"Can you explain the scale of awfulness to me?"

"It's not like, something with numbers..."

"Can you make a list of things from more awful to less awful?"

"If you give me a list I could sort it, maybe."

"Killing babies but not eating them. Killing adults and then eating them. Killing adults by eating them. Slavery. Vomiting. Fraud. Stealing. Having an arm ripped off. Spying. Burning to death. Hitting people. Having sex with people who don’t want to have sex."

"Wow, okay. Uh..." She's got paper, at least. She puts "hitting people" in the middle and "spying" below that with some margin for later edits - "do you mean like dying in a fire where usually it's smoke that kills you or just specifically burning to death in a non smoke way?"

"Are they different? Put both where they go!"

MOST AWFUL
killing adults by eating them
killing adults then eating them
killing babies then not eating them
dying of literally burning to death
dying of smoke inhalation in a fire
slavery if it doesn't also involve killing or eating anybody
having an arm ripped off
rape
spying if it's treason probably
hitting people
stealing
fraud
vomiting
spying maybe unless it's treason??
LEAST AWFUL

"Hmm. Does killing babies by eating them go here?" Dareni taps the page at the very top.

"I guess yeah!"

"Where does killing people for their first crime go?"

"Maybe depends how awful the crime is."

"How does it connect to the awfulness of the crime?"

"It's more awful to kill somebody for something little like... shoplifting a candy bar... than it is to kill them for something really bad like murder."

"What makes shoplifting a candy bar little?"

"- well, the candy bar is little, and nobody, like, dies. You could just pay them what a candy bar costs and they'd be fine about it and you can't do that if you kill somebody or even just, like, cut off their arm."

"Hmmm. What if something bad happens because you stole it, like someone dies of not having food?"

"That doesn't really come up on Amenta unless something really weird and bad is going on, even reds aren't usually about to die of starvation, just like, maybe you don't eat enough vitamins and your teeth start falling out or something, and that wouldn't be because somebody stole your lunch, that'd be because nobody was delivering fruit for a whole season or something."

"That makes me think about something I don’t know if I know enough words for... what can you tell me about borrowing things?"

"If I wanted to borrow, like, my sister's scarf or something, I'd probably ask her if she was around but we wear each other's stuff enough that if she was out I might do it without asking and give it back later and I guess if I ruined it I'd give her something of mine to make up for it. If I wanted the neighbor's stew pot I'd definitely have to ask, and give it back washed, yes even though they'll just wash it themselves, to be polite... if I wanted to borrow, like, someone's house to have a party in, then I'd have to get even more nuts about making sure it was clean and fixed up at the end."

"I think that didn't answer my question but I don't know how to ask it better."

"Did you maybe want to know about... borrowing money maybe?"

"Maybe!"

"That's called a loan and you pay it back in installments with interest, are those useful words?"

"Yes! Can you tell me more words like that?"