"You've only met elementals who've been enslaved for a while. Wild ones are different. They are not going to have coalesced mid-cloud with fact-checking habits that happen to suit you."

"Do they have other personlike variance in - personalities - such that eventually we'll get one who'll attack or murder humans for fun -"

"I can't rule it out but all the stories I have about pre-slavery elemental/human contact don't get worse than 'dangerous misunderstanding'."

"Then hopefully we can avoid hostility arising. I'll work on it."

"Thanks."

And how does everybody feel about 'wild elementals: kind of like birds' as an argument?

Many locales have laws on the books against reds doing anything to attract birds. That at least should be copied over.

Yeah, that seems reasonable.

Since the elementals can read, perhaps red districts should have signs: Elementals Not Welcome, Do Not Land Here.

He will push for the signs to say 'please'.

They can A/B test that.

Uh-huh. Are there more of the elementals.

Yes. There seem to have been more than eight to start with, some in less monitored locations, and there are a few more happening every day.

" - there'll be billions soon enough -"

"I have no idea how the rate is determined. There aren't billions at home, we'd have noticed billions, even before we started hunting them they were hard to find."

"Relative to some environmental feature? We didn't have any until recently - how long do they take to coalesce, did it start when you arrived -"

"They are neither observable nor conscious till the moment they're all coalesced so I don't know if there's some preparatory process stage. If we assume it's instant it started happening when there were more than a couple dozen of them here."

"But it can't be relative to current numbers or you'd still have more. To our population maybe but why would it be tied to that - I hope they are universally non-hostile..."

"From the sample I have information on they start out really innocent and simple, which isn't necessarily safe but isn't hard to make safe. You could talk to some of them about it - some of the ones from my world I mean, although I guess you could try to chase down one of the new ones if you wanted."

"I'll try the immigrant ones first." Would any of them like to talk with him about how to make Amenta safe for all the newborn elementals.

This newly rescued Wood is up for that.

He appreciates it. He's curious what being a new elemental is like.

"We're interested in different things than - I don't know what to call you-and-humans. Flesh people? We're interested in different things than flesh people at least until we've spent a lot of time around flesh people. It wouldn't have occurred to me to try to meet other elementals or find out who spoke the languages I knew on my own for a very long time."

"We could encourage people to think of this as - some kind of natural phenomenon, rather than as strange people appearing, but obviously thinking of you as less people-like has been awful for you also. What would be the best way for people to treat new elementals, ignore them or..."

"I guess it depends on what they're doing. If one is just sitting in a forest playing with magic you can probably just leave them alone. If they come where you are and they seem curious you can talk to them."