"I mean... maybe it will cancel out a little with the not-contagious thing?" says Aurin dubiously.

"On the other hand," he says, "with the not-contagious thing, it becomes totally safe for me to obnoxiously walk around in natural form. I mean, I'm going to wait for the not-contagious thing to be confirmed common knowledge first, I'm not about to take stupid risks with other people's wings. But I can't imagine anybody'll love me for it, even so."

"Oh, hell, Mial, why would you do that? You'll just spook people."

"Well, I'm only going to do it once their reason to be spooked has been thoroughly proved gone," he says. "And I'm not gonna do it all the time. But sometimes I just feel an intense need to be obnoxiously a shren."

"The language hasn't caught up yet, I'm not sure it's going to. Somebody tells their forty-year-old that it's okay and there's been a series of miracles and Draconic still says aieeeeeee and then you walk down the street...?"

"Oh, fuck Draconic," Mial growls.

"I did not solicit contractors to install it in my head, I'm just saying!"

"Ugh. You have a point. I will limit my obnoxiousness strategically," he says. "Maybe I can call up the miracle worker and ask him to fix Draconic while he's at it. Now that would be the obnoxious act of shrenhood to end all obnoxious acts of shrenhood. Near-literally. But," he sighs, "probably there are some people who are actually attached to the way it works now."

"I might wish it worked differently but I don't think I want anybody fucking around with it," says Aurin. "It's - it's basic."

"It hates me and I hate it back," says Mial.

"You've needed it a few times. It's - it has other words too."

"I'm not sure it's worth it."

"Please don't do rash things with - with community resources."

"I'm not going to fuck up Draconic for everyone," he says. "No matter how much I want to."

"Okay, good."

"I'm just saying, if I had the chance to speak a language that didn't hate me... if I could just for fuck's sake change 'shren' so that it meant, you know, dragon whose wings don't work. Which is what you get if you explain shrens in any sensible way to anybody who is not contaminated by this fucking vicious mind control device we call a language."

Aurin does not have anything to say about this, he just sort of looks at Mial and sighs slightly.

Yes. Sigh.

"Anyway, any further evidence that the mind control device doesn't impose sanity that you have to share?"

"Nope."

"Do you have six more people to cause to spit-take or do you want to play a board game?"

"Who else am I gonna tell? Grandfather? He didn't even call Dad about the miracles. Dad had to hear it from your mom."

"Yeah, she mentioned. There's still some chance that he's planning to turn up dramatically after enough time has passed that he figures there's no way you're still a shren," Aurin says, pulling a board game from the shelf for such things at near-random.

"How much do you want to bet?"

"Last time I made a bet with you I was out five aaberik that had spent a few decades markedly deflating," Aurin says. "I don't know if it's likely and I'm not coughing up any coins over it, but you can't rule it out yet."