"Makes sense. - does it make any sense to ask how you feel about being a Sadness?"

"I'm proud of being a sadness."

"Huh. Why?"

"I'm an important part of Riley. And I'm- who I am. And I used not to like myself so now I try to like myself a lot."

"Progress!"

Sadness smiles and nods.

"Yeah."

"I have no idea what to say to Riley. I'm sort of trying to figure out what I'd want to ask about if someone claimed to be speaking to my younger self on behalf of my autonomous-person emotion of sadness, but she'll probably have completely different questions than I would have."

"I don't know what she'll ask, it's not something she's thought about before. We could ask the other emotions before we contact Riley-as-a-whole and try to figure it out? She'll want to know whether other peoples' minds are like hers, but we don't know that.

I want to make her worry about bad stuff happening to imaginary people. But I don't think she can stop imagining bad things entirely. And trying could be bad for her."

"Yeah, it could. A subtle artist might be able to change it so she can imagine things the way I do, but it would be so dangerous to try and I'm the only one around..."

"Oh. Why would it be dangerous?"

"...because it would involve messing with her mind and nobody even has practice doing it since nobody imagines things that way where I'm from."

"Yeah.

And I guess there isn't a way for you to get practice safely, either."

"Nope. It's a problem with telepathic arts, all the practice has to be on someone. The safe way is very tentatively with someone who has experience supervising so they can undo anything you do."