...Well, on the sort of bright side, if she goes and kneels at a minder and tell them she's being contacted by aliens, they'll think she's insane and probably getting above herself. So that narrows down her decision space conveniently.

...Do humans need help? Yeah they probably do, they do blow each other up and torture each other and all that. Not exactly something she's had a lot of personal concern about, but she doesn't have personal concern for about any of her missions, and that doesn't really matter very much, to her.

The idea of someone wanting to help mages is weird. Maybe it's an alien mage from somewhere where all the mages are renegade. 

This definitely sounds interesting (to say the least), and - like something she'd rather be happening with her than without her, also. If she can get that without being torn to pieces. (If it's real. But if it's not what it says it is it's still something, and really about the same applies, actually.)

She wonders, in the same way she heard the telepathy, but maybe plausibly deniably not with deliberate intent, what she might be wanted for.

To Anica: 'The dragonets were my people! I don't have a people right now. I had to step down from having the dragonets. I can ask other people about humans, I suppose. The dragonets are kind of like your lizards, but bigger, with six limbs. They like to sing and they don't have ways of talking to each other from across the planet and they don't write. They don't like big groups too much, but big groups are better at putting away food for hard winters. But even their big groups are like tiny human groups. They don't seem at all like humans or mages, so - how would you describe a mage to someone who'd never met one? Or a human?'

To Shiarl: 'Thank you. I think I need lots of help. You seem to know a lot about local problems - do you know if there's any that're really easy to fix?'

To Elvira: 'I need people to help me understand humans and mages. They're all very confusing, and nothing like the dragonets I used to watch over. I also don't know what the biggest problems are - I can see what people are dying of, and I'm working on the stuff that looks easy, but there might be something I'm missing.'

Well that's cool! Did they have mages? Or - 'empowered' or whatever humans call aliens'-and-stuff-magic-people-who-don't-count-as-mages.

Fair warning, if she asks most humans things, they'll tell her that mages are terrible and dangerous and need containment and all that. Anica actually happens to know a human who will not do that, and probably knows the normal human amount about humans, if star dragon person is interested in recommendations. 

Hm. Well, here's some biological facts! Mages are like humans biologically, they just have the magic on top of that. Here's how they have kids! (Humans have kids with each other. Mages these days come from artificial wombs.) Mages have magic. Here's a bunch of facts about mage magic. Mages have alimentation needs. Food, water, the opposite processes to those, sleep, breaks, entertainment material/opportunities, contact with other mages. Access to the outdoors is like, disagreed on. Humans also have stuff like that though they don't call them alimentation needs. She's guessing humans probably also need all of those, though she's only sure about the food, water, opposite processes, sleep part.

Mages probably spent all their lives getting tortured and threatened with torture a lot and are going to be afraid of stuff. Humans generally think mages are super awful and torturing them is a great idea. Mages can't want to die (though they can want to do stuff that will also happen to make them die). Humans can want to die, actually, though also want to not die a lot. Humans like having stuff and sometimes fight each other for it.

She's not sure if this is the right sort of description. She'd probably want to check what sorts of things whoever she was describing this to expected or knew about or might want to know about.

She knows about problems mages she's been with have, and that other mages in this country probably have the same or similar ones, and that mages in other countries have a lot of similar ones but it isn't all the same.

She knows some things about human problems, she thinks, but it's from tv and books and class, she doesn't think it'd be the same as really knowing. But she can try.

It would depend on what was easy? ...Humans can get sick and die if they drink water that isn't clean, and if she understands correctly, the same places with a lot of unclean water don't have very good medical systems. If there was a way to make all the water clean, that would probably help? Some humans are in pain all the time, and some of them can't get pain medications (most of which are magical) or get to a medical place. Is copying pain medications easy? Some mages are born with something that doesn't usually happen, like purple fingernails. They get punished for it, their entire lives. Is hiding something like that before their minders notice easy? 

...If there's a renegade mage alien trying to do something involving mages, and she's helping, and anyone finds out about it, they will absolutely tear her to pieces, and then some. They will interrogate her until they are very, very sure she has nothing left to tell them - wouldn't, couldn't keep it from them if she did - and then they will tear her apart in full renegade-attacking-people fashion, and if she's very lucky they might decide she's too dangerous to keep around long and kill her early.

(That doesn't feel lucky, right now. But she worked for the Authority of Mages, and she walked into their cells to do healing, over and over, and she could never talk but sometimes whoever she was there for could (in as much as that counted as talking). And mages can't want to die, but they can want it to just stop, please, very very badly.)

She's not seen a chance to run away and stay away, yet. But she knows what she would do if she saw one. And running away isn't as bad as actual attacking people (incentives), but staying away, by planning it, and tricking them - by using the skills they taught her - that would be almost as bad, at least. It isn't like she's never looked at a risk and decided it'd be worth it, before.

She could go kneel at a minder. But she knows, pretty much, she isn't going to do that. She could say stop talking to me. That - might not work, actually, she doesn't actually know how alien mage would feel about that. But she could. Could stop responding.

She isn't going to do that either. Whatever this is, she doesn't want it to go off and happen without her, where she can't even see it. She wants it.

Aliens talking in your head is not a thing. Games in your head are a thing, and a game in which you get above yourself with renegade mage aliens - well the field mage got ideas, and it's not like they expect that to never happen, even with all their prophylactics. She will scream and plead and they'll want to be very sure she's learned a lesson. But she can probably be sorry enough, in the end. (She runs it through her head, over again, composes again how she might say it to a truth spell).

And she thinks, 

Well, on the scale of how much mages know about humans, she is probably up there - she's had a lot of training on pretending she's a human agent, and she's been out on missions doing that, and thus, like, actually been around and interacted with humans who weren't her minders and such. Still presumably less than humans.

She doesn't know what's confusing, though she thinks she's not bad at understanding things that are, so maybe she can do something about that? And she doesn't find much of anything about mages or humans confusing per se, so.

She doesn't really know how to sort problems by bigness, or much about that. (She also has no idea what looks easy). Based on what she spends most of her time doing, the CIA thinks an important problem is terrorists or whatever else they call them, but she's not sure if that says anything about how big the problem is as opposed to it being their job. ...She knows what things their trainers thought it was important enough to make sure they were able to talk about when they were in cover? That probably has anything to do with bigness, at least from human perspective.

Uh, global climate change? Nuclear war? Some country developing a magical superweapon/superplague/something? The last two she doesn't think are problems in the sense of happening right now, more in the sense of people being worried about. Hostility to democracy and Western values? She's not sure if that's actually a problem or just something the CIA and their friends don't like. 

To Anica: the dragonets didn't have some people who could use magic and some who couldn't. She hadn't seen them being able to use magic - she would just give them magical things. It didn't actually occur to her to make any magical, though if she could have she would have made most or all of them magical.

She wouldn't mind a recommendation for a human to talk to, actually. That would be helpful.

That sort of description is actually helpful, though she's gotten a lot of it by observation. Thank you.

To Shiarl: she can do clean water, but not trivially - still, it seems like a good use of her time. (She quickly does research about what humans mean by 'clean water,' in case any of it's different from what the dragonets had, and sets about doing that more thoroughly than she'd already been. Chemicals, especially, she'd been missing those in her sweeps for pathogens.) 

Copying pain medications is, however, trivial. How would Shiarl suggest she get the pain medications to people? Would they find suddenly appearing medication alarming?

Hiding things from minders might be a bit complicated. Still, she thinks it should be doable, especially simple things like color.

To Elvira: terrorists are people who kill each other for political reasons, right? She's already been making it so that people fighting don't hurt or kill anyone not centrally in the fight. She can make it so that bullets and bombs and stuff stop hitting everyone, too, though.

What's global climate change? What's nuclear war? How would she recognize if someone was trying to make a superweapon?

She doesn't think people's values are really her business at all. She mostly cares that whoever their last divinity was, they were doing a really poor job at stuff like 'making sure people aren't dying from stupid things.' It's not divinity's business what people believe.

So is she something other than a dragonet, because it sounds like she uses magic. Both in that she just suggested so and in that telepathy.

Recommendation! Human is in another country, but she's guessing that's probably not a problem. Human's name is Eugenia Carter, she's over in the United States, she used to be in their army, she was working as a security guard last time Anica got some info but that was a bit ago. ...She's not sure what kind of locating information is needed here, she can like, give more details on when and where they were in the same place but she doesn't really have the ability to draw a picture or anything...

Sure thing!

Yeah! She's not a dragonet. She didn't make the dragonets, not really - they happened accidentally - but she made the world they live on.

She'll contact Eugenia Carter next! The mental sense of identity is enough; she doesn't really know how to explain that but she knows who Anica means.

...Wow. Very wow. Like, making the sky-dragon was already telling her there was a pretty insane power level involved here. But wow.

Is that a type of person there is, ones who go around world-making? Are more of them going to show up? What's 'happened accidentally' here?

Oh good, because she doesn't think she was going to be able to manage database access anytime soon. Well, at least on her own. 

She hasn't ever met anyone else like her, but she doesn't know how you'd get a universe with stuff in it from nothing - and this one already had Rules, which seems to be the type of thing a universe only has if it contains beings like her.

She doesn't think more will definitely show up - she was in the dragonet universe for a very long time, alone - but she doesn't know how she got here, either.

She was testing her ability to make random animals without thinking through all the design stuff and some of them turned out to be people! She'd already been trying to nudge some existing animals to be more people-y, but that hadn't worked.

She knows that! Well, sort of, they did have like, science lessons, and she's learned some more stuff for research work reasons, and she's read some books, but that's got the usual limits of 'what was in the lessons' and 'what books happened to be around'. But she can totally say things about the Big Bang and evolution and stuff! What're Rules?

...Well hopefully if more show up they won't be like, horrible, and won't try to start a fight, because that sounds like a problem. Also if there were world-making beings around already she's not sure she has a great opinion of them. Also seems like they might like mages specifically suffering for some reason. Which isn't great.

Wow! That's definitely very cool. How does she tell people from not-people?

Rules are things a being like her can't do or change! The ones here had when she arrived are: A being's mind is protected. The past is inviolate and unchangeable. The future is unpredictable and changeable. The natural laws are absolute.

She's declared new Rules in her dragonet's universe but not here, and is hesitant to try since declaring Rules around souls was what seems to have triggered her no longer being in the dragonet universe.

She definitely disapproves of any being like her who made a whole group of people just to suffer. That seems unsporting.

She can't mess with any beings' minds, but people are... Different? Even when the dragonets hadn't invented language yet, there was a something about them than non-people animals didn't have. But she's also only ever interacted with a few types of people.

Huh! She definitely didn't know that was a thing, at all. Is that like, something humans know about and she just didn't hear about it, or do humans not know either? Where do they come from, in cases where she doesn't declare them?

(And she hadn't been thinking about implications of world-making amounts of power with respect to minds - mages can't really mess with minds, so she's not used to thinking the other way - but now that it's come up, minds being protected sounds rather good to have. Of course if you didn't have it you could like, mind control humans into not doing the sorts of things they get up to. But that seems like it would probably cause problems especially for anything more complicated than 'don't torture people so much', and given the downsides there having it not a thing at all really wins out.

She hadn't been thinking about past and future changing as something that could go more than one way either, but if it can then, well, not that the past seems great but changing it seems like it would be a mess, and being able to change the future is definitely handy. Unless it was going to be really great but could be messed up, but given everything else she kind of doubts that it was going to be really great.)

Which laws are natural?

Oh, are souls a thing? She knows some humans think various stuff about that.

Well, that's good. Anica herself got a better deal than many in a bunch of ways, but that doesn't mean she's a fan of the whole thing. 

Oh, neat! And makes sense to her. (People without language for a while - alien people! - is neat/interesting to think about.) What other types of people were there?

She doesn't think humans know about them, though she also doesn't know where the Rules come from. Maybe past beings like her?

The natural laws seem to refer to things like how gravity works and how atoms work and how magic works. Physics, pretty much.

Dragonets hadn't had souls before she gave them some. Humans have souls now, though they didn't used to - at least not the kind that's relevant to her. She made them when she made the afterlife.

There weren't any other people in her nursery, yet, though she was making some planets ready for them! She's just interacted with dragonets and humans and mages, so far.

Wow. (Souls, afterlife, wow.) That's incredibly extra impressive even on top of the world-making. Wow. ...Just humans-humans, or mages too?

...She's kind of curious if there are any Rules or natural laws or anything that relate in any way to how humans think all mages are super evil for some reason. (She doesn't think all mages are super evil, but humans are really big on that, and very consistently too.)

Nursery? Was she expecting more people, to make the planets for them?

She was expecting animals! She made planets because it was fun, mostly, but she didn't expect any of the lifeforms she was playing with making to be people!

Mages have souls, too. It'd be a very incomplete afterlife without!

And there's no Rules or natural laws about mages being evil or humans thinking that, she doesn't think. Her experiments with magic have tended to explode a lot but she also doesn't know yet how magic works.

Making planets for fun totally sounds like something she might do if she could. Which she can't, on several levels. That's neat! She's pretty much never interacted with animals outside of labs, but she hears humans like them. Are alien animals different than ones around here?

That's good to know! And to have! She, uh, hopes the human' souls don't go start torturing the mages' souls?

Guess it's back to humans being like that for some reason.

Huh! She didn't know that was a thing that was likely to happen, but she supposes no one teaching them would have let them get anywhere near doing anything that might explode if they could help it. She knows a lot about how magic works, if dragonet-maker wants to know things about that? In a way other than making explosions. Though explosions do sound neat.

It's a lot of fun! She doesn't know how to give out the ability, especially not without messing things up, but she thinks she would if she could. And alien animals are differently shaped, and have some different abilities, and some of them she custom made to be very very cool, but they still do a lot of the same instinctive stuff most animals here do.

The afterlife's set up so people can't harm each other without permission! Everyone can avoid people if they want. She felt that was very important. It's a really nice afterlife, and the people in it already seem to like it.

She'd definitely like to know more about magic, even if explosions are really neat.

...She does know how to give out the ability with messing things up? Which things? Or just like, in the sense that if a lot of people had it they'd probably cause a problem? 

Neat! (She's interested in which ones are very very cool and how but she's going to actually restrain that for the moment.)

That is a really good way to do things, if you can. She agrees on importance. (There's a flick of going-off-to-other-associations at 'permission' but she's pretty sure that's not what's being meant here.) And well that's definitely very good! (She hasn't fully wrapped her head yet around this being a thing (with people in it, liking it. With more people who'll be in it and not - who knows what but probably gone), had it fully or even really partially penetrate into her world model or her feelings or the rest. But - definitely very good, she can react to that.)

Her personal main association with magical explosions is getting designated over to the army and relevant humans wanting her to make them (not the explosions directly; weapons that among other things cause some), and obviously if she does that's going to kill a lot of people, and if she doesn't they are probably going to kill her. (And torture her to death, specifically, but for herself she wasn't as concerned with that one.) (She didn't. They didn't kill her, it turned out. Did torture her a bunch.) But if she gets her thoughts away from that explosions seem neat!

Should she like, talk about magic right now? Is there some particular order to be going in?

She's not sure how to give out the ability but could probably figure it out but has no idea what that would do though it'd probably be destabilizing. Maybe interestingly so, though!

She would like to hear about magic but is unsure what order's best...

Seems likely.

Hm. ...Is the way she's doing stuff with magic like, having made herself a mage or been one to begin with, or is she using the power she has (which is clearly a different thing) and interfacing with the kind of thing mages do or trying to copy it or something?

She made a body without intelligence with mage powers and has been making that do things - she supposes she could give herself mage power, but if mage powers explode a lot she'd really rather not explode the universe.

...empty puppeted mage bodies is kind of weird to think about for multiple reasons but how about she think about that later and for now stick to the interesting things they're talking about.

She's not sure what's going on with the explosions (maybe she could figure it out with more detail?) In her experience mage training doesn't really involve explosions, but there've been mages for thousands and thousands of years and humans wouldn't really like it if mages were exploding stuff when not supposed to, so if there's some ways to learn magic that involve explosions and some that don't probably that got figured out a long time ago, and now mages all learn the non-explosion way.

She's also not really sure how power scale would work here - she's pretty powerful, for a mage, and she definitely can't explode the universe, and she doesn't know if being the kind of being that can work with the universe, and then also being a mage, would map the power level from one to the other, or not do that. For that matter she doesn't know how being not a homo sapien and also being a mage would even work, or if it works at all in reality.

Anyway, magic!

There are a lot of metaphors for magic floating around, because mages do need to talk to each other and study and stuff and if mages talk shop and humans can't understand them they get very unhappy. One metaphor that gets used is that doing magic is like crumple-folding and fastening paper into various shapes. Where the 'paper' like, coats whatever you're trying to do magic to. ...Some magic doesn't super fit under this as well, like in the moment healing, but a lot of stuff fits.

So there's some things that are pretty simple and you could usually figure out how to do them (not that anyone's allowed to do that very much, but). If you want to crumple paper into a ball, you can probably do that - it might not be the neatest ball, but it'll probably be a ball and will work for ball-like things. If you need a really specific detailed shape, you're way less likely to be able to get it without instructions, or if you do it'll probably take a while and a lot of trial and error. If you're not actually completely sure what shape you need to do what you want, then you also have to figure that out. (She's in research, so a lot of what she works on is like that.)

...Is that helpful/useful? Should she go at it from a different direction? Maybe it would help if she knew more about how dragonet-maker's magic worked, so she could do compare/contrast? Or can dragonet-maker get, like, a textbook, there are textbooks mages learn from. (She could potentially talk to a mage-teacher but that kind of has a high chance of going badly.)

The Sky-Scaled One is omnipresent! So if an explosion would come from her body, her body sort of is the universe? (She gives some more details on what's been happening with the exploding puppets).

The Sky-Scaled One usually wants things to happen - sort of by pushing on them - and then they do. Sometimes her wants aren't very clear, or she pushes a want that she hadn't thought through and doesn't actually endorse, or a thing she wants happens and then she predicted the consequences incorrectly and doesn't want the consequences, or she has two contradictory wants and can't decide between them, or a want that she thought wouldn't run afoul of the Rules actually does. Since she can't predict the future the big things she's worried about here are 'predicting consequences incorrectly' and 'not actually endorsing pushed wants.'

She can become aware of all mage textbooks and their contents and then know what they contain! Actually processing that sometimes takes time, though, but the dragonets never invented writing so it hadn't actually fully occurred to her how much goes in writing. (She nudges her conscious awareness towards the contents of every textbook on the planet, both about magic and everything else. She focuses on processing magic, history, and geopolitical textbooks first.)