"I'm fine. Hey, want to skip stones on my pool?" (Merta made a ledge around the top of the huddlebed to hold a shallow pool of water.)

"Um I never explained it right before. The book I read said getting more colors is about what kind of things you do and also how you feel about it. Red is for sports and hard work and doing things you don't like 'cause you want them to be done, like carrying rocks to build a house. Blue is for seeing new things and taking shortcuts by knowing, and being clever, like getting the wind to grind a mortar and pestle so you don't have to. Green is for learning about plants and animals, and for helping plants and animals and people, and for um knowing in ways you can't write down? White is for learning new languages and doing art and practicing talking, and for wanting to understand and say things to people. Black is for making things that last a long time and for being very very careful and for planning, like building a house in a direction so the wind won't batter it and making sure the ground is good. I don't know how to skip rocks, that sounds fun to try!"

"So you've got to have the right feelings? Bleh.

See you, kid."

"Here's some rocks, see how they're flat but still a bit rounded? If you throw them so they're flat, and give them a spin, they'll bounce off the water. I'm trying to bounce them off the near half of my pool and get them to stop as close to the far end as possible without going over the edge."

Plish.

Plish.

"Have you ever met a frogold before?"

He watches how she holds and moves her arms. Throwing rocks probably has the same principles as an axe swing, right? Exactly how you hold it and move is important.

"No. Just Kaleid. It's very different, people who can do only one thing but do it all day. Even important people can't do magic all day! What do frogolds do?"

She tosses a stone in the air.

Gulp!

It vanishes... and she spits it out into her hand. "Don't worry about losing stones over the edge, I can get them back without climbing down."

"Ooh, that's good for throwing things! Can you get stuff over the wall or up a cliff like that? Or get tools without standing up? Or catch fish?"

He will go ahead and start trying to skip stones! They have to spin, and they have to mostly go flat.

Toss. Sploosh. It sinks. Toss. It skips, but way too far.

Gulp. She spits it into the water.

"Yeah, I can grab any loose object that fits in my mouth within the width of this house or so." Twenty feet. "If it's in the water:" gulp, and the rock is replaced with an air bubble. Spit. "Or if I don't give back any air:" she tosses the rock and it vanishes with a sharp pop.

"You're a good" kid "friend. Most people think first about how we're going to steal all their stuff."

"I also thought of that but it's not like you actually did it. Calsa could burn me or Merta could cover me with rock or Siki could... Spy on me?" He shrugs. "Can you do it through glass? Make a jar with no air in it? I remember hearing that some craftsmen use places with no air, but I don't know what for. Maybe so they can heat things and not burn them."

"Siki could sneak knives into your blanket, or trip you off a cliff... he won't. Catfolk and werewolves and mouselings and gnomunks and most mammal-derived species just don't hurt people. They do steal, though. And frogolds aren't bred to be friendly puppies who want to please everyone, we don't smell like you, firmlanders don't meet us often... so it's easy to worry about us even if you don't worry about catfolk.

Oh yeah, I could grab the air out of a jar. Glass or stone. If you find a use for that, I want to do that!

I miss my mommies and daddies, but I don't really want to go back to farming fish in Argo Lake. Stealing is wrong. Merta wants me to be in a team of doctors, which, just, ew. Blech. No.

What does Merta want you to do?"

"...I dunno. What the Magistrate wants me to do, probably. Make a lot of money for Kef? Make guard rocks? And that is okay because Kef is paying Calsa to take care of me. It's fair. I kind of think Calsa and Merta want me to think they're Moms. But I don't. Calsa is nice and Merta is okay but I have a Mom already."

"It would be nice if everyone had fire plates and didn't have to fear bandits... not a big problem in Kef yet but there will be more. How big can your magic get?

Calsa and Merta don't really seem like mammal-derived Moms to me either, but I wouldn't know. What do you want to do?"

Splish. "I think even important people don't get huge magic. Maybe a hundred times what I have now? They mostly get better at using it. I know there's a trick to make magic things stay magic..." Splish. "...I want to use magic with machines, like the turbines. Those are amazing! ...Why is the mammal thing so important?"

"Which mammal thing? I guess we're all half mammal, since humans are mammals, but there's a clear difference between, say, catfolk and frogolds. 

A sharp sense of smell, and producing body smells with reliable meanings, is shared by most mammal-derived species. If you just use your eyes, all species smile and glare and cry the same, but the puppies don't always use their eyes.

Mammal moms really like to take care of you. They get attached. My first mommy picked my egg out of the water because it was pretty, and her boyfriend, my first daddy, started paying attention to me when I showed him I was smart. By the time my fifth mommy taught me to skip stones, my first had moved on to another pretty egg. A lot of eggs and a fair number of taddies don't grow up. It's okay - by the time we're people, we're safe.

Some mammals, not all but including catfolk and werewolves, have litters. Like frogolds have lots of eggs, but instead of picking the best kits, they pick who gets to have a litter and give one kit to each other family. Because they get attached to kits. So the way they pick who actually makes the litter changes what the species is like, as the choices add up, litter after litter, year after year, lifetime after lifetime. That's why werewolves are so friendly and catfolk are so sharp and smart.

Can you make water? Can you make a rock that keeps making water?"

"...That's weird." Like they're dogs or cats for real. And babies not being people yet??????

"...That's really weird. Um, yeah, but the turbine is way easier. Making magic things per-man-ent, that's called making an [enchantment], I don't know how yet. Just what the book said about it. About pulling on the place under the world."

"The place under the world?

Can you cool things down? Can you store water in a plate?"

"I dunno. Probably? I only get to try like one thing every day. I guess you probably want to get water without needing a catfolk."

"Yes, and in the drybright it doesn't matter how many catfolk there are; there's no water to pump up no matter how deep you dig. Water comes through pipes or it comes from kappas, or a tiny bit from ents. If you could put a town's worth of water in a plate and carry it there, a lot of people would be very happy."

"I read stories about people exploring, um, drybrights." Desert adventures, oases and ancient ruins. He wanted to see them some day. "Pipes would be better. It'd be like a big bowl, not a lake. Not even this pool. Or maybe some day a [portal]. There's one between Kelos and Remii that Rulaan of Kelos did. You can just walk through and be there right away."

"Wow. Is a [portal] a thing that water can flow through? Or do you have to carry it? - that would still be great.

Can air go through a [portal]?"

"I think it's just like a door. I never saw it but I heard about it."

One of his skipped rocks lands close to the edge. "Yes! This is fun."

"I wonder if wind would blow between the hot and cold parts, like it does in the sky. You might need two [portal]s, one for each direction? But you could put them anywhere! One deep in the drybright, one deep in the drydark. Make two places newly inhabitable.

The 'drydark' is a silly name, isn't it? It's not dry. Deeper in, I hear there could be mountains of ice."

"[Portal]s everywhere! But if it were easy there would have been more back home... Why doesn't the sun rise and set like it's supposed to?"

Plish plish plonk.

"Maybe it's easier here? Like how a catfolk here can fill a fire plate for you?

Okay. You're from a different world where magic works differently, right, even though the grownups don't want us talking too much about that? Let me go slowly to make sure I don't make any wrong assumptions. Your world is a big big ball of rock, flying along in a even bigger loop around your sun, right?"

"...Yeah. I went really far from home. The world is a big ball, you can tell because of how far away things disappear bottom first. And I think that sounds right about the sun."