A Lost boy somehow gets even more lost.
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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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Like prayer. That would fit the metaphor he was trying to draw out, yeah... and it makes sense, if he takes for granted that they're petitioning the Fae or some aliens or whatever to abduct/create a new being...

"Can people make people who can't make people?"

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"You can make them, uh, catatonic? If that's what you mean? I don't know if you can make them missing the ability the way they can be missing a... hand... instead of just making them not using it, though. Seems like a pretty academic question."

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"As in, making them not interested in making new people, or too scared to, or something?" He's not exactly pretending to believe this hypothetical explanation for his presence more than he does, but it seems worth bringing up even if it makes him feel a tingle between his shoulder blades, a whisper of air against the back of his neck.

He wonders how much he would be questioning his identity and memories if he didn't have obviously magical effects going on that people here seem confused by. Even the idea that he's a botched summon whose memories didn't fade wouldn't explain the way he entered the world.

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"Right."

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Just how fine-tuned is this trait selection, exactly?

"How many... personality parts... can a person be made with? Does making someone who doesn't want to make someone cost other parts that you might want someone to have?"

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"Well, you can't contradict yourself or the contradiction'll resolve itself somehow, but you can make people any which way as long as it all fits in one person."

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"But as long as nothing contradicts, can you include as many things as you want? I don't know how skilled people I've are at things they don't spend their time doing, but is there anything that stops someone from being made as the best sailor, farmer, hunter, tailor, potter, glassblower, singer, dancer...?"

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"Well, if they never practice some of those things because they don't have enough time they'll fall out of practice, but you can start them with plenty, sure."

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"If this ship crashed on an uninhabited round that suddenly appeared, would everyone here have the skills to start an entire town and do all the things it would need, without making anyone new?"

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