"With magic?"

"Some magic, some being extremely fast and strong and not needing to rest. Which I suppose is also magic."

Nod.

"The... Orvaran government is eventually going to want to evict you all. The wards will help, they won't be able to even hurt you very much very easily, let alone kill you, but—I'd rather it didn't come to that at all."

"We'll go to the poles. We won't make you any trouble."

"Thank you. I would like to move as many reds there as possible, let you have your own nation or something."

"Nobody's going to want to trade with us, we'll have to be self-sufficient and we'll have to be able to defend ourselves from anyone who wants the land once it's nice."

"Magic," she says. "That's part of why I want to teach you. And maybe I'll develop some ritual that completely cleans anything so you can in fact trade."

"If people buy it."

"Yeah. I'm not yet sure how to get to that part, but—keeping you alive first is more important."

"Thank you."

"Of course."

"...it's not an of course."

"It should be," she sighs. "It's not a hard question, everyone is a person, everyone is worthy of protection and happiness and life, this uncleanness thing is a fiction that got way out of hand and should be long gone with your state of technological advancement and yet."

Awkward silence.

"So at least from me it's an of course."

"If you say so."

Nod.

They go back to what they were doing.

And after a bit she calls Aitim.

He doesn't answer but calls her back. "Sadai."

"Hello. How are things going?"

"Well. You?"

"I have given them food and water and medicine and health and warded the place, if anyone tries to raze it or shoot at it they'll be mysteriously inefficient."

"To my knowledge no one intends to bother, might set off the ones who weren't in the test city."