that'd probably help."

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"Any things? I forbid you to eat pears for a week." Kiss.

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"But what if the countries I'm visiting serve fancy pear dishes and it would be discourteous to refuse them?" 

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"Tell them you're allergic."

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"Elves don't get allergies. I hadn't heard of them until Midnight summoned a demon to make us popcorn one time and the demon asked if we had any allergies. They sound terrible."

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"They're not that bad."

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"Don't they sometimes, just, kill people. For no reason."

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"...the ones people I know have just make them itchy or sneezy."

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"Oh, okay. That's actually not too bad. I will carefully avoid pears. Do you need anything before I leave again?"

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"I'm going to get Ruviri first this time."

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"Sounds good." 

 

And when the delegation is ready to head back out he goes with Cir to get the door for Ruviri.

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Ruviri is convinced to come visit and fetches her attendant and kisses every one of their siblings' heads goodbye and hugs their parents and skips into Milliways and holds her brother's hand.

They look very serene like that.

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Awwwww. He tells Bar that all of them are on his tab and then heads back out to meet more nations.

 

 

Six more mages die. Three are whitemages and do not keep their powers. A red and a blue and a copper do.

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The nations are all interested in his swag, in scoping out his interest in attacking their enemies, and in the opportunities afforded by otherworldly magic.

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He is very very generous with the stuff. He is totally disinterested in attacking their enemies but not yet ready to give particularly emphatic signals that they too ought to stop attacking their enemies, not until he knows more. He does tell one pragmatic-seeming minister that if his world went to war against another equipped with their weapons there would be no survivors on either side, and that for this reason advanced societies mostly grow out of wars - "or at least never have them twice."

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The minister is duly grave about this assertion.

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And when everywhere is visited he returns home, closes the portal, sends out a mass message - I know how I want to do the summoning rollout in Godspring, but it's going to be resource-intensive and require around ten thousand people. Come by my room for planning. 

 

And how is Cir doing -

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Cir is in his room curled up with his sister. Ava is not there at the moment.

"Hi Maitimo!" says Cir.

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"Hey! Hi, Ruviri - liking Milliways okay -"

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"There's a giant squid in the lake!" says Ruviri.

"We got wetsuits," says Cir. "So we could swim and wouldn't have to worry about the squid if it turned out to be a person."

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"Great idea. I think the squid is in fact a person. We're going to be planning how to roll out summoning in Godspring, want to be part of that?"

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"Sure," says Cir.

"Can Ava come?" asks Ruviri. "She'll be back in a bit."

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"Of course."

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Ava is back in a bit, having returned their lunch dishes to Bar. She braids Ruviri's hair for her because they're going to be around Elves and then they are all set.

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He waits for people to arrive. He has a big map covered with dots - three thousand and sixty-two of them, to be precise.

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Do the ones on Cefax by any chance correspond to its five Godsprings?

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Nope! Cefax has fourteen and they mostly correspond to population centers (but not perfectly).

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"What are the dots?" Cir asks.

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"If we put a little clinic at all of the dots to do vaccinations and education and loans and supervised summoning we are within ten miles of 98% of Godspring's population." He changes the map; some dots move. "Adjusting for geopolitical realities - there are a couple countries that won't cooperate, there are a couple war zones, there are a couple places where it may not be far but it's not tractable as travel for whatever reason - we can probably hit 90%? Which is letting hundreds of thousands of people just permanently die but I'd have to double the dots to get substantial gains from there."

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"Loans?" asks Ava confusedly.

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"Financial infrastructure in general, but yeah."

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"Why is that important?"

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"The simple answer is that when it exists consumption rises and food insecurity goes down and so on. I think the reasons have to do with evening out unexpected expenses and letting people save and letting people travel and send back money to their families?"

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Ava nods.

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"There are a bunch of worlds that had preindustrial humans and then got richer so we tried to learn what worked for them. If it doesn't work we'll change courses. You guys might think of things specific to your world that we haven't thought of, though."

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"Are we special any way besides the godsprings?" asks Cir.

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"You have better birth control options, to the delight of Elves everywhere. Cefax in particular has more of a middle class, you've got significantly higher literacy rates than preindustrial Earths..."

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"Most places don't have anything like Seedlessness?" asks Ruviri.

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"They do not." Shiver. "Or they drive it extinct, I think that happens on Earths?"

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"Yeah, if things don't domesticate and they're useful humans are bad at that coordination problem," says Cam, strolling in. "Wow, Godspring has a lot of dots on it, maybe it should get that checked out."

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"I want to send like ten thousand people." And he summarizes how he picked dot locations and what sorts of expertise people would need to man a dot and - "if the circle is drawn in light, at a frequency humans can't see, and they flip the switch, they're the summoner, right?"

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"Yeah, if the light frequency works at all - you can do 'behind a wall' if 'ultraviolet' fails. Are the ten thousand people there indefinitely or training locals?"

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"Training locals. I was thinking three Years."

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"Yeah, that's long enough if they're good at teaching humans."

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"I don't know how good at it to expect them to be, but I want to keep Godspring paused while we do trainings and then have lots of resources for tackling problems as they come up." He waves some more people in. "Is there a model of computer or something that is sufficiently popular that we can just keep a thousand on hand to pay daeva for their time, it's going to be too much of a resource drain to do magic items..."

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"Chiplocked ones are possible to install in daeva without a demon but it's really hard and unpleasant so you could pay fairies and angels that way if you keep a demon on hand. Off the top of my head not short of that, too many kinds updated too often."

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"Okay, so compensation for daeva time is a problem, non-reproducible circles are a problem - maybe we do have to keep a demon on hand anyway, if we're doing vaccinations and so on..."

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"A demon per dot?"

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"Kind of a logistical nightmare at least until the locals start daevafying."

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"Maybe demons would like a redmage."

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"No."

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"You don't need one per dot unless you need really fast turnaround. Still a lot. Redmages only come from five springs apart from the interdimensional moral sensibilities problem - green, though - But I don't think we want to add to aggregate demand for mage services."

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"We do not. We're going to pension people out faster."

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"Milliways has a lot to pay demons with but - yeah, one of the nice things about this approach if it works is that it scales fine to any preindustrial human society we run across and if we're digging deep enough to pay a ton of demons then that does not scale nearly as cleanly."

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"Maybe figure out a portfolio of stuff we can keep in a closet such that there's probably something there that's worth the time of a random angel or fairy, have a couple dozen demons on resupply missions. Or screen ones who wanted to adopt children, wasn't there discussion about doing that?"

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"There was, yes. There's not an infinite supply of demons who'd be into it but you wouldn't have trouble turning up thousands."

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"Could make do with like a hundred if they only have to stock places up once a week or so. Mingling, want to find me a hundred demons who want to raise children in exchange for occasionally resupplying clinics?"

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"Yeah!!!"

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"Karen, Miranda, can you help me put together a curriculum on how to be of assistance to preindustrial humans for the Elves who'll be staffing these places - does anyone know how to administer vaccinations -"

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"I only know how to do it directly..."

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"Can I borrow representative Elves and a couple natives in case we don't anticipate all the mistakes they might make?"

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"Yeah, definitely. I'm drafting an announcement describing who we're looking for, I'll toss some representative people at you once they sign up."

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"I can probably teach myself to do injected vaccines and verify I'm doing it right and then teach people. Orally administered ones aren't complicated."

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"Thank you! I would also really appreciate your help coming up with a binding that prevents greenmagery and to be safe while we're at it also Hazel wizardry."

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"In full generality, no reversing existing greenmagery or curing anxiety disorders, no turning things polkadotted?"

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"Maybe have both?"

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"Can do."

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And various other project elements are delegated. He will be responsible for convincing various governments to permit this, but he has quite a lot to bribe them with. He forwards an announcement about interdimensional humanitarian work to Ambela for review before it gets published on Sanity.

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"Oh," he says to Cam, "I bet you that with their world moving again the Security and Infirmary shifts ended, we should go meet the new ones."

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"Sounds like a good idea."

The infirmary now contains a girl in a frilly blue outfit.

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"Hi! I'm Timothy."

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"Sara," she says. "Are you hurt...?"

"No, just seeing who's here," says Cam.

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"Where're you from?"

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"Tennessee."

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"Oh, on Earth? What year?"

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"1998."

"If I gave you a list of things that may happen in the future on your Earth would you take them to the relevant authorities?"

"No, probably not."

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"Don't want trouble?"

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"I'm just real busy at home."

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"How does your magic work?"

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"I just kinda do it."

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"Does everyone have it?"

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"No, you have to contract for it."

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"Can people from other worlds?"

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"I don't know. You have to be a girl."

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"Why's that? What are the terms of the contract?"

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"He didn't like write it down. I don't know why you have to be a girl, maybe we're just better."

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"What sort of stuff can you do?"

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"Uh, healing, obviously."

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"Yeah, that I figured. Is that all?"

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"No, there's not like a list, but I'm good at healing."

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"Thanks." And back out of the infirmary - "it'll go faster to look it up, I think."

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"She wasn't selected for bedside manner."

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"I don't mind that, but gosh, how can you be hanging out in an interdimensional bar and not be curious about the rest of the multiverse? We should give her a summoning textbook, at least. Earths that era are known to take it well."

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"After checking for reasons this one might not."

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"Yeah." And who is in Security?

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Some guy! Pacing!

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He introduces them.

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"Laaro. Charmed." Pace pace.

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"Where're you from?"

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"I call the world Alucine! Nowhere else seems to have them, you see."

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"What are they?"

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"They're where stuff goes, pockets with dirt on the bottom and sky on the top, none of this 'planets' or 'space going on forever' - mind I do like it when space goes on forever, it's like a poem -"

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"How does the magic work, can anyone get it?"

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"Oh, yes, but only fools do so," says Laaro, beaming. "And some altruists and some desperate types."

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"Why's that?"

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"Vices!"

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"And those are?"

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"Learn magic and pick up some dangerous or unbecoming personality trait! No takebacks!"

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What, again? He's getting really fond of magic systems that don't have horrible psychological side effects. "Is the penalty for knowing it or for using it?"

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"Learning it. Might as well play with what I've got!"

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"Makes sense. Thanks." 

Looking up a list of those: can also go on the to-do list.

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"You're welcome!"

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He can't get anything from the world with the alucines; they have a magic internet, looks like, and puts everything on that. He can read from the magic girl world just fine. Between reading he gives commentary on a curriculum for Elves interested in running little clinic/banks in Godspring. "I want to have a summoning class for them where friendly daeva explain to them every thing they said that could constitute agreement, or renegotiation, and what they could do if they were inclined to be a jerk. I think otherwise they won't get it."

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"I actually think that like 80% of the missing information that makes it hard for us to anticipate the multiverse is just 'everything should be interpreted as a euphemism for coerced sex'."

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"That does seem to have frequently been your problem, yeah."

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"Sometimes there are euphemisms for other things! But yes a lot of it is that."

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"The other things are more familiar? Like, I could say to people 'someone might steal from you' and they would go 'why, are they going without necessities? do they not have a legitimate way to get access to those things?' but it wouldn't be puzzling that under stressful conditions people would steal. I could even say 'daeva might torture you out of random sadism' and they have Melkor as a reference point for that. But, like, if Elves had redmages we'd just consider it a strange disability and work really hard on memory blessings so they could have a normal life. I am sure there'd be redmage kink sites but there are 'being covered in butter and thrown into a swimming pool' kink sites, you really really really would never get - the arrangement in Godspring - and yet from the inside it makes sense, which is why it's so upsetting -"

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"That is actually not one I've heard of."

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"I do not think it was very popular for feasibility reasons until the advent of VR."

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"I've heard of more infeasible kinks, just not the butter thing."

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Shrug. "Anyway, I think you can avoid most potential daeva disasters with a few lessons in being cautious, but understanding what the potential disaster cases are will help."

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Nod.

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Timothy rolls his eyes and tugs Cam towards him and kisses him. 

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This is cheering and Cam wags his tail.

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Oh good.

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Elsewhere he has a big stack of mostly-finished summoning circles. He puts one on the floor and stomps on the corners to get them to lie flat and goes and fetches rocks and smoothes it out so it's all perfect and then gets a pen and finishes it, neatly.

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Lo and behold! A demon! She has a tail and horns and has also gone in for digitagrade hooves.

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Cool!! He claps his hands delightedly. "Hi," he says. "I'm Maitimo."

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"Hiya, Maitimo. What're you up to?"

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"We're looking for demons interested in a long-term summons doing development work." Pronouncing 'development' takes some concentration. "I am in particular interested in talking to demons who might want to raise children on a long-term summons! Do you know anyone I should talk to?"

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"Uh, anybody who conjures parenting advice columns to sigh over, I guess. Mrindeh maybe."

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"How do I spell that?"

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The demon conjures it written for him.

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He takes the note gleefully. "Thank you! Can I get you anything? My world hasn't invented recorded songs yet but I can sing them, or you can have my magic dragon -" he digs it out of a pocket and it takes flight - "but not my magic car, I'm really attached to my magic car."

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"Nah, I'm okay," she laughs.

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"Okay! Have a nice day!" 

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"You too."

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He sends her home. He draws up a circle for the name she gave him.

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Mrindeh appears after a ten minute delay.

The resulting noise could only be heard by dogs, of which there are none present.

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He really likes it when people are obviously delighted to see him! He bounces. "Hi, I'm Maitimo," he says.

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"Hi Maitimo," squeaks Mrindeh. "I'm Mrindeh."

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"We're looking for demons who are interested in a long term summons to raise children! Someone -" he sends a mental image since the silly demon with hooves did not introduce herself - "suggested I talk to you!"

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"- are you okay, she's not, she's not very - nice -"

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"...she was very nice. She didn't even want my magic dragon. It's a good binding, too, Cam made me most of the circles and he's really careful. One of the murderdemons we had a circle for showed up and I don't think he liked me much but he couldn't do anything."

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"...murderdemons?"

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"Uh, people who the government is trying to summon because they killed a lot of people and they want to make them stop?"

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"...I don't know if she's on any lists but she ought to be."

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"...okay. What's her name? I'll tell Cam and Timothy and they'll fix it."

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"Klera."

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"Spelling?"

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Mrindeh conjures it up.

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He takes it and puts it carefully in his pocket. "So, do you know anyone who would like a long term summons to raise children?"

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"Besides me?"

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"Yeah. Well also you didn't actually say you wanted to but yeah."

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"I do, I do - I know some people, if you need more -"

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Nodnod. "We need lots. If you want to give me a list I will talk to all of them. Do you want a hug?"

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Nod nod nod nod nod.

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Hug!!!!

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Eeeeeeee!

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Poor demon. It would be very sad to want kids and think you couldn't have them. He pats her. 

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Snuggle snuggle pet.

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- "please don't touch my hair Elf hair is very sensitive sorry I should have said that sooner -"

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She flinches back. "Sorry - I didn't - I didn't know -"

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"Of course not, I didn't say. I should've said." Pat pat. "You're nice."

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...giggle.

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"Anyway I think the grownups want to talk with you about the terms for the long term summons thing because I might say something wrong. I'm just doing the interviews. So I will tell Timothy to summon you and then he will do that and then you can have as many kids as you want."

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"Thank you."

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He beams at her.

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She beams and makes a piece of paper and tries to remember names.

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He plays with his car while she does that.

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"I can't think of any more."

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"Okay! Thank you! I will tell Timothy to get back to you soon or write a note if there's a delay for some reason." Hug.

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Hug!

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"Do you want to go or do you want to stay while I talk to more people?"

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"I don't want to get in your way."

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"If you know the people you recommended then you probably wouldn't be getting in the way too much."

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"Okay. I'll stay."

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He carefully lays out another circle and copies a name from her list.

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A demon appears! (And so on, and so forth.)

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And eventually he proudly brings Cam a long list of demons who want to raise kids on a long-term summons in Godspring. And one demon who a different demon said was mean - "she was nice to me, though. It wasn't just the binding she wasn't trying to kill me at all."

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"Well, some people are only mean to certain targets."

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Nodnod. "Anyway Mrindeh asked about the government list of murderdemons and said she should be on it and I said I'd tell you. So I'm telling you."

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"She might already be," says Cam. "What's her name?"

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Piece of paper! He can barely spell in the tengwar and those are phonetic.

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Cam looks her up - "yep, she's already on a list."

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"Sorry, should I not have dismissed her."

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"It's okay, the binding was good but it wasn't designed for releasing a murderdemon under."

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He nods solemnly. "What did she do?"

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"Broke into a few houses, killed a few people. Left the kids though."

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"That's strange. It's not like grownups are less -" vulnerable, he sends as a concept rather than try finding all those syllables - "if you're a daeva -"

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"It's not any harder or easier to kill them but sometimes even bad people have hangups about who they'll be bad to. Won't hurt children, or women, or dogs, or nuns, or something."

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"I wonder why she hurts any people at all."

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"Couldn't tell you."

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"Should've asked." Sigh. "How's training the clinic volunteers going?"

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"We are getting inured to the Elves asking why they have to have locks and whether their publicly accessible bathroom will actually need to be cleaned that often."

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He valiantly resists the urge to ask why they have to have locks. His cheeks puff up like a chipmunk with all the not asking he is doing.

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"You need locks because otherwise people will steal stuff and you need to clean public bathrooms because people don't treat places they don't have to take care of nicely."

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He nods solemnly. "Do you think Elves're nicer than humans and daeva or do you think it's just that we have different circumstances?"

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"Elves are... lower-variance. You can grab a hundred random Elves and they'll probably all be peaceful and responsible, at least when it matters. If you grab a hundred random humans thirty of them will make terrible neighbors and ninety of them will go pretty much wherever their incentives and the path of least resistance lead them and a couple of them will be sociopaths and a couple of them will have solemnly devoted their lives to something stupid that they think is for the greater good and maybe, if you got the right hundred humans, you'll get one who's good all over, but even if it wasn't the right hundred humans they'll mostly have some virtues and those are as solid as Elf virtues."

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Nodnod. "It seems like it'd be much much harder to be a good prince of humans. I guess Timothy isn't a prince."

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"He is not."

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"And Midnight rules humans but he was mostly trying to win the war and not trying to love everybody and be worthy of their respect and do right by all of them."

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"Pretty different projects."

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"Both of them are kind of impossible, I guess."

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"Well, there are Sanity's Valar around now, winning the war might be easy with them."

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"Are they gonna do Kib's Arda or Midnight's first?"

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"Midnight's is different in some ways so they'll probably start with Kib's."

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He scampers off to go play.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm trying to think how much of this procedure Hazel can use. Maybe most of it, if the Statute was still in place..."

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"And if nobody investigated the dots for Statute violations."

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"If everyone involved was a Muggle there wouldn't be any statute violations."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Weren't you saying a while ago that if they produce magic they might be construed as violations even if it's not wizard magic?"

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"Oh, yeah, if we're anywhere near it. And daeva might get ruled non-Muggles." Sigh. "You know where we should really do next is spontaneous-babies world."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh?"

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"Servantmaking would be super useful for us and the summoning rollout will be indescribably easier when everyone has stuff to trade daeva."

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"Well, 'everyone'."

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"They can't all learn it?"

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"Can, don't."

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"Might be more motivated with summoning a thing. ...you can awaken golems that're people, right?"

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"Theoretically, not in practice. Kib made a line of them that talk and calculate and learn and such but do not appear to be people."

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"So not an urgent problem, at least."

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"In theory we'd have the same problem with AIs but no one's programmed one of those yet either."

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"Not anywhere?"

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"At least not so you'd notice. There are ones almost as bright and better conversationalists than Kib's line of golems but they just populate video games and are pretty definitively not awake."

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Nod. "Anyway, servantmaking sounds super useful."

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"Especially in places without the infrastructure to maintain technological robots and long distance lightspeed communications and such."

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"And that's kind of most of them. We can maybe put up satellites in Godspring but a shine setup would be less hassle."

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"I'm not actually sure it'd be easier to set up initially - and you can't train the locals to do shines, if their shines get lost they have to import replacements - but it's at least worth experimenting."

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So he drops Ambela a note asking when the competent Valar will be ready to take Kib's Arda's Melkor.

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Do they have an estimate on that?

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They are happy to do it next; they are not done explaining things to the current set of Valar but they could probably leave someone that job and send everyone else on to an Arda in more need. There should be a discussion about forking-and-reaching every single space Arda prior to the pardon of Melkor; logistically it will be bit difficult, since there are millions of them, and they don't really like forking off alt consent, but it should probably get consideration nonetheless.

In Ardas after Melkor has been pardoned it will take a Years-long war to imprison him again without breaking any continents. They are thinking about how to improve on that and they think they could get it down to two Years, but they'd need some extraordinarily powerful new form of magic to expect to do it overnight.

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Do they have in mind specific magic they'd need or do they just anticipate that something sufficient might exist?

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Eru has suggested it's not in principle completely impossible for some kind of magic to be sufficient to kill Valar (without destroying everything around them, even) but nothing they have could do it. Well, except Eru. They haven't asked him to help, they're not sure it's a good idea.

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Seems like a last resort.

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Yeah. Anyway, they can imprison a Melkor, they've done it before, and with two sets they can even ensure there aren't civilian casualties. But it won't go quickly. Thus the potential appeal of sending people through to all of the chip Ardas, what does she think about that?

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It seems like it might be one of the highest leverage things they could possibly do, especially if they can exponentiate the explaining things to Valar part as new ones are brought up to speed.

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They are optimistic about that! The Valar they're talking to don't understand things thoroughly enough to explain things yet but it's only been a few months, with all of them working on it as fast as they can they'll be capable of that within a few more Years at most.

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"There'll probably be some Ardas that'll pardon their Melkors in the meantime."

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"I suppose we could monitor their timelines through Bar and try to interrupt..." Can the Valar think of a quick functional way for non-Vala visitors to address a world with a Melkor about to be paroled - or about to break parole, if he could be reimprisoned then -?

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They expect their alts could easily be persuaded to delay parole by a visitor arriving from a world where he broke parole. We aren't very hard to convince to delay things, in general, when we haven't gotten the explanation about time being important. I think you could probably suggest they wait twenty Years to talk with us.

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Easy enough. They should get some people confident that their alts won't mind forking to man Bar and keep an eye on maybe a few dozen Ardas apiece.

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He knows some people he can ask.

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"I wish we had a way to deal with ones who are already loose. A black hole could obviously do it, just the collateral damage..."

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"Yeah. Black hole and a team of a hundred thousand fairies to evacuate everyone?"

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"They'd have to find them. Flat Valar can manipulate gravity but I don't know that a black hole would work if they did enough of it to save the planet."

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"Has Timothy tried his murder spell?"

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"On whom? No."

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"Are there not any suicidal Maiar? You'd think there'd be at least one."

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"I'd expect one of you to be the person to ask!"

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"I do not know a single suicidal Maia! Maybe Timothy can try to kill one of the oathed-harmless ones in Singularity? Maybe he can teach Cam the spell, since Cam is indestructible and Timothy is very squishy."

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"They have a self defense clause, won't hold still for it..."

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"We have invisibility, they wouldn't have to see it coming."

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"Unless they use other senses. But I can suggest to Cam that he learn the spell."

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"What would the collateral damage look like on the smallest possible black hole -"

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"I think it still eats the planet, unchecked - maybe a fairy could move it and only rip up half the continent with tidal forces -"

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"Maybe in Space Ardas where he's been paroled we can lie in wait and hole him when he leaves Valinor for Endorë."

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"That'd work if we timed it right and knew where to intercept."

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"All this magic, we've got to have some way to track him."

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"We can tell where he's been, probably, but catching him five days later might be another matter."

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"We can conjure for the ship, if not for him directly."

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"I'm a little worried that his exact route might be sufficiently path-dependent that we can't find him by looking for where his alts have gone when they made the trip, if we're going to lie in wait."

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"Maybe if we changed a lot of stuff prior to that, but do you think it'd vary if we've done nothing but sneak in to wait for him?"

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"Depends how he picks it. It's a long trip."

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"Maybe we could nip him on the way out, it's probably far enough from the planet that a small black hole wouldn't rip it up."

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"Or surround it with those magnetic shields that Cam has in his planetoid."

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"And then move it away afterwards. Ulmo'll grumble about the strange things the tides are doing but Ulmo grumbles about that all the time."

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"Poor Ulmo."

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"He wanted one sun," he tells Minor, who is reading a medical textbook in the corner. "One sun would hardly affect the tides. But everyone else wanted two and he was outvoted. He also wanted to leave us in Endorë."

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"Well, it sounds like if the Valar had been normal levels of incompetent that'd have been a good call."

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"Or if Elves had been normal levels of troublemaking. But coming to Valinor worked out well on the whole for our set."

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"What is a normal level of troublemaking?"

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"The level everyone other than Elves display, I mean. The Valar really wouldn't have handled it well, not at first - they'll be okay now - you read about Númenor, right -"

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"Yes."

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"No idea how to intervene on that one but I bet there are worlds coming up on it -"

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"It seems like it would be most efficiently headed off early, it's so terribly messy afterwards and then Eru involves himself..."

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"Yeah. ...summoning might fix it. Since mortality is the complaint. Unless the local Valar disable it, then people'd really have a grievance..."

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"Which of course they'd do until they were talked sensible."

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"Don't know how much attention they paid Númenor, maybe you could teach it without it coming to their attention, buy some time..."

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"You'd have to get Thauron out of the way."

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"Yeah." Sigh. 

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"Maybe the curse will work."

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"I left them a note suggesting they try it."

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"Going to find them a suicidal Maia or recommend they go with a live fire test?"

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"I'll look into suicidal Maiar but absent any I think we should still try it, it's by far the cleanest way if it works."

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"True enough."

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" - so," he says to Cam idly a while later, "do you want to learn some unforgivables?"

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"Plural?"

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"One usually doesn't pick up the Killing Curse first because it's the most intricate but you might have a really rough time on the mindset bits of the other ones, maybe you should just go straight for it."

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"I don't think I could do the Imperius on anybody I liked. At all. Which would complicate the consent part. Does that one work on animals?"

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"Yeah."

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"I wonder if it works on demonic animals."

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"It wouldn't be very hard to fetch some real ones, if no."

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"Yeah, but it would be interesting if it didn't."

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"I can try it if you want."

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Cam produces a demonic mouse.

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He tries to make it run around.

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It runs around. "Well, that's convenient," says Cam. "All right, so I want it to be my puppet and not do what it would otherwise do, namely flop over and overtax its mental capacity breathing and twitching its whiskers at the same time, is that it?"

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"Yeah -" and he demonstrates the set of wand movements repeatedly, slowly and then at proper speed - once you have a spell down you can cut corners there but not when you're learning it.

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Wand motions are annoyingly finicky. Cam practices that a lot. And then: this mouse is his and he made it and it will do what he wants. "Imperio."

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The mouse will run around. Timothy beams at him. "People are harder - which is one reason to expect Maiar and Valar to be yet harder - but there you go, you have mind control powers, good job."

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"I feel special." The mouse takes a bow. "Was the demonic mouse easier than an animal with more of a mind?"

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"I didn't notice a difference but I wasn't paying a ton of attention - I expect demonic people'd never throw you off, obviously, and most people throw you off when you're starting out..."

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"Do you have feelings about me getting ahold of Ister and the like?"

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"By all means go for it - it doesn't even do anything for you, does it, and anyway we're trying to get Melkor dead and I find myself very vehemently in favor of anything that accomplishes that -"

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"It does not. And yep."

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Hug. "It'll be very satisfying if this works and you can pop around ending them all."

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"How breakable are wands?"

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"I mean, you won't trip and snap them, but I'm sure a Vala could do it trivially. Can you consider it part of yourself hard enough?"

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"It'd have to be attached or encased. Will it work like that?"

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"Fully encased no, attached should be okay..."

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"It might not work, it's more made of wood than most parts of my body, but I'll try stuff."

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Nod. "Let me know when you want to try to kill your mouse."

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"What's the mindset for that?"

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"I finally got it down the day Minor died. It's just - this is unworthy of life, I want it erased -"

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"Is that one harder on human targets, do you know?"

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"I have only ever tried it on demonic kittens."

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"I thought you might have heard secondhand."

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"I could ask, but mostly even the sort of people who'll admit to knowing Unforgivables won't admit to casting them on humans."

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"Fair point. ...How much does literal aim matter, if I miss what happens -"

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"If you hit someone else I think they still die. If you don't hit anything living nothing should happen. Maybe it'll leave a dent, powerful spells do that occasionally."

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"So not for use in the open or crowds. How fast does it move, can I block it with stuff?"

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"Maybe if there's a necklace for reflexes, it's not instantaneous but I've never heard of anyone dodging it. Most people around Melkor would be orcs and we can get 'em back, though."

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"I'm imagining getting one of him and Sauron and the other finding shields."

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" - plausible, yeah. Could try to teach Minor, strike simultaneously..."

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Nod.

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"It might have to wait a couple years, though, I don't know if you can even learn them at that age. I was fifteen.... I wonder if Mingling's Valar can hold theirs still for you?"

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"Be useful data."

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Squeeze. "We don't have to ask but we probably should."

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"Yeah. Although, if it doesn't work, will that mean the curse can't kill Valar or that I'm just not very good at it?"

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"No idea. I could ask."

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"Ask who?"

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"I know a guy who tried casting it on a daeva and it didn't work. I don't know if that felt different from failing to cast it right but he will."

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"Ah, him. Will he answer an owl or will you have to go be creeped at again."

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"He'd answer an owl but he might lie, if I go in person I'll notice a lie."

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"Right. Eugh."

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Squeeze. "Bothers you a lot more than me, for whatever that's worth."

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"It's worth plenty, just, eugh."

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"You can come with if you want. He's already seen a demon and I'll need to summon someone as backup."

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"It would probably make me feel better to glare at him, am I allowed to glare at him."

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"Yeah, probably, just don't expect him to be - chastened, or whatever."

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"I won't."

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"Does 'mission: Avada Kedavra the Melkors' have any dependencies or should we just go whenever -"

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"Probably should ask the competent Valar if this has any downsides of which they're aware."

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"Sounds good."

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The competent Valar observe that if Valar can be permanently killed this will be very disruptive but experimenting does not make it moreso. Mingling's set is capable of letting Cam attempt to kill theirs but are debating whether execution is justified.

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"Well, we can still go visit the creep and collect his perspective."

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"Yeah. Now?'

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"Do I need to behave in any specific way around him? Not talk, try not to look like your boyfriend -?"

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"Oh, I was planning to introduce you as my boyfriend, why not? - is your Occlumency down that'll be important -"

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"I have not tried Veritaserum but I have got to the point Miranda was at when she threw it off like nothing."

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"Then I bet you're okay but you can have a drop if you want."

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"If it's not too scarce."

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"Since we're opening the door anyway I'm going to have Theodore run me some errands while we're out."

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"Oh, what errands?"

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"Grand larceny potions ingredients, mostly. I'll pay Hogwarts back later."

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Snort.

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"It's for the greater good!!"

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Cam tries a drop of Veritaserum. He announces that he is the Pope.

Kiss.

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Kiss.

 

 

And the next day they get Aaron to hold the door and Theodore goes off to steal potions ingredients and Cam makes himself and Timothy a shuttle.

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"You will have to direct me chez creep."

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"Yeah. That way. His name is George."

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"But I was having so much fun imagining that his parents predicted what he'd be like and named him accordingly."

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"You can continue to call him 'creep', just - I asked myself why I hadn't told you his name in the first place and it was something like 'I don't like thinking about him as a fully realized person instead of a source of information to navigate occasionally' and that's not really a tendency I endorse. So. George."

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"Fair enough."

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House! Fancy not-yet-Victorian manor, even.

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"Classy place."

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"Wizards have nice places. Don't explode it even if he's terribly annoying, there might be company and there're certainly house-elves."

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"Poor elves."

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"I doubt he is unusually abusive to his elves." Sigh.

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"Glowing character recommendation, that."

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"I got myself willingly involved with him, he hasn't been showing up at my house with questions. If I were like a very tiny bit worse at people I would spend a lot of time worrying that at some point you'd notice this and judge my choice of company." 

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"You had limited sources of dubious skills!"

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"Yes, I did! Not for much longer, I don't really see a use case for the remaining Unforgivable."

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"...yeah, I got nothing."

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"Was briefly tempted by Horcruxes when I was younger but now we've got much better options for that, too." They land. "You should probably put a shirt on."

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"What, lest I distract the creep with my abs?" Shirt.

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Kiss. "He might get jealous and then who knows what you would have to annoyedly prevent him from attempting to do."

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"I just don't like any of the ways you can get a shirt to be reusable with wings. Velcro, ugh. Buttons. Laces. Those vaguely feminine halter top things. Most of this behind the neck with my dexterity, moreover. If it amuses you to do so you can cut this off me later."

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"I have absolutely no complaints about your continual shirtlessness." The gate swings open for them. There are albino peacocks in the very groomed yard.

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"Did he go find albino peacocks or, like, bleach them?"

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"I don't know. Theodore might, but he'll be mad at me for having dropped by here again."

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"Oh?"

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"My little brothers are protective of me, in their own fashion, which involves in Theodore's case getting mad at me when I do things he thinks are stupid."

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"Incidentally should I freak out if anything other than a leveled wand comes up?"

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"Elves can do magic without one but he would have to give them instructions to do so, out loud. Don't accept food and drink obviously but he won't insult us by offering, a hat said 'Slytherin' when I was eleven so he has certain baseline expectations of my intellect."

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"We never did follow up on seeing if I could throw off potions altogether like drugs."

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"With how fast they wear off, even if you can't they wouldn't be much threat to you. I honestly don't expect a problem, you don't pick fights with people whose capabilities you don't know." They reach the main door. He knocks. 


An elf answers. The elf has clearly burned both of its large floppy ears recently. "Master Way is having an appointment?"

"Regrettably it would not have been possible to arrange one in advance."

"Master Way is having to wait in the parlor, then," the elf says, and lets them in. 

The parlor has house-elf heads. On the walls.

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"...are those real?"

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"Of course, master. This is a respectable house, we would not be having fakes."

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"...Why are they there."

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The elf blinks at him confusedly. "...there are some in the sitting room also?"

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"Is it customary for some reason to display taxidermied house elf heads, and if so, what is that reason."

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"Is showing how long has been a respectable house with elves, sir."

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"Aha."

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"You can go."

The elf leaves. Timothy seats himself.

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Cam sits next to him and looks at the elf heads.

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Squeeze. Sigh.

 

The door opens. 

It's a man in his fifties, maybe, with hair long enough Elves would find it indecent, and robes that are almost eye-catchingly black. "Way! You should really make appointments, dear, sometimes the grownups are busy."

"Won't be five minutes, I have a question."

"I'm not casting any more spells on winged people without more explanations of same."

"Cam's not here as a test subject, he's my boyfriend."

"Oh," he says amusedly, looking at Cam more than glancingly this time.

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Tail-lash.

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"He was prettier a couple years ago, you know."

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"I was imagining I'd make occasional cutting remarks but I can't actually think of a reply to that which manages to further clarify how appalling it was, well done."

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"Oh, he enjoyed himself, did he not mention that? What was your question, Timothy -"

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Cam settles a wing around Timothy.

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"Killing Curse on an invulnerable target, does it feel the same as failing to cast it properly in the first place or different?"

          "I could tell the difference."

"Thanks. We'll get out of your way."

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Up they get.

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Back to the shuttle. "Should've warned you about the elves, sorry, lots of families do that."

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"Do they behead them when they become more decorative than practical or wait for them to die?"

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"The former."

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"Ugh."

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"I know. Mother told ours she got a lot of use out of having them sit around tasting varieties of tea for her but usually once they can't do useful work -"

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'"They die of their own accord at that point anyway?"

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"Not right away but they decline pretty fast."

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"I suppose it doesn't bother them to be around. Heads."

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"Not that I know of. I really should have thought to warn you."

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"It's all right."

Shuttle.

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And away.

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"What reaction can he possibly have been hoping for with either of his less charming remarks?"

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"Curious what the dynamic between us was."

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"Oh? What does it look like when viewed through Creep Goggles?"

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"Uh, I have obviously found people with some new source of power so one of - they now control me, via magic or people I'm fond of or just ability to offer very strong incentives to cooperate - or I now control them, probably via magic but maybe you have a secret weakness or something - or we're allied, in which case what I'm getting out of it is obviously unimaginable power but what you get out of it is unclear, wouldn't just be sex..."

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"I get half-hour compliment monologues, obviously."

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"Some people are insufficiently imaginative about the sources of power available to me. But anyway, you check that by checking - are you supervising me or protecting me, do you care about me more than instrumentally, are you jealous of him -"

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"Please tell me I read a clear no on jealousy, if I ever wake up one day and am pleased to have anything Creep is pleased with himself for having in the way he's pleased to have it send me to the poppy gardens."

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"You did not come across as jealous, no. If when we met you'd wanted something for giving us Mars and medicine and summoning I really wouldn't have held it against you but now if you pull that I promise to promptly inform everyone that you are being impersonated."

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"Thank you."

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"Possibly not Kib. I'll inform everyone who thinks you're real in the first place." Kiss. "You keep mentioning the compliments but I have not actually given you a half hour of compliments since that day. Can this thing drive itself?"

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"It may get confused close to Hogwarts. And the trip doesn't take half an hour."

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"Okay, okay. I will take the time to come up with them."

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"It'll be best without interruptions." Wag wag.

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"And without distractions so you shall have to stop wagging your tail."

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"What happens if I forget myself and there is a wag at minute twelve?"

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"I shall have to begin all over. If you are too wiggly I might never reach the end."

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"Oh no! I would never find out what the last thing you appreciated was."

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"It wouldn't get boring, though, I could vary the emphasis and the turns of phrase. And add dramatic illustrative smoke signals."

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"Oooooh."

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They go back. They close the door. He congratulates Theodore on his potions theft successes. 

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"I should get underway on a potions curriculum."

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"You should. You should take Felix before you go kill an evil god, if it doesn't wear off after a few seconds."

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"There's really no reason it ought to do that if I don't want it to."

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"Polyjuice did but it was affecting how you looked, your indestructibility seems finicky about that."

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"I was trying not to turn into Miranda."

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"Oh, I didn't realize. In that case Felix'll probably last. It has a slight mood effect but I think it might be one you wouldn't hate - it gives you - justified extraordinarily high self-confidence?"

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"I can put up with that for a better shot at evil god killing."

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"Thought so. You should come upstairs so I can pay you very detailed compliments."

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"Okay."

He comes upstairs and sits on his tail.

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He giggles. "I won't actually get distracted. Well, I will, but I have this lovely necklace, see, I can come up with things to say and find you distractingly delightful. I  doubt this was the intended use of the necklace but it was a me who invented it so I don't doubt it that much." Snuggle. "I love you, Cam. I love how good at using your resources you are, and how much fun you have with new ones - we grow up with magic, you know, I think sometimes we take it for granted, but even most people who discovered it in an abandoned house at seventeen would just see adventure, or maybe profit, not the opportunity to turn the world on its head as quickly as it could safely be done. When we figured out Miranda was a you I was glad there was a you who was a wizard, because it'd mean we wouldn't miss anything, wouldn't misuse what we had, wouldn't take careless risks - but also wouldn't be satisfied - there's a kind of person who considers everything a careless risk once things are pretty much all right for them and the people they love, or at least the people they have to see face to face. I'm not even sure I'm not that sort of person, just with a tendency to consider everyone everywhere mine. But you're not. And so even knowing already who Miranda was, and that she was delightful, and that she would be a tremendous asset in fixing everything within our reach, it was still reassuring to know she was a you, and so everyone in our reach could grow and grow and grow and what we wanted wouldn't change... I was so glad there was a you who was a wizard. And now you are actually a wizard and that's even better."

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"Will you also not be prohibitively distracted if I kiss you occasionally during this exercise."

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"Gosh, I don't know, I think I could cope but it might make it harder to definitively say how long it has been."

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"I'm recording again, we can check the timestamps." Kiss.

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Kiss. "In that case I find myself without objections. You have a very unshakable sense of yourself and it's adorable. I - find the alts thing vaguely surprising, if pleasantly so, I don't think I would always turn out all right, too much of who I am is wrapped up in what other people need me to be and what I need to be to accomplish the things I want done - maybe I just don't exist in societies that wouldn't raise a me into someone the rest of us would recognize, I don't know, but I feel like you could come in anything - more faces, more species, worse circumstances, weirder circumstances - and you'd turn out the same because you're not getting yourself from the world around you anyway. It feels very - solid, to be around. I can plan more confidently because you are so straightforwardly and irrevocably and unshakably you."

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Cam's tail escapes from where it is sat on. Wag wag.

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"I cannot believe you went so long without a tail, incidentally. It's a very important tail. I can hardly imagine you without it. I like how meticulous you are. Some people are careful because they want to be a careful person and some people are careless because they just want to get things done but you very much want to get things done and are still thoughtful and careful about all of the risks and drawbacks and complications of doing them. There are people I know around whom I now have the urge to grab them by the ear and drag them to you and say to them 'see, this is what being careful is for, and yes, it's supposed to be for something, not just a virtue divorced from the benefits of the mistakes you avoid and the costs of going slowly - you are very efficient, that is another thing I like about you, if you have something to move forward on you are moving forward on it. I would admire that even independent of admiring the projects you are moving forward on but your really excellent taste in priorities definitely helps. I think it is adorable that there is a demon medical school and you went to it, have I mentioned that? Demons are all indestructible and mostly do not get summoned for medicine but you had downtime and so spent it going to medical school. I find it tremendously satisfying whenever something you picked up during what must have been a very tedious century and a half turns out to be tremendously valuable to us now that we're fixing the multiverse as fast as we can reach it. I'm pretty sour on gods who like stories but if I had to be a god who liked stories 'and then everything he'd learned along the way was desperately needed on millions of worlds and they spent the next chunk of forever fixing all of them' would be my kind of story."

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Giggle. Smooch. "I love you. You should be able to imagine me sans tail just fine, I looked like Kib."

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"Kib's posture and movements and so on are very - I would want the person who did that to him dead off no more information than the way he moves his head when someone walks into the room. I assume you were not like that."

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"...yes, true."

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"I also, unlike some people we met today, think adults are prettier than teenagers."

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"He's in his forties even if you don't count the past life, he just got stuck that way."

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"Yes, I know, but eighteen's young to be stuck at. - what happens to summoners who die old, do they slowly deage or do they magically appear young -"

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"Appear young. Somewhere between eighteen and forty, usually somewhere in that range they're reasonably happy with. Limboites work the same way. My mom looks twenty and my dad looks mid-thirties."

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"Are deaf people still deaf? Insane people still insane?"

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"No unless their self-concept can't accommodate working ears, and sometimes."

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"Huh. But we were talking about you. I admire how consistent you are with your principles, even where they're inconvenient, and how you don't get tired of applying them or make excuses or exceptions. I admire how good you are at - finding where a confusion is, when you're encountering something new, and clarifying it in terms that the other person'll understand. I really enjoy your sense of humor - are you all as snarky as Kib all the time, quietly -"

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"I'm less fatalistic about it but yes. You would have had to meet Miranda earlier to get her before she learned to self-censor."

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"Maybe somewhere we will find a four-year-old you and Mingling will at last consent to share his Cadillac and everyone can appreciate being snarked at by a Bell who has not yet learned any tact."

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"I'm not sure the snark has come in yet, age four. Might take a couple years past that to fully develop."

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"Landlords," he says loudly, "if you're seeking inspiration I want to meet a tiny snarky Bell." And then more compliments.