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A Lost boy somehow gets even more lost.
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It began as a normal morning in the endless forest of the Hedge, which is to say, it lasted about 9 hours because Danny kept walking continuously, with only short breaks to rest his legs and drink some water.

Patterns are hard to find in the Hedge. Or maybe they're too easy to find, deceptively easy, and then they disappear like a rug pulled out from underneath at the worst moment.

Still, one pattern that holds up relatively well is that most things don't stop traveling at the crack of morning. Which means one of Danny's basic survival strategies in this weird world a step between infinite others is that, if he finds a safe place to sleep, he leaves it as soon as the sky starts to lighten, so as not to get caught dozing if someone else arrives, and so he can keep moving between places while most other things and people are asleep.

He was having a bit of bad luck finding some food today, which isn't the huge problem it might be in a normal forest. The fruit here doesn't seem to ever rot (unless it rots within a minute of being picked, or as soon as it turns night/morning, or if it gets touched by any water, or...) and even a handful of nuts or berries seems to fill his stomach and keep him energized for "days" at a time. And if all else fails, he has his bow and can find some animal to hunt, though that's more obviously dangerous. It's hard to spot any birds through the misty treeline, and even the not-obviously-magical animals here are rarely defenseless.

He wasn't even particularly hungry when the day began, but he's learned over the years of having a really stretched out eating cycle to be extra sensitive to the differences between "full" and "no longer full" and "not really hungry" and "okay maybe I could eat" and he tries to get a head start on foraging around then before it gets to "I'm actually rather peckish," or worse, "food would sure be great about now," let alone the actually bad, "I notice I'm hungry."

When he was a kid, his mom once told him they should never shop while hungry because then they'd buy too many things they don't need. A similar principle applies in the Hedge, where you really want the luxury of saying no to some of the things you come across. Not because they wouldn't taste good, but because they might taste too good, and then you're stuck in a clearing eating rainbow flowers forever, or biting a carrot that reverses your gravity to send you screaming into the sky, only barely able to hold onto the deceptively normal looking root.

That had happened his first ~week here, and had been something of a learning experience.

So he pushed his way through stinging hedges and thorny bushes for hours on end, searching for a snack he could save for later, then, failing to find that, a snack he could eat now, and then, failing to find that, a meal he could eat soon, and then, failing to find that...

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"- so, once you're talking about making people to be useful in any way, you probably also want them to live a long time, so you make them as physically youthful and healthy as you can. But you want them mentally mature, their full height, not still in the middle of that developmental thing I forget the word for."

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Puberty. Probably. "Right, that all makes sense to me, but... the girl who was made just needed to speak a new language. Which they did, really well, so I guess it worked out okay?"

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"...I should hope so? Presumably she could do other things too if they had any sense."

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Okay, deep breath, start over.

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Sand sand.

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"What confuses me," he says after a few moments, "Is that I don't really understand the limits of making people. When the girl was made, the one a few years younger than me, she said they made her early, by multiple weeks." He can't remember how many exactly, but it was more than a month. "But if people normally can be made once per week, I just don't see what was limiting them from making her an adult..."

 

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Wait. Maybe he misunderstood this whole time? What had she said, exactly? Something about the math turning out alright...? Maybe her being made early had nothing to do with her age...

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"...I don't think early has anything to do with younger. If, again, they had any sense. If they had sense, I'd assume they had her plan drawn up, added your language onto it, and made her ahead of schedule but at some normal age, probably just about full height and done developing. If, again, they had sense, I don't think they're making somebody every week! That doesn't really matter unless you want a whole lot of people in a really short time frame."

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Okay he needs to rethink everything he thought he knew about how people are made and at what age. He wishes he could remember his conversations with Chesabit more clearly, but the idea that she was made earlier than expected and the fact that she was younger than everyone else on board the sail combined to give him a false impression that's persisted until now... though he's not sure the other guy is right, Chesabit certainly didn't seem like she was "done developing" unless he drastically underestimated her age...

Either way, it makes him wonder how many other presumptions he has about this world.

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Sand sand. "I guess I must have misunderstood some things. Do you mind if I ask you more... maybe stupid or obvious questions?"

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"Go ahead, why not."

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"Thanks." Sand sand sand as he tries to sort through his thoughts and questions, to prioritize... "I think I'm most often confused about just... the actual process of making someone? I don't plan to make anyone myself, but I've never seen it done and no one's explained how to do it. I guess it's something everyone just is made knowing? And I've worried about making someone accidentally, assuming I even can, since it sounds like it just requires imagining them in enough detail."

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"- it doesn't even require that, if you don't care how they turn out. Please don't make anyone!"

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"Well I don't want to, really, but if I don't know how, is that enough to avoid it?"

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"Not trying to should do it, but don't - try to just to see if you have the right idea, or anything -"

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"Yeah, I won't!" Sand sand sand. "...But it is actually a decision, then, there's a clear sense of wanting to that's required?"

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"Normal people do not make anyone on accident. But carelessly made people can have all kinds of things wrong with them so you should be very careful!"

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"...okay so the problem is I can't tell if you're saying 'normal people' as in people who are not unusual in any particular way or... normal people as in people who are made to be normal, or something else, so it's not... actually helpful to be told that normal people don't do it accidentally because maybe you mean it's actually just never happened, or maybe you mean only people with some weird special thing about them sometimes do it, and the thing is I don't think I'm normal so if it's possible to make someone accidentally, not just carelessly but by just thinking the wrong thing for long enough, or... I don't know, wishing really hard, or feeling really lonely, or something... that's the thing I want to make sure I don't do."

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"How would someone... be normal... without being made to be normal? - I know you're not normal, that's why you need to be careful, but I don't know if you have, uh, involuntary twitches or something that could affect your mental actions?"

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"Not... really?" He sands thoughtfully for a moment. "But I'm not sure what counts as a mental action? Just as an example, if wishing really hard that a kind of person exists counts, then... yeah, I sometimes have emotions that make me feel that. If most people are made in a way where they don't involuntarily have those sorts of feelings, and I wasn't made that way... you see?"

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"I don't think emotions are quite the thing? If I'm missing my boyfriend, and wish I was hugging him, usually I don't move my arms about it? You have to not move your... mental arms."

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"Okay, that is a bit of a relief. Is there anything else that you'd put in the category of 'moving mental arms' that isn't the movement needed for making someone?"

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"I'm not sure what you mean?"

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Right, what does he mean, exactly...

Sand sand sand. Adjust body to reach a new bit of the hull... Sandsandsandsand....

"Well, if we're talking about our actual bodies, we could say there's a bunch of different kinds of movements, even just for arms and hands. There's a clutching motion." He demonstrates, arm reaching outward, fingers closing. "A blocking motion." Hand into fist, elbow twisting to jerk his forearm laterally across his front in a way that tilts his body, which he quickly stabilizes. "A waving motion, and so on. They don't all feel the same, but they all feel like I'm moving my arms, because I am."

He goes back to scouring the hull. "If there's a thing that feels to you like a mental arm movement, which leads to making someone, I'm checking if there are things that count as mental arm motions besides the one that makes people? If it's like waving, not saying it feels like that I just mean as an example, is there anything else that feels like moving mental arms, even if nothing happens when you do it?"

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"No, no, that was a metaphor. I'm not - moving arms in particular, or rather that isn't the thing I'm not doing to avoid making people. I think I have heard people compare it to prayer but I'm not the praying type personally? Nothing else is similar."

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