The forests near Carmen's home are beautiful in fall. The ground is a mosaic of reds and yellows and oranges. While it's still warm enough, she likes to sit under a tree and read.

Today she is reading a novel by one of her favourite authors. This is an excellent passtime, because the forest is pretty and fresh and quiet and safe.

Well, mostly safe.

Unfortunately, Carmen is too busy reading to notice the snake slither up to her. Too engrossed to see it on her leg before it sinks its fangs into her.

She screams and jumps to her feet, but imediately feels dizzy. She reaches for the tree to support herself, but finds nothing there.

She has never heard of snake venom that was hallucinogenic. However, this is the only explanation for why she seems to be standing in the middle of an active port.

The stranger is pretty, dressed inappropriately, and obviously foreign - she also appeared completely out of nowhere, but Gimlith will attribute that to being distracted and overwhelmed by this sensory nightmare of a modern mercantile economy. They are both about to be crushed so she pulls the stranger out of the way. The stranger does not seem to realize they are about to be crushed, even though the crates are swinging directly overhead. "New here?" 

Carmen is brought out of her presumably-drug-induced daze when a surprisingly-solid halucination grabs her arm. She flinches, then screams, then starts frantically looking around and swearing in multiple languages. After she has regained some level of composure, she asks the most pertinent questions: "Who are you where am I what happened?"

I didn't say she asked them very well.

The stranger also doesn't speak Sindarin, or Adunaic, or what she recognizes - though admittedly, that's not much - of the Umbarian tongue. Had she stowed away on a boat? Hit her head? "Let's get out of here," she says, mostly for the stranger's benefit, and tugs her in the relevant direction so the meaning is entirely clear.

Carmen is confused but follows her. She hasn't understood anything this strange person has said so far, or even recognised which language it might be, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. Learning languages passibly is easy and they should have a workable pidgin by the end of the day.

The streets here are too narrow. At a guess whoever is in charge of building permits has been handing them out for bribes and now everything encroaches everywhere. She pulls the stranger well out of harm's way and then keeps walking for her own peace of mind, walking and walking, until the port is a distant din and they're at a coffehouse she likes. "I can buy you a drink," she tells the stranger, even though she presumably won't understand her, and ducks in.

Carmen nods mutely, thinking about phonology and whether this language might be related to any other she's heard.

"Coffeehouse," she says, though she's heard it said that you shouldn't teach people a language by giving them tons of nouns to memorize. 

"We'll have two cups of coffee," she tells the proprietor, an acquaintance who pretends not to recognize her. Oh. Right. That. 

He is careful, too, not to touch her fingers as he takes her money. "Apostasy isn't contagious," she wants to tell him, but settles for muttering it to her foreign stranger.

Carmen stares at the dark drink curiously. She sniffs it and decides that it's one of the most disgusting blood-substitutes she has ever encountered. This place must be really poor. The synthetic blood that aid agencies sent to developing countries was higher quality than this. She would honestly rather drink water.

She tries to explain that she wants water to her new companion. She pantomimes rushing rivers. She feels like an idiot.

Stranger dislikes the coffee. She realizes she should stop calling her 'stranger'. "Gimlith," she says, pointing at herself, she can do the Finrod-and-Beor routine. "You?"

"Carmen", Carmen says. She considers giving something formal, like "yaz-Bensabat", but figures it'd be hell to explain while they don't have much of a method of communication.

"Great. Carmen, you don't like coffee? It's an acquired taste, but worth acquiring, you can't live in this city without it. Milk? I have no idea how to pantomime milk. Tea? I can get you tea."

So far, she's been able to associate "coffee" with the icky blood substitute and can guess that other variants on this are being offered. She's not sure which would be more impolite - refusing to try any of these poor-people beverages, or trying and rejecting them each in turn. After all, if the stranger had anything good, she wouldn't have offered a guest this "coffee" thing first.

Carmen opts to pantomime a river again. The embarassment only increases with time.

"Hungry? Biscuit? I can do a biscuit." She stands up and buys one.

"You and your friend are heading out in a bit," the proprietor says. 

"Not long," she promises.

Ouch.

Whatever.

She is curious about what this strange, solid object is. Presumably, Gimlith has decided to stop trying to feed her, since no more beverages seem to be forthcoming.

However, what is more curious is the fact that Gimlith and the buisness owner seem to know each other. And dislike each other.

When Gimlith turns back to her, Carmen pointedly looks between her and the buisness owner with raised eyebrows.

Well, the question was clear.

And she can answer more freely, honestly, than she'll be able to once Carmen speaks her language. "I'm on a list of people accused of insurrectionary and inappropriate behavior. It's a bad idea to know me, basically. I can get off the list by going to the capitol and pleading on bended knee for redemption in the eyes of the gods, and then publishing a long essay disclaiming the views I was wrongly accused of having, but sometimes if you go they'll just arrest you and anyway I'm old-fashioned, in the Elven sense, and don't really want to lie."

The stranger had caught none of that, obviously. "Uh. Biscuit?"

The most she gets from that is that there are multiple people who dislike Gimlith, but she's not sure who they are. She'd better hurry up and learn this language so she can ask other people about her new companion, in case she's bad news.

In the mean time, Carmen takes the strange rectangle and turns it over in her hand. She has no idea how to pantomime this, so she simply asks, despite knowing it won't do much good: "What is this thing for?"

Has she not seen a biscuit before? Gimlith doesn't really want to grab it back from her, that's hella rude, but she's also not going to interact with the proprietor again, so...

She holds out her hand for the biscuit.

Carmen sheepishly returns the buscuit. "I'm sorry," She murmurs. "I didn't mean to break your thingy... Or disrespect it, or something."

Allergies? Gluten intolerance? She can go to a different coffeeshop and get them something else. But just in case it's unfamiliarity, she bites into the biscuit, chews and swallows it, smiles to indicate it's tasty.

Carmen almost falls out of her chair.

"You- you- you bit it. You... Moved your teeth around and then swallowed a solid! How did you... Do you need medical attention? Oh shit oh shit I knew I was high oh shit..."

That scared her? Do people eat in private, where she's from? She waves her hands to communicate "everything's okay, I'm sorry I committed some cultural faux paus, the gods don't even exist aren't going to smite us both."

She points to Gimlith's stomach and pantomimes vomiting, in order to convey "Are you ill?" Language barriers are so inconvenient when people start doing the impossible.

"It wasn't poisoned," Gimlith says irritably, "I'm not that unpopular." Unless the stranger can recognize some poison that she can't? Might it be? She gives the proprietor a hard look. He's glaring back at her irritably, but murderous levels of irritably? "Just in case," she says to Carmen, "let's take the rest of the biscuit to my revolutionary friends so if I keel over they have proof the government murdered a dissident."

She nods and follows. She'd been picking up more and more of the language, and has pieced together that they're going to see other people that Gimlith knows, and that her companion is now appropriately worried about the fact that she ate a solid.

But why wasn't she worried before? Was she briefly possessed by a demon? Does she not remember having eaten a solid? Is everyone as high as she is now? She watches her step, in case there are more LSD snakes about.

She doesn't feel poisoned. There are slow-acting ones, but slow-acting ones that a foreigner could identify immediately, that a coffeeshop she didn't even particularly frequent kept on hand? Three blocks west, three more north, and they're at the apartment of a friend. 

Carmen observes the building. The arcitechture around here is strange.

She knocks.

The door opens.

"Izindal," she says. "I met a stranger in the streets today. She doesn't speak a word of Adunaic or Sindarin, but when I ate a biscuit she absolutely panicked, and indicated a belief I was now going to die. So I thought I'd bring the suspect biscuit by. So you can check it, if I do die or fall gravely ill. Carmen, Izindal. Izindal, Carmen."

Carmen raises the palms of her hands in greeting "Izindal."

She feels goofy, but she's trying.

He nods gravely. "Carmen. Can you understand me? Can you understand me? Can you understand me?" He looks at Gimlith. "That was Quenya, Taliska, Rhûn."

She nods her head to say no. The second one sounded related to the language Gimlith had been speaking, but she doesn't actually understand it.

She's nodding, but doesn't respond. Izindal tries some more sentences anyway, encouraged. "If you speak a related dialect, perhaps some of the sounds or more obscure words will be familiar? If you speak a related dialect, perhaps some of the sounds or more obscure words will be familiar? If you speak a related dialect, perhaps some of the sounds or more obscure words will be familiar?"

She nods again to indicate lack of comprehension. Luckily, she has figured out an OK amount of Gimlith's language. She points to her chest and mimics what Gimlith said earlier <<She doesn't speak a word,>> She tells him.

So the nodding apparently didn't mean "yes, you're close." Oh well. Izindal shrugs, pockets the biscuit. "Hello," he says, and then pointing at himself. "I don't speak a word. You don't speak a word. She doesn't speak a word."

To Gimlith: "you're not feeling poisoned?"

OK, he held <<speak a word>> constant and varied one word, and it wasn't their names, so she assumes they're the pronouns of this language. First, second, and third person pronouns; probably.

She turns to Gimlith and asks <<She know poison?>>, gesturing to Izindal.

"I"m not poisoned, you're not poisoned, he's not poisoned."

"You've got to give her some sentences that aren't negations," Izindal says. He picks up a few wooden dice, hands them around. "This is my die. This is your die. This is her die."

OK, so this guy knows how to teach languages better than Gimlith. Was that his job?

Carmen points to Gimlith's stomach. <<This is her not poisoned?>>

"We hope," Izindal says. "This is my stomach, this is your stomach, this is her stomach. She ate a biscuit. I -" he walks away, grabs an apple, walks back - "eat an apple." He bites it. "You eat an apple?"

She gasps and jumps backward. Why do people keep swallowing solids do they want to die???

<<Apple!>> She shouts. <<Buscuit! Poison! Not not not not!>> She nods her head vigourously to indicate what a horrible idea that was.

Izindal puts the apple down. 

"The other thing I'd considered was that their society has a taboo against eating in public," Gimlith observes.

"Yeah, maybe. Did you tell her that the gods won't smite her -"

"Because they probably don't exist?" Gimlith finishes. "No, I didn't. I'm already on the naughty list."

<<Taboo against eating apple!>> Carmen interjects. <<Taboo against eating buscuit! Poison! Not eat. This eat.>> She pantomimes drinking from a cup.

"Okay," Izindal says, "Nothing but liquids for you? We can do that. For us, no taboo against eating biscuits, no taboo against eating apples."

She's incredulous. They eat solids? I have to find out more about this. What are their words for 'solid' and 'liquid'?

She decides to just give them hers. <<Biscuit.>> "Solid." <<Apple.>> "Solid." <<Coffee.>> "Liquid." She pantomimes water. "Liquid." <<You eat solid and liquid?>>

"Yes," he says, "we eat solids and liquids. You do not?"

"I do not. I eat liquids. Solids is poison. I eat-" She points to the veins under her skin.

"Huh," Izindal says, staring at her fingers with confusion. "How do you get enough nutrients that way? I can make you some soups, I guess? Where are you from? How did you end up in Romenna?"

She misses the latter half of that, but at this point her food vocabulary is decent. She points to her veins again "This is 'soups'?"

"No, that's your skin. Soups are things you drink for nourishment, so you're not hungry."

"'Drink' is 'eat'?" She confirms. "I drink skin. Skin is best food."

"No," he says, "you don't. You drink soup, maybe, or ambrosia or something. Skin is this."

"No, I drink skin. I..." She sighs. Might as well demonstrate.

She makes a slight incision in the palm of her hand with one canine tooth, and then licks the resulting blood. "I drink skin," she repeats.

They look horrified.

"That defies physical law," Izindal says, averting his eyes and looking slightly green. "You can't drink your own blood for nutrition, it just wouldn't make any sense- is she an orc -"

"Those probably don't exist," says Gimlith helpfully. She is also averting her eyes.

"No no no." She corrects. "I don't drink my skin - my blood? I drink... Your blood? No, not you... I drink..." She gestures as if to encompass all the world's blood. She starts feeling like an idiot again.

"Blood in general," Izindal says. "Like fleas."

"That's insulting," says Gimlith. "Like - I don't know, I've never heard of anything like that."

"People physiologically can't survive on blood."

"How do you know, have you tried it?"

They're alarming their guest. "It's fine," Izindal tells her. "We're broad-minded, here. Don't believe any of the old superstitions. We've just never met anyone who drinks blood before."

"No blood? Never drink blood? How you survive?"

"Food," they say unanimously.

"Blood is food! The food! Can't survive with not blood."

"Well, we can," says Izindal. "How do you know you cannot?"

"My people cannot. No of my people can. We have drink not blood and not survive. Cannot eat solid." *She pantomimes choking on solid food.

"Right but, like, soup? Coffee?"

"She hated the coffee," Gimlith says.

"Is soup blood?"

"Of plants," Izindal says after a long pause.

"What is 'plants'?"

"Growing things? Green?" He gestures to a house plant.

She turned up her nose and nodded in distaste.

"No. I drink blood of..." She points to a bird on the window sill. "This. I drink blood of this."

"Well, at least it's not people," Gimlith says nervously.

"Birds don't have much blood," Izindal says.

"Not only bird. Bird and...." She gestured impotently.

"Animal?" She imitates the sounds of a cat, a dog, a bear.

"Animal, yes. I drink animal blood. My people survive with animal blood. Why you eat plants blood? Animal blood is better."

"Plants are more numerous," Gimlith says, smiling slightly, "and grow in one place, don't run around. And don't hurt when you eat them."

"My people know how grow many animals in one place." She counters. "And can grow animal blood without animals. We use...." She comes up short, trying to describe what a 'machine' is. She decides to try making the the sound of cogs turning, and then realised this isn't going to work. She sighs.

"Ah. In that case, very sensible," Izindal says. "Umm - your people are not known to us. Who are they?"

"My people are Zifarti. Not all people I know are Zifarti. All people are name 'people'. They all drink blood. My people are name 'Zifarti'. Understand?"

"Yes. My people are named Adûna. Not all people I know are Adûna. Some live very far, some live for all of time, some created the world, none drink blood."

Huh. Is this an entirely different planet? "This is... Different world? All people of my world drink blood. My people drink blood; far people drink blood; all people drink blood. Never hear of people eat plants."

"We are equally confused."

"Who are other people? How different to Adûna?"

They look at each other. "There are Elves," Gimlith says cautiously. "They do not die and are very old. They eat the same as us, though. There are other Men, who live far away. They die like us. But they eat the same as us too. There might be gods, but I don't believe in them personally, I think they're a lie told by the ruling aristocracy to justify their absolute power."

Some people die and some don't?

"Why do you die? Why do Elves not die? Can you grow to not die like Elves? What are gods? Do they die?"

Laughter. "We are trying to grow to not die like Elves," she says, "it's hard. Do you die? Gods do not die, if they exist at all."

"I can die. I can hurt, like with poison. If no hurt, I don't die. Why do you die? Do you all die? Do you die if no hurt?"

"So you don't age. This is - a question of great significance to us as a people. We have a span of two hundred years. Some a little more, many a lot less. Then we die even if we are not hurt. We die this way because it is considered the nature of our kind of being. It is not the nature of your kind, or other kinds, and we do not intend to leave it the nature of our kind for very long either. Does no one on your world die if they are not hurt? Has it always been that way? Do you have legends or stories of other kinds of beings?" She also wants to ask about their political structure but that can wait.

"The Zifarti legends are of beings who grew my people's knowledge. Gave knowledge of G-d many many years ago. None of my people age. Even far people who are not Zifarti and do not know Zifarti legends. Not in any story we age. We were like this always. Why you age? Can you grow to better nature?"

They laugh again. "We're working on it. Can you grow to a better nature? What's a better nature for you?"

"For you would be not ageing. For us, we are ending..." She makes a coughing sound.

"We will not-" *cough* "-or-" *sneeze* "-or-" *retch* "-when done."

"Nice. How are you working on that? How close are you?"

"We are doing with..." She grasps at the words in her limitted vocabulary and finds them all wanting, so she curses in her native tongue instead. "I don't have enough words. I can't say the things. Do you know how I can learn more language?"

"Yeah, definitely. I'm not supposed to crash here, because I'm on the list of troublemakers and Izindal's family has something to lose, but I'm sure he'd be happy to sit here saying words all night so you can pick them up while I go find a dead animal for you to suck on. Two dead animals? They can be dead, right? You don't have to eat them alive?"

"Not dead too long or blood is..." Another retching sound.

She wants to tell Gimlith thank you but, as far as she can tell, no one has said that phrase around her yet. She instead holds up the crossed fingers of gratitude. At least body language is universal, right?

"Welcome. Okay. Recently dead. How long is too long?"

"Drink as dying is best. Less than day is not too long."

"Okay. I can definitely get you slaughtered-today, probably not still-alive. Done, Carmen."

"Okay!" Crossed fingers again.

Izindal sits down with her and cheerfully starts listing words; he seems quite willing to do this all night.

She works at the edge of her ability to associate these words with concepts via context and visual cues Izindal gives her. Vampires are flexible about when they sleep, once it happens frequently enough, so she can also do this all through the night.

Gimlith returns around dawn with a dead pig. "The butcher said 'aren't you a vegetarian'? And I said 'aren't you supposed to pretend not to know me?' and he shut up but it wasn't really very satisfying."

Carmen now understands enough Adûnaic to find this amusing. She gratefully drains half the slaughtered pig's blood, filling her stomach to maximum capacity - far beyond what a human could hold.

When she's done, she slumps to the floor happily. "Pig. Pigs are big and sweeeeet. Why don't you eat meat, Gimlith?"

"I believe that the treatment of animals by Men replicates and perpetuates the ideological structures of violence under which the upper classes oppress the lower ones and the nobility oppress the commoners and Numenoreans oppress outlanders and the Elves and Valar oppress men."

"Oh, I don't know how your people treat animals," Carmen admits. "But that's reasonable. My people treat them badly. This is why we are making more and more of our blood with machines - so we can stop hurting animals soon. I support this. I just don't think I can make blood with machines here and I prefer not to die, so I'm stuck like this."

She sits up a bit. "Actually, do you know if I can go home? Or how I got here?"

"I thought you stowed away on a ship, is that not what you did? And you can make machine blood?? How?"

"I wasn't on any ships. I was reading a book under a tree when I was bitten by a snake, and then suddenly I was here. At first, I assumed the snake's venom was a drug that makes you see things, and this whole world was just a drug-dream. It looks like I was wrong, but I don't know what did happen."

"Uh. I don't think there are any recorded incidents of people vanishing after snakebites, either, so that's not a reliable way to get you home. Hey, do snakes drink your blood? And, uh, we have ships that go everywhere except Valinor but I'm not sure that'll help you.

"Snakes don't drink blood. The only things that drink blood on my world are people, some fish, and some bugs. Why don't your ships go to 'Valinor'?"

"Not allowed. Valinor's supposedly ruled by gods who won't let anybody in. The won't let anybody in part has evidence for it. The gods part does not."

"Have your people ever been to Valinor, or seen anyone who came from there?"

"No and no, though there's plenty of reliable historical evidence that Elves visited from there half a millenium ago. We don't live that long, so no eyewitnesses."

"What are Elves like? Specifically, what distinguishes Elves, Men, and gods-as-described?"

"Gods-as-described have never been seen, except in stories which conveniently suggest that they favor the current rulers. Elves are like us only taller, prettier - because our beauty standards were designed with them as the ultimate ideal, despite its laughable impossibility for Men, and it's not even healthy - and Men are us."

"In these stories, what's the justification for the gods favouring the current rulers? And what causes Men to age when Elves do not?"

"There've been books written on that second question. The gods. Something to do with our souls. Our sinfulness. It's all bullshit. No one really knows. I can't answer your first question either - sometimes it's that the current rulers are descended from the gods, sometimes the gods just recognize their wisdom."

"Do most Adûna believe these claims of divine right? If not, why bother making them? If so, why do you disagree with the rest of your people?" Carmen paused, restraining a torrent of questions. "Actually, would it be possible for me to read any of the books myself?"

"Sure thing! We have public libraries, these days. Big public works initiative. Whenever the Kings get too outrageously richer than the populace they pay some laborers to construct some elaborate buildings, buy off the populace from revolting. You'll just have to learn to read our script. And yes, most people believe it, or don't disbelieve it. I don't know why I'm different. A year ago I'd have said "I'm smarter" but that's not it."

"Why did you change your mind about being smarter? And how hard is it to learn the script, once you're OK with the spoken language?"

"Oh, pretty easy, really. The Elves made it, and they're very refined in their tastes. It's better for writing the Elven tongue than ours, but most of the books are written in the Elven tongue anyway - it's considered the intellectual one. Formal court proceedings still happen in Quenya, and nearly the entire government is administered in Sindarin, despite the fact most of the populace doesn't speak it. Elves. And I realized being smart doesn't have anything to do with why most people are  unwilling to question what they've been taught, and attributing it to any other virtues of mine seems unhealthy."

"Oh, you have separate languages for different domains too? All the important stuff in my religion is done in two dead languages, plus secular Zifarti stuff uses another language that's rarely spoken in the country I'm from. Lots of historical importance. Are Quenya and Sindarin important to your government for historical reasons?"

"Sort of. The Elves speak them, and the Elves are kind of like history. Mostly I think it's to their advantage to conduct everything in a language the commoners don't speak."

"Oh, that's an interesting take on it. The reason not many Zifartas in my country speak the Zifartil language is because, about two centuries ago, the government tried to force everyone to speak the same language, and the Zifarti were a minority. The idea was to have everyone bound together by a civic identity and by the fact that, while they understood each other, they couldn't undertand foreigners. The government also found it more efficient to administer people who they could speak to. What are the benefits of not having the government and the populace speak the same language?"

"The populace has no access to their government, can't defend themselves in court, gets only mediated versions of their own history, and is denied most high office without any explicit laws or discrimination on the government's part."

"Then who does run your government? How do people know the law? There is no point in even having a law if people don't know it and can't follow it."

"The law gets translated, obviously. And most of that sort of thing is learned knowledge. You do what your parents say, you grow up and teach your children the same, sometimes someone tells you there's something you can't do. No access to the system, no ability to appeal it, but it's not hard to comply with it."

"Wow. Your country is even more dark and totalitarian than Natsiya, and Natsiya is synonymous in my world with "dark, totalitarian rule". Was it always like this? Are there other countries that are less... like this?"

"She might be exaggerating," Izindal says. "I have a lot of concerns about our leadership but Gimlith's whole thing is being very, very angry."

"That's slightly unfair," she says, "a great deal of my thing is making people uncomfortably aware that they, too, ought to be angry."

"Most people live perfectly fine and happy lives here," Izindal says, "and there are avenues of accountability if you're mistreated, though they're imperfect."

"Right. I shouldn't take everything you said as perfectly accurate anyway - no offense; just best practices. Have to hear all sides. There are patriots in my country who say G-d founded our nation, and sepratists who think it's literally run by demons. It's only fair that I read what the regime says in its own defense, anyway."

"Well, for that the libraries are very well equipped. I've been up all night. Gimlith can teach you to read."

"Alright!" She says eagerly, not betraying a hint of tiredness. "Bring on the books!"

"This script is Elven, like I said, and better adapted to writing their language than ours. Elves care a lot about mellifluousness and less about things like not-being-incredibly-fucking-prescriptivist. Anyway. Lemme draw the letters and read you the sounds."

She starts doing that.

She repeats the sounds and traces the letters. Then she tries writing a few of the Adûnaic words she already knows using this alphabet.

"NIce, you're getting the hang of it. Do you people have extended neuroplasticity? Is it as easy for you to learn languages as an adult as in childhood?"

She's a bit surprised by this question. "Learning a new language is really quick and easy during a long enough conversation. We just forget them quickly, too - after a few weeks, if we don't talk to anyone. Is this not true of your world's people? Of plant-eaters in general, or just Men?"

"That is....not true of anyone in our world. Elves can learn languages quickly, because they can see into minds; they also remember them, I think. We learn slowly, or not at all, which is why it's such a problem that the people in charge don't speak the same tongue as their subjects. And if we did speak a language we wouldn't forget it in a few weeks, it'd take years to get rusty. Huh."

"Your memories must be very different to ours. We learn quickly and then forget quickly, unless it's something interesting enough for us to remember. If we're super focussed on something, it sticks around for a long time. Otherwise, it rushes in and out. I know of people who are especially interested in languages and know hundreds of them, but anyone else would forget the first when they started learning the fifth, unless they had to use all of them."

"Hundreds would not be possible for us, at least not a real command of them. But it is not a barrier of forgetting, but of acquiring in the first place. Where is your world? Is the climate similar? Same Moon? Same stars?"

"Climate is different in different places. Colder north, warmer south - until you go far south and it gets cold again. It is like this on the southern coast of my country, but I live a little bit north. There is a moon and stars, but different star-patterns."

"Yeah, that all would make sense if you were on a different continent," she says, "but how have we not run into you, and how'd you get here? How far do your ship sail, exploring your world?"

It suddenly occurrs to her that there is very good evidence that this is a different world.

"We have machines that fly above the clouds - closer to the moon - that can see the world. We make maps of all of it. We have visited every island with people. If we had discovered a people who didn't drink blood, I would have heard about it in the news. This can't be the same world."

"Wow. Okay. Do you know if our stars match the stars from anywhere on your world? You shouldn't ahve the same Moon without the same stars."

"I'm afraid I haven't looked at many star charts. I just know what the stars look like where I live. Your moon might be smaller than ours or farther away or it might just be hard to tell in this phase of the cycle - but it's probably a different moon. How long is your lunar cycle? And how long is your year?"

"Twenty eight days, and three hundred sixty five. Yours?"

This is absolutely terrible.

"Twenty seven days a month! Three hundred and seventy a year! Our calendars are incompatible! I can't celebrate the holy days! Oh shit oh shit the world is going to end oh shit..."

"...what?"

In her panic, Carmen dispenses with comprehensibility. "My people - the Zifarti - we have things we do. Our laws command us to do them. They sustain the world and prevent it from ending. If we stop then everything stops. We all need to do it. I need my calendar!"

"Wait a second. How would you know if the world ended if you didn't do it? That's not observable, right? No one in your community has ever not done something they were supposed to, in all of history?"

"Well, yeah, some people have tried to free-load on the community by not following the commandments and still benefiting from the continued existence of the world - but that's wrong. That's incredibly wrong! Imagine if everyone did that. If we all just stopped and expected someone else to do it, then the world would end and we'd all be screwed. That's why no one is allowed to stop. No one can defect if we don't want everyone to. It's the only consistent position."

"....but the world didn't end, right? They stopped doing it, and the world did not end. Maybe your rituals don't actually keep the world spinning and if you all stopped nothing would happen? In fact, I'm inclined to say that's the likeliest outcome, because there's no way that the continued existence of the world depends on the right number of people doing the right rituals. Are you sure the rituals have been transmitted with perfect accuracy? Presumably some things have altered over time, and the world didn't end, right? Who benefits from this system? Do some of the rituals set up an aristocratic priestly class who can take advantage of everyone else's labor?"

"The world won't end as long as there are at least one hundred people all following the law independently of each other. There are enough of us that the small number of people who've free-loaded didn't ruin everything, but that's because it was a small number. We have our culture and social structure and the expectations of our community to keep us on the right path, so we have been able to prevent enough defection to break everything.

"We know that we're doing the rituals correctly because we've put a lot of thought into it. I mean a lot of thought. We have written books about the books about the books about the rituals; and we still debate those. We have been super careful. We have a well developed philosophical tradition dedicated to keeping track of this. I mean, if your correct observance of a set of commandments kept the world running, wouldn't you?

"I guess you could say there are 'priests'? But I don't see how they'd benefit much from the continued existence of our religion. Most of the people who put a lot of effort into religious work are volunteers, and the few people who aren't live on pretty limited donations. There isn't a lot of money to go around for charity, and a lot of that goes to the secessionists, anyway. I could become a priest if I wanted to and studied hard, but I'd much rather be a history professor. Better pay and more interesting. Pretty much all priests are people with a special interest in religion who'd be unhappy in another job.

"But, even apart from that, everyone benefits. Our religion holds our community together. It gives a sense of common purpose. It let's us be vastly important to the world, in a universe that otherwise wouldn't care. It gives us our art and our music and our stories. It makes life richer, at the same time that it allows life to continue by sustaining the world."

"But think how much you'd benefit from not believing that your world will literally end if anyone steps out of line! How many kids grow up terrified that if they slack or mess up they'll end the world, and that if they stop believing it they'll be shunned as freeloaders by their entire community, and considered morally responsible for the destruction of the world? Look, you were freaked out that you didn't know your ritual calender. Surely you are strictly better off knowing that you don't need to keep doing it?"

"Why would we shun someone who stopped believing? The universe doesn't care what you think about.  There are probably tons of people who don't think that observance of the commandments powers the world, but do it anyway because it's what everyone does. As long as you're doing your part to keep the world turning, why should anyone care why you're doing it?

"And, sure, not being afraid of ending the world is probably better than being afraid, if you hold amount of world-continuation constant - but it's not like we're constantly cowering in fear. Being able to say the right words and wear the right clothes and live in the right house and, simply by doing so, sustain the existence of the world is incredible. I'm not enslaved - I'm empowered. We hold the fate of the world in our hands and tell oblivion 'not today'. Isn't that great?"

"No, because it's not true."

"How do you know it's not true? How do you know what does and doesn't make my world work? Your world is different. Your world has different stars, so it's nowhere near mine. Maybe your world runs on completely different physical laws! Maybe your world's gods are fake, but that doesn't mean mine are -

"- Well, um, there's only one G-d. This is important. But otherwise, yeah, my point stands."

"What have your gods done? What evidence persuaded people that they're real?"

"G-d. Singular. Although there is some debate over whether the Destroyer is a god and whether we should consider ourselves dualistic.

"Anyway, G-d doesn't really do anything any more. It wrote the laws of reality and set the world in motion and sustains it with new... Energy? There is a specific word for this, but I don't know if you have it. We call it negenturopi. The machinery of the universe mostly ticks on without us. However, it requires occasional, systematic intervention to prevent it from breaking. This is why we follow the commandments.

"The original book of the commandments was given to an older people by the... Translation lacking. 'Small-god'? The small-god Nashi. Nashi recited it before a crowd and dozens of families bore witness to him, so there's that evidence. This was about seven thousand years ago. After that, they kept the commandments and transmitted them for generations. Many calamities befell them, and yet they kept surviving, with a few well-placed miracles. With time, they grew to conquer their neighbours and build an empire where this was the religion of everyone.

"Then invaders with a new religion came and wiped out the empire. Nashi returned to us and guided one of the many tribes that had been in the empire - the Zifarti - to a group of hills. There they hid and repulsed invasions with the assistance of Nashi. Since then, those hill people have had to sustain the universe themselves, as all the other tribes were forcibly converted to a new religion that viewed ritual observance as idolatry. We are the guardians of the last light of Nashi's revelation, and it's up to us to grease the gears of the universe."

"So... you have not seen any evidence that your god exists, and no one currently alive has, but there are stories that Nashi existed, and Nashi claims to be a small god. Okay."

"Look. It is totally possible that we're wrong. And what if we're wrong? We have created an institution of cooperation and fellowship that gives people meaningful lives. There are societies that have gone the "Let's tear down our churches and force everyone to be an atheist!" route. It ends poorly. I know several non-Zifarti atheists. They're good people. However, I don't want to be one of them. Even if I saw proof that my beliefs were wrong, I'd keep following the law, because doing things that connect me to my community is meaningful for me and is meaningful for my neighbours - and if, per chance, they aren't meaningful to G-d - well, too bad."

"Societies built on lies don't end up fair and just and beautiful, they end up creating more structures of power that can be used to wrong people."

"Which you know because you've done a randomised controlled trial of several societies of equivalent wealth and demographic balance, building a few on lies and a few on truth, correct? I'm sure that when reading through your libraries, I'll find out about the dozens of civilisations you built from the ground up on different principles. I mean, you're so focused on evidence that I bet you have tons to support that claim. You'd never decide that my entire culture was broken a priori, would you?"

"You people drink blood, most of our sociological literature you'd consider inapplicable anyway!! I do have hundreds of societies with documented mythologies and beliefs in various gods and practices, and all of those are a lie, and yours sound exactly the same."

"Great. And how many that didn't? Who was happier and more just? How much so? According to what measures?"

"Very few, because people are stupid and immediately decide there are gods around no matter how nonexistent the evidence. Anyway, if your gods don't exist, they don't exist. How can you keep living a lie just because it maintains social harmony?"

"Why should we not celebrate certain holidays independently of belief? Suppose it doesn't affect the continued existence of the world, and everyone participating knows this and consents to be involved in it. How would this be bad? Under what system of morality is consensual participation in a holiday a bad thing?"

"Lots of choices that people make voluntarily are bad. What a limited idea of goodness, you have, if there is nothing at all to say about peoples' choices except that they are not technically coerced!"

"What does matter, then? If consent and happiness aren't what goodness is built on, what is it built on?"

"Truth. If I'd be happy not knowing about any of the injustices in the world, they'd still be there. If I thought spinning in circles on alternate Elenyas made the world keep moving, it still wouldn't be true. If I'd agreed to have those things wiped from my memory so I could enjoy them more, I'd still be leading an impoverished life, compared to one where I pursued those joys that arise from things that are really true. 

Justice. I can imagine a series of events or a series of choices constructed so that everyone consented to, and was happy about, being denied opportunites that their superiors got, or that were reserved for a different kind of person, or that they inherently had no right to. This would be worse than a world where they believed themselves the equal of any other. 

Individuality. Whenever there's a Way That We're Happiest, there's tremendous pressure to do that. You said yourself that you regard anyone who lives their life differently as a worthless freeloader. Variation in human needs and experiences should be celebrated, and even the voluntary choice to conform and forget whatever pulls you in your own diverse direction is not good."

"What is truth for, exactly? Is it not to allow you to perceive the world correctly and, thus, make better decisions about it? If I want to practice my religion just as much whether or not I believe it to be true, what is the value of learning whether it's true or not? Sure, I have a general interest in having more true information, but true information about the situation in your world seems more valuable to me than knowing whether my religion is true, because one influences my preferred actions and one does not. Thus, I should really be devoting more time to that.

"What is justice for, if not to promote a happier world for everyone? What things are just or unjust? Is inequality unjust, independent of how well people are doing? If so, isn't a world where everyone is equally poor better than one where everyone is unequally rich? I disagree.

"What is individuality for, if not to allow one to pursue the things that make them uniquely happy? We should have the freedom to choose different foods, because we have different dietary needs - I drink blood and you eat plants. The most fundamental requirement of individuality is choice. So, if I choose to make myself part of a community and follow its rules and participate in its rituals, then that choice must be respected. To say 'you can't make these choices, because they aren't individualistic enough' is the height of hypocrisy."

"Truth is as valauble as happiness and for the same reasons: as a good end, not a means to another one. Likewise justice. You could breed some people to be content with slavery, and happy with it, but you shouldn't do that, because justice matters. And you can choose your rituals, but you can't have communities where people are raised to think that's the choice that'll make them happiest, or that they're obliged to it for false reasons."

"They're all equally valuable? Well, in that case, given a standard measurement of amount of truth, justice, and happiness in a society; would you prefer a society that had truth and justice, but where everyone was unhappy, to one lacking in truth and justice, but where everyone is happy?"

"Truth and justice. Look, maybe your world doesn't have enough injustice - or maybe you're not on the receiving end of enough of it - to understand why someone would feel that way. People, given the choice, do not actually choose to be happy slaves, or drugged peons. Justice matters."

"...Maybe this is due to translation error? 'Happiness' is the closest approximation I could find in your language. In my language, yudamonya refers to the general feeling that you are living the life you want to live, such that you expect changes to it to be unwelcome. I can imagine people for whom large amounts of truth and justice are not required for them to be living the life they desire, and I see no reason why I should tell them their preferred life is wrong. Likewise, 'happiness' is probably a bad word, because I can imagine people who would want pain and adversity in their ideal life. What I don't understand is why you believe that truth and justice are requirements for worthwhile lives - any worthwhile lives. Even if you need them for your yudamonya, surely you can see that this isn't true of everyone?"

"Obviously you could create a being that preferred being a blind, drugged slave; that was legitimately the life they desired. I think creating such a thing would be monstrous, and that the best possible life for all actually existing beings does involve truth and demand justice. Look, we have lots of people claiming that their slaves are happy. They are wrong. Maybe your world is actually full of happy slaves, but I have met hundreds of people who insisted that their slaves were happy and every single one of them was wrong, and perhaps that's because truth and justice actually matter and happiness, any word for it, is not really capturing what makes a good life."

"You're equivocating! You said 'I have met hundreds of people who insisted that their slaves were happy and every single one of them was wrong', which implies their slaves were actually unhappy, and that this was bad. But then you said 'happiness, any word for it, is not really capturing what makes a good life', which is implying that it's not the absence of happiness that's bad! Your argument only holds if it's 'I have met slaves who claimed to be happy and, from my position of oh-so-superior knowledge of what people need, decided that they didn't have good lives'.

"Look, the reason you shouldn't trust someone who says 'my slaves are happy' is because they have ulterior motives. They have every incentive to lie or delude themselves so, as a general rule, anyone who keeps someone in involuntary servitude and then claims they're happy should be disregarded. Centuries ago, my world had ubiquitous slavery. Then the wealthy nations outlawed it and used their influence to suppress it everywhere else. I am certain that this outlawing was one of the best things that ever happened, and improved millions of lives.

"However, at the same time, I know people who voluntarily choose to serve someone else - often a romantic partner - in the role of a slave. I say 'choose' because they decide that this is what they want going in and have the power to dissolve the relationship at any time. They generally claim to be happy, and I see no reason to tell them that they're wrong about their own desires. It's not what everyone wants - I'm pretty sure it's not what I'd want - but it is what some people want, and I respect that.

"For someone who loves liberty, you sure are quick to scorn people when they use it for things you disapprove of."

"You are making arguments that I have exclusively seen used in the service of a malicious and insidious ideology that results in no happiness and no justice and no freedom. I don't believe that the choice you present me with is real, because in pracitce when people insist that they are making it they are always lying. It is lovely that your world doesn't have slavery. Mine does, and I am trying to fix that, and I am disinterested in hearing how under the right conditions actually peopel would voluntarily be slaves. Those people are an acceptable cost of ending slavery, and you would think so to if you'd ever actually encountered it."

"I am totally willing to accept that the set of people who would be harmed by ending slavery is vastly smaller than the set of people who would be helped, and that ending slavery is good. I said it was also good when it happened in my world. If there was a button that made it impossible for people to be slaves, whether they wanted to or not, I would press it. I am just saying that your beliefs are harmful in edge cases, and the reason I care about this is because I am myself an edge case. Both of our moralities say that involuntary servitude is awful, but at least mine isn't adamantly opposed to me saying my prayers. If someone came to you and said 'I agree with 99% of your values, but think you dress indecently', wouldn't you be inclined to argue with them anyway?"

"I don't care if you say your prayers. I care if you try to spread the idea that societies ought to have prayers, or that goodness and happiness spring from people saying prayers. You can say whatever you like, but when you push for it as a good life it's rightly subject to scrutiny."

"Why would I spread that idea? My people made an agreement with Nashi, but no one else did. You can do what you want. I won't object if someone else tries to mimic me, or lie if they ask me what my religion says, but I have no interest in getting other people to follow it. It's the way of my people - no one else's."

"It's the way of you personally, and anyone who finds it personally appealing. Your children wouldn't have to do it?"

"Well, that's kind of a political question, to be honest. My children wouldn't have to do it, if they didn't want to. The children of most of the people I know wouldn't have to do it. The children of about half the Zifartas in my country wouldn't have to do it. However, the majority of Zifartas live in two neighbouring countries, where they are extremely persecuted. Thus, anything that binds the community together and gives it a sense of meaning and individuality ends up being way more important. Children who grow up there would probably face coercion. I'm not saying it's great, but there's nothing I, personally, could do about it."

"I think you underestimate yourself. Lots of unjust systems stand because no one involves thinks there's anything to be done about them."

"Alright, fair point. It probably isn't true that there's nothing I could do about it, but it wouldn't be my first priority. To the extent that I support social causes where I'm from, I'm most invested in synthetic blood development, because if we can mechanically create blood that's just as good and cheaper than the natural stuff, we can stop farming billions of animals. We're already on that path, since not-too-great and pretty-expensive blood substitutes already exist, but we need to go a bit further. The potential gains from this are far greater than any possible benefit of deconverting foreign Zifartas and, even if I can do some things, I certainly can't do all things. Prioritisation is important. What's the most important problem in your world?"

"Death, slavery, colonization - they're sort of related, I really can work on all of them."

"Oh? How are you doing that?"

"I am not sure I trust you enough to answer that, I'm sorry. I could get in a lot of trouble."

"Is there any aspect of your strategy that can be discussed without incriminating you? It seems likely that I can do things you cannot, and those sound like problems I would like solved as well."

"The government funds and encourages all of those projects. They think colonization is good and slavery is sometimes necessary. The problem is that you can't influence the government by talking to them and persuading them, they don't listen to people like us. What you can do is make it go disastrously badly whenever they try. If someone were to do that, then the colonization would stop."

"What do you mean they don't listen to 'people like us'? How are your leaders elected? Wait, are they elected?"

"Our leaders are those among our people who claim descent from Elves. What is 'elected'? By the gods? They claim to be."

"Where I'm from, we only talk about election with regard to leaders being chosen by the people they lead. If you govern an area, it's because the people who live there decided they wanted you to make their rules and administer their affairs. Most parts of my world used to have people who ruled because they descended from certain people, but that is becoming rarer with time. In my history, rule by election seems to replace rule by descent as countries become richer, more educated, more densely populated, and have large militaries composed of common citizens. Admittedly, those four things tend to be related, so it's hard to say what causes what."

"We are rich, educated, and densely populated, but people are still happy to have the Elf-descended rule us because their lives are longer and people say they are smarter and more capable and more in touch with the gods." 

"Are they 'happy to' in that they endorse this leadership and would independently choose them as leaders, or in that they put up with it and don't complain very much? And how rich are you? Are most of your physical goods made by machines or craftsmen? Who fights in your armies, if you have armies?"

She is sceptical that any rich nation would willingly drink 'coffee'.

"Put up with it. Mostly. There are some true believers. We make more goods by craftsmen than machine, though that is changing, and more than either with slaves. The underclasses serve in the armies in exchange for social mobility, usually. You think getting richer will make things better? Slavery makes them rich, but it does not make them more inclined to end it!"

"It's possible that the trend doesn't generalise to this world, if plant-eaters are sufficiently different, but in my world, slaves are less competent and motivated at skilled labour than paid workers." She says, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she goes into full-on history-lecture-mode. "Because of this, industrial work ended up dominated by wage labour. Meanwhile, mechanisation also increased the productivity of a given farmer, which increased the amount of food, which increased population density. Increased population density increased the supply of workers to per unit of arable land, until the cost of employing one person who worked voluntarily dropped below the price of entrapping someone and establishing security to prevent their escape. The cost of holding someone against their will is reasonably fixed, but wages decline as labour becomes more plentiful.  Thus, we had a general trend of more hired factory workers and free farmers, relative to slaves. Additionally, we fought a bunch of wars that required arming our entire populations, and it's extremely hard to keep people enslaved once you've handed them guns. People with guns are also inclined to want a say in the government, since they're harder to oppress. As such, the countries with the most conscription were the quickest to end up with elected leaders."

"So we should start a war," she says. "That's a good idea."

"Um, not exactly. Wars also kill a bunch of people. Killing people is bad." She paused thoughtfully. "On the other hand, if you do want to start a war, you could convince the colonies to rebel and arm their slaves. That worked a few times in my world. Depends on how likely they are to succeed and how many people would get killed in a war. If the motherland is likely to give up quickly, and the ex-slaves manage to keep their guns, that could actually be a great humanitrian opportunity..."

"That's..pretty much what I'm trying to do. Do you know things about how to make it succeed quickly?"

"Hmm. That's a lot easier if the motherland is a democracy. Then you can run a media campaign about the war being too expensive and unjust and not worth anyone's time, until the government has to stop, out of fear that they'll be replaced the next time leaders are being elected. Can you print newspapers with images? Images of children in the colonies being murdered has always worked really really well, back home. Even if you can't get people to elect new leaders, organising strikes in the motherland - especially in industries necessary for war - can be catastrophic to the military effort. Convincing foreign countries hostile to the motherland that having her lose her colonies would weaken her, and getting them to join in the fight to support that, has also been successful. In general, things are easier if the colonies are separated from the homeland by a body of water, but are physically contiguous with each other. Then promoting piracy in the seas, by providing pirates with safe harbour in the colonies, harms the motherland's forces more than the rebels. Whoever needs a navy more is at a disadvantage. Also makes trade hard, though. Note that these are just the 'dirty tricks' side of the war. When it comes to the actual fighting, I see no reason why I'd know more about it than your people. My interest is history, not tactics."

"I take back everything I ever said about you, that was eminently sensible and half things we are trying to figure out how to do and half really good ideas and almost no one here will even talk about these things, and if they do they insist that it's Wrong - strikes we've done. Newspapers we've done but they have to be underground, they're illegal. Piracy is a brilliant idea, we've tried sabotaging ships..."

"Thank you! Also, hold on, is it illegal to talk about sabotaging your government? In my country, anarchists yell about revolution in public, and most people just ignore them. Your government sounds a lot more like the neighbouring countries where Zifartas are oppressed than like my homeland. Do you also have secret police officers who monitor your communication?"

"How would they? If they found a letter it'd be bad but it's not as if we use a letter service for this kind of thing. It's not illegal, where you're from, to plan starting a war against your own country? I'd be executed."

"You can talk as much as you want. In my culture, it's pretty much expected that young people will go through a period in their lives when they want to destroy the government and start a war. The rest of us have songs making fun of them, to be honest. Then they grow older and become more moderate. It's a life-cycle, and no one these days seriously expects it to end in a civil war. If we executed everyone who said 'fuck the police', we'd run out of 20 year old men within a month. It's people who actually start bombing and shooting who get arrested."

"Hmm. Here it's very rare so the people who say it are generally serious. Were you serious, when you made those suggestions?"

"Depends on what you mean by 'serious'. I am honest when I say that those are things that worked on my world for achieving your stated goals. However, I'd give an honest assessment regardless of what your goals were. I'm a teacher's apprentice - if I'm asked about the facts, I give them. Do with them what you may. If you want me to personally support your cause, I'll have to be convinced that it's just. Show me the books about the situation in this world. If it's as bad as you say, then I'll help for as long as I'm here."

"The books are written by people with something to gain from the system. If you really want to see it, you have to go to the colonies."

"Fair point, but information costs. Reading books requires far less investment than travelling overseas, so I should do that first. I mean, I have to do it at some point anyway. I can't skip over the other side of the story."

"Yes, definitely, read as many books as you like, just keep in mind that someone paid for the books to be copied, right?"

"Well, yes, but someone has to pay to make every information source public. Is there really such a limited range of people who pay to print things? Or who are legally allowed to? Or is it just that the libraries are very selective about what they'll contain?"

"Books are very expensive. Most people could never afford it, and those who can are almost definitionally among the aristocracy that we would expect to benefit from promoting certain narratives. And yes, politically troublesome books are banned."

"Books are expensive? Huh. You said that underground newspapers are a thing, so it can't be inherent to the cost of printing. Do you have to import paper at high prices? I guess you could still have low-circulation newspapers with small pages. Or are you culturally opposed to binding your books with any material that isn't super expensive? Because my people have a pretty cool innovation where we bind books with hard paper and make them super cheep."

"No, it just takes forever to write them. It's not considered a book if it's printed, that's for nonsense like underground newspapers. The library will only take respectable, scribed books."

"You still write books by hand? That is so dumb. Like, honestly, your use of slaves for industrial labour was stupid and inefficient - but handwritten books? For status reasons? If you had press freedom and I had bad priorities, I would start a competing library with better variety and modest prices, get a bunch of patron, and steal all the status, just to teach these people a leason. Alas, I actually care about doing worthwhile things with my life. What a shame."

"That sounds...valuable. I think you would get in trouble. The press is very new and is associated with revolutionaries and troublemakers, it is not yet widely used. You would get the wrong kind of attention. The rich people live very long times, they do most things for status reasons."

"OK. Step one is to print and disseminate a bunch of totally non-threatening yet popular-among-working-class-people literature that the government can't reasonably object to. Get the populace as a whole to associate the printing press with corny romance novels with lots of poorly-written sex - unless you have obscenity laws, in which case you'd need some other trashy thing that everyone wants, but no one of a certain class considers worth paying attention to. Then you get more and more people using it for more and more basically-descent things, until everyone reads printed books and the government would look weird if they tried to ban them, but the rulers have also only realised too late that there are simply too many things to effectively censor them."

"I like the way you think. We don't have laws against romance novels."

"Great. You want to make them trashy. This is actually important. If you're a revolutionary, it's in your interest to make it so that the upper classes aren't reading these books to begin with, because then you can write things that subtly discredit them. Set stories in decent countries that are ruled by Men, because it implies you don't need semi-Elves. Write about Elves doing stupid things, which implies they're fallible. Basically, write things that make people less trusting of the current order, but not in a way that makes the government anxious until it's too late. You want to maintain plausible deniability...

...Because that's worked where I'm from. Just saying, in my professional and unbiased capacity as someone who knows about history. Do what you want with that information."

"You're brilliant, you know that? I can do that, and I can't even get into very much trouble for it, because I have to lie low for a while anyway. And i know people who own a printing press!!! Trasky romance novels in which Elves are stupid. Izindal'll have ideas for that, too. Wait, what happened where you're from? What do you mean that 'worked'?"

"Thank you. It is my pleasure to consult on this thing I am definitely neutral about.

Anyway, it's not so much that someone masterminded creating a genre in order to people overthrow their government. What happened was that people already had a genre of poorly written pornography which no one of refinement read, and the... I don't know if you have an equivalent movement. If I try a really literal translation, then it was social-ism. Anyway, the social-ists of this country decided to make a ton of books about how rich people abuse poor people, and how poor people need to fight back. It was pretty subtle at first, but also super popular. Popular enough that attitudes about employers shifted until they were associated with sexual predation. This was probably a contributing factor to the social-ists getting a lot more members and conducting a lot more successful strikes.

I don't know how well it would work if you're trying to create a genre from scratch, but it probably won't hurt... Unless you fuck up and get caught, in which case it will hurt a lot. But, like, you were planning to burn ships. I assume you've made peace with this."

"No one thinks I'll live to 30. It's ...worth it, for me."

"Oh, wow, shit. That is... Sub-optimal. The fact that you guys die at 200 is bad enough. I feel like this is a problem that could be solved by you being more like revolutionaries of my world who lived long, but they mostly had their underlings do the dangerous things, and this seems incompatible with your personality. Hmmm... Have you tried focussing your effort on less fatal things? I mean, even if it's worth it for you, there are probably multiple possible things that would be worth it..."

"I couldn't forgive myself for doing less important work just so I could stay alive, not when these policies kill so many."

"Hmmm. Like, it's possible that there is less dangerous work that is more important. On the other hand, I can already see you giving me a look and saying 'well isn't it suspiciously convenient that the way to do the most good is also the way to take the least risks'. OK. I... Don't want you to die. I like you, and am also principally opposed to death, so I would prefer you to live. If that means ensuring that you do dangerous things in a minimally-stupid way, I'm willing to keep consulting you. But, please, do consider that there are ways to make the world a better place and live past thirty."

"You have a good sense of me. Many people have said that to me and that has always been my answer, that it seems very nice how the right thing to do just happens to be the self-serving one, but you have good suggestions and if you have one here I'll listen. I don't want to die. I just can't close my eyes the way everyone else can."

"I'm willing to admit that I don't know the situation well enough to say with confidence that your approach is wrong. If in the future I find out that there is a higher-value route for you to take, I will not hesitate to tell you."

"Encouraging piracy sounds appealing," she says, "but I can start with books while I'm constrained by my current notoriety anyway."

"The dissident-turned-romance-author." She teased. "The nobles will talk about how their compassionate approach to criminals has led you to become a valuable and productive member of society."

"Oh, they don't know who I am or I'd be way more screwed. And I don't think they'll consider this productive, not the sort of story I want to write - see, there's a way to be subversive and appealing at the same time, and I'd barely even have to make anything up-"

"Oh? Then who is keeping track of you? What do they want? And what are the true stories that you are hopefully going to fictionalise enough to not get caught...?"

"Just the local authorities and the people whose job it is to get people in trouble for subversive activities. I wouldn't tell true stories, that'd be an invasion of privacy.  But you aren't supposed to have romances between two women, because the Valar say so, and I happen to have had quite a few of them, and people like reading that kind of thing."

"Well, that's one way to be subversive, assuming it's legal. I know relationships between two men are considered bad in a few religions, including the majority religion of my home country - even though most people these days are too secular to care. There are laws against it in some nearby countries. However, I've never heard of people who thought relationships between two women were anything more than really odd. Why are your gods opposed to this?"

"The Elves don't do it."

"Really? There are no homosexual Elves? Who do I need to seduce around here to get some representation..."

She laughs delightedly. "If there are any, we have no stories of them. You could go to Imladris and try to seduce the lady Arwen but I expect that would end badly for you. I know no other living Elves by name."

"Are there Elves who live nearby? It occurs to me that there are many reasons to interview them. Actually, how big is this place? What's the physical size of the country, or the whole landmass it's on? How many people live here? Where is this... Town? City? I haven't seen enough to be sure what it is."

"Anadune. It's an island, in the shape of a star. The Valar raised it out of the ocean to give us a place to live. It's a few hundred miles tip to tip. We're in Rómenna, which is our biggest city, it has around a million people. The island as a whole has six million. There are no Elves here; the ones who aren't in Valinor live in the north, in ancient hidden kingdoms."

"Do you actually believe the Valar raised this place out of the sea, Ms. The Gods Are Frauds? Is this country in diplomatic contact with the Elves? What about other nations of Men? Where are the colonies, and how were they acquired?"

"No, of course not, but they certainly claim they did. We used to be on better terms with the Elves. They now come very rarely, maybe once a century, and in private, and often leave before we know they're here. The colonies are all east of here across the sea."

"Are the colonies several islands or one island or the west coast of a larger landmass?"

"Larger landmass. Middle-earth, the whole rest of the world. Why?"

"Curious about the logistics of this colonisation project. So, if it's on one part of a large continent, what do neighbouring nations think of it? Are they afraid of being conquered by Anadune and likely to support the colonies if they rebel? Do they have some sort of alliance or mutual cooperation with Anadune? Or is the entire rest of the continent unpopulated, or something?"

"We conquer as far as our reach can extend. The people beyond our borders sometimes war with us, but they are primitive and disorganized and don't form a force I can usefully defect to and turn against the crown, and it's not clear they'd release the slaves anyway. We are not honest with alliances; there's always a good reason to betray them and take more land and peoples."

"Can you arm them with guns and teach them how to use them? Guns are super convenient in that they allow you to build an effective army out of dumb meat-shields. I once went to a history camp where they had us do mock battles every day with progressively more modern fake weapons, from ancient times to the present day. Everything changes when you get point-and-click weapons."

"That sounds like an amazing camp. I could, except where would I get that many guns? Or any at all?"

"Oh, right, I should have guessed that you don't have the right to own guns. Back home, the answer would be 'down the street, at the armory'. Um, I don't suppose you know how to make guns? I remember the recipe for gunpowder, and I know a couple things about what makes some guns better than others, but I never learned how to build my own guns. It didn't seem very useful at the time. I wish I'd been carrying a textbook on war or something when I got here, instead of this novel." She said, gesturing to her now-abandoned historical drama.

"I don't know how to make guns. I also expect if I tried to acquire the ingredients of gunpowder, I'd be under a great deal more scrutiny."

"Gunpowder is just made from potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur. Are any of these, individually, controlled substances? If not, you could just get three of your friends to buy them individually, so that it doesn't look like any one person is trying to make bombs."

"...I don't think they are. I could come up with other reasons for retiring to a place in the country. Still leaves the guns themselves..."

"Do you know anyone who makes guns? Or know anyone who would have a plausible excuse for asking about gun manufacture? The impression I have is that crude guns aren't very hard to make; they just aren't very good."

"No, not yet." Her eyes are sparkling. "I can change that, though."

"Oh? Do you have people in mind? Or are you just really confident in your ability to befriend gunsmiths?"

"If it's important, I can do most things. Most people can, they just don't really care and don't really try."

"Um, I am a bit sceptical of the most people part, but I'm glad you can do that. What are your plans and priorities at this point, seeing as you probably don't care about incriminating yourself to me anymore?"

"Find a girl in the country with a big house and a big garden so I can work and have deliveries uninterrupted, find someone with a printing press, write a romance novel, bind it cheaply with paper, print hundreds of copies, get gunpowder delivered and befriend a gunsmith and learn how to make guns, explore the option of promoting piracy on the high seas. Anything I missed?"

"Transport me to the colonies and back, so I can see if this is something I want to be personally involved in? I mean, it's OK if you don't need me involved, but I'm not doing much by way of gun-building and subversive-literature-writing otherwise."

"You can earn yourself money for passage," she says, "I don't have it and anyway the profits from the passage aid the purveyors of the products of slave labor in defraying the costs of their travels."

"Um, what kind of work is even available around here? You seem to be less technologically advanced than my home country, but I'm not sure how much so, so I don't know what to expect your employment market to be like." She feels a pang of longing for her old job and wonders if anyone around here might know how her dislocation happened.

"Working on the docks, watching and tutoring children, carrying messages, joining the guard, becoming a sailor. Most people work on the docks. Or you can leech off the workers as a wealthy fop, if you have Elven blood."

"How difficult would it be to get a job watching children? Oh, damn, I would probably need to know things specific to this world to get another teaching job.

Hmmm. I wonder if I could just blatantly plagerise all the books I've read, now that I'm in a place where no one has heard of any of my world's best authors. I'm pretty sure that even copyright lawyers don't have dimension-hopping powers. Mind sharing that printing press?"

"Be my guest! Well, we'll both be some sheltered distaff-line Elrosian girl's guest, but within that constraint, be my guest!"

"Thank you.

Who are the Elrosians, and how do you intend to find a person to host you? How common is it to host people while they do things like writing?"

"Elros was the first King of Númenor, and half-Elf - actually, if you believe the histories, a little more than half-Elf, but it's not a bad approximation - and all his descendents are special, they have Elven blood. They only marry each other so as to preserve and not dilute it. It is not common to find housing by seducing naive young women but I'm very good at it and it always works."

"All of his direct descendants? Such that they all share at least half their blood? That is... Not Done in my culture. It's anthropologically fascinating and I shouldn't judge it and there are people in my own world who have done that, but still - ick.

Are all of the rulers of this country descendants of this one person? What's the fertility rate like around here? And should I assume that partial-Elves aren't universally heterosexual, the way full-Elves are?"

"No, no, it started five or six generations in, with Aldarion and Erendis' marriage turning out so disastrously. They're all very very distant cousins. We don't marry siblings. Partial Elves are supposed to be mostly virtuous like Elves, but in practice lots of lonely girls will kiss you if they're bored, and Elrosians as much as anyone else."

"Huh, OK. Distant cousins are less icky. Do you only kiss girls; bored or otherwise?"

"Yes. Do I look like I want to get married and have children? I'm going to die, it'd be terribly unfair."

"Do all relationships between men and women end in marriages and children? Huh. I guess, if printing presses are new, you wouldn't have the contraceptive pill yet..."

"Yes, that's how the Elves do it so that's How It Is, and you can get away with avoiding it for a while but eventually you'll end up with a child. Women are prettier anyway, I have no idea why anyone risks it."

"My people can prevent pregnancy for as long as we want, so it's pretty normal for heterosexual relationships to begin and end with no marriages and no children. However, it used to be the way you describe, and we still consider it taboo to create a child without marrying your partner.

I have never seen the appeal in having a relationship with a man, regardless of pregnancy. In my culture, women who only have relationships with women are considered a distinct group. Is that also true here?"

"Uh, maybe? I sort of break all the rules and mostly only hang out with people who break most of them, and among us, like, most people only sleep with the same gender, it's safer and vaguely transgressive and so forth. Lots of them will settle down and marry eventually. I don't think people think of it as their defining trait."

"Interesting. I'd guess you don't have any clubs specific to homosexuals, if it isn't considered a notable trait. Would it be dangerous for you if it were widely known that you had relationships with women? Because if you write books about it, someone will take a guess..."

"That is among the least dangerous of the things already said about me."

"Oh, OK. So it's a minor transgression. What are the big things that are said about you?"

"Heretic and traitor are the two that carry substantive legal penalties. Uh, I'm a dishonest dangerous-to-know unpredictable loose cannon busybody troublemaker who thinks she's a Vala, that sort of thing, but that they don't arrest you for."

"It's illegal to not believe in the gods? Yikes. As a member of a historically persecuted religious minority, that rankles.

I can guess 'dangerous-to-know unpredictable loose cannon busybody troublemaker' is accurate, you probably don't believe you are a member of a class of beings you consider non-existent, and there is an obviously logical problem with asking you if you're dishonest. If you're so dangerous to know, why would an Elrosian get near you? Actually, a better question is why would law enforcement let you get near an Elrosian?"

"No one knows what you believe, it's illegal to denounce them in an inflammatory manner and any manner is inflammatory in front of the right judge. And it's not like there are constables everywhere, I just find myself in someone's garden eating their fruit and then introduce myself and then if they call the guards I go try a different house. I'm not dishonest, but I'm not like some Elf who'd never lie."

"...Elves never lie? Is this, like, magically enforced? What about partial-Elves?"

"Dunno and no, they're like us and can lie as they please. Stories say Elves don't lie, but the stories say all kinds of nonsense and I have still never met an Elf. Technically I guess I don't even know that they exist."

"Why do you find Elves more plausible than gods?"

"Many more stories, more recent stories, more specific, more plausible, and the Elrosians are very different from us."

"In what ways are they different? Presumably not more suited to rule, as far as you're concerned."

She laughs. "They live longer, they're taller, they have more delicate facial features, they're very lightly built. Not smarter or more talented, though those also wouldn't mean they deserved to rule."

"How would you have rulers be chosen?"

"We don't need rulers. People can manage their own lives."

"Um, how will you settle disputes? My world actually has a long history of people going 'No rulers! No rules!' every now and then, and it usually ends poorly when anything bigger than a town tries it. I have heard pretty good arguments for how to make it work from my more... Radical acquaintances. However, the weight of precedent is against it, so I'm super sceptical."

"The people involved in the dispute can have documents drawn up that establish how they want disgreements settled - a trusted friend, an arbitration board, a public debate and vote -"

"Every pair of possible disputants? That would be horrendously inefficient for a group of ten, much less a town of ten thousand. And what if someone just says 'fuck you, I'm not acknowledging the arbitrator's decision after all'? How are you going to enforce decisions?"

"People probably won't make agreeements with that person."

"And if they decide to use force to get what they want - breaking into houses and taking what they want - will no one retaliate?"

"I imagine lots of people will form agreements of the type 'if someone is known to use force to get what they want, don't trade with them' so such people would be unable to be part of a community."

"In a small town, yes, this would be enough to regulate behaviour. But in a city? Will information costs really be so low that everyone in a city of one million will know the name and face of every dishonest person? Will there be no one who can profit by being that one guy who sells to criminals and fences stolen goods? Or will everyone have to shun criminals and people who don't shun criminals and people who don't shun people who don't shun criminals, and so on? In a large enough population where not everyone's reputation precedes them, how could you possibly use 'scorn them' as your only enforcement mechanism?"

"The alternative is using state violence, which is much much worse. I'd rather some thiefs get away with it, and not for very long or to particularly good ends, than have even a single constable."

"Do you believe that the correct way for private individuals to acquire goods and services is to pay for them?"

"The one thing I really believe is that the things we do to prevent and punish crime are indescribably worse than the crimes themselves, and that most people wouldn't be criminals even if there was no chance of being caged for life or publicly whipped for it."

"It is true that most people would not be criminals, if your people are anything like mine. However, not having a strong system to deter crime leads to a situation where criminals are better off than non-criminals. Just as it is true that people don't want to be dishonourable themselves, they also don't want people who wrong them and act unfairly to get away with it. In the absence of an institution that effectively and consistently makes crime unprofitable, people will get pissed off and start one. Be they republics or kings or lynch mobs - something will pop up. Human nature abhors a power vacuum - or at least an order vacuum. People who think their society is safe and orderly and fair probably wouldn't care if no one was running it, but if it's disorderly, they'll pick a new ruler faster than you can say 'permanent revolution'."

"I don't think you're right about human nature. I think everyone wants to believe we need rulers to keep us in line, when in fact we'd be just fine."

"OK. I can't speak to a fundamental, underlying nature of people; because I am not an expert in such. However, I can speak to historical precedent, and if you try to use honour and respect as the sole mechanism of maintaining order in a settlement larger than a small town, you're gonna have a bad time. And even the towns I've read about that didn't have any state violence did occasioanlly errupt into personal violence in the form of duels, or mob violence."

"I'm not saying it'll be perfect, just much much better than the problems created by trying to stop that sort of thing."

"Eh, I'm pretty sceptical of that. My country has law enforcement, but it's rather limited and I don't find it all that objectionable. I'd rather have it continue that way than move to a small town, or continue living on the edge of a city, but have to worry about the 0.1% of people who are violent assholes."

"Well, I suppose we disagree. It's easy to find law enforcement unobjectionable when it's only wrecking the lives of people you don't know or care about."

"It is likewise easy to think law enforcement is disposable when you've never had to live without it." She yawns. "I'm tired, since I was studying your language all night. Is there anywhere I can sleep?"

"Right. Yeah. Uh, I doubt Izindal will mind if you crash on his couch, and I'm going to get started on step one of the plan here, catch you tomorrow?"

"Sure. I'll still have to check out the library at some point. Thank you for your help. Good bye!"

She has literally never met someone she liked more, and almost wants to ask for a kiss before she goes, but one really shouldn't mix business and personal life like that. Seducing girls is for reasons, not just because you're filled with glowing admiration for them.

Carmen inspects the couch to make sure she won't crush anything, and then plops down. Being around Gimlith is great. She feels energised by being around someone so passionate, and useful because she can help someone so brash to not get killed.

However, now that she's coming down from the energetic high, she is struck by how very alone she is in a completely new world. A world she knows almost nothing about. She misses her family and friends and the consistency of a life where she always knew what was going on. She sobs a little.

She needs to look like a little less of a scoundel if she wants to even walk into the nice part of the city without being stopped. She swings by a friend's house to borrow a washcloth, improvise a bath, get a nicer dress, put her hair up, and affect her most Elfish persona. Then she leaves.

She wakes up after about nine hours and looks around. No one is in the room at the moment. She retrieves her novel and reads, as if the world didn't just turn upside down.

She walks through the neighborhood, unobtrusively observing people returning from school, until she sees someone she recognizes, greetes her enthusiastically, secures an invitation to visit, and has a place to stay. Good. Now for the printing press.

After two hours, she's finished. She grabs a few sheets of paper and a pen and starts translating the book into Adûnaic; rewriting passages over and over until she's confident she can convey the right tone in a new language. She can probably do this for books she has memorised, too. She isn't sure whether there's much of a market for historical fiction around here, but oh well. Special interests are mysterious things, but at least it means there's something she has a near-photographic memory for.

Izindal's house is on the way to the place where she'll first ask about a printing press, so she decides to stop by there. "I found someone who can host us while we plot insurrection! Or learn about it, in your case. I told her you were a mysterious blood-drinking stranger from the far far east and she was appropriately intrigued."

"Well, I am indeed mysterious and strange and blood-drinking; so I won't object to your characterisation. Should I come with you to meet her?"

"Yes, definitely, let's head over once I've won myself a printing press."

"Need any help with that? If not, I can continue translating."

"Don't think so. You're translating your book into Adunaic? That's amazing."

"Yep! It seemed like the obvious thing to do with it, once I'd finished it."

"Not at all. Awesome, though. There are so few books written in Adunaic."

"Oh. Hmm. Will I have to learn Sindarin to read anything in the library?"

"Yeah. Language of serious people, by which I mean rich people, by which I mean people who frequent libraries."

"Right." Sigh. "Are there any things that are written in both Sindarin and Adûnaic? Preferably something with line-for-line equivalence, like poetry, but other things also work. Since they use the same alphabet, I should be able to sound out the Sindarin and pick up the language just through sufficient patter-matching."

"Hmm, maybe? Ask Izindal, he's into poetry and so forth."

"OK. Um, where is he? I haven't seen him around so far. Then again, I have been pretty focussed on my translation."

"Probably at the university? He'll be back shortly, it's not safe to be out after dark."

"...What happens after dark?"

"Oh, just, if they're going to come rough you up in the streets, that's when they'd do it. Izindal has fewer enemies than me, but enough to come home while it's light out."

"Ah, OK. Well, in that case, I suppose I shouldn't keep you any longer. Good luck acquiring a printing press!"

"Thank you! Congratulations on writing a book, that's generally a big deal!!"

"Eh, translating one, and I'm not quite done. But thank you, nonetheless."

"Nonetheless." And she blows her a kiss - that's allowed, right? and runs off.

She blushes, surprised. Then grins while waving good bye.

To a friend who's a printer, next, to find out if there are any printers who'll talk to her while she's in trouble with the law.

Carmen continues translating. She wonders whether she should be writing books in Sindarin as well, but the people who read Sindarin probably won't read printed fantasy (which is what stories from her vampire world would look like).

It's harder than she anticipated to find a printer who'll talk to her. Even some of the ones who print underground newspapers won't!

Carmen finishes up her translation, and then collects the papers in a box she sees on the other side of the room. It'll probably need a lot of editing from a native speaker, but as a draft, it's complete. She labels the box with "Draft novel. Do not discard." in big letters.

Eventually she talks to a guy who says "come back in three months" which means six weeks, four if she acquires some money, and she's satisfied and drops back by Izindal's.

"Did you find a printer?"

"Yes, but not immediately, but he'll come around. You write very very quickly."

"I'm just translating. It'd be a lot harder for me to write something from scratch. I think I'm OK at lecturing, but I don't think fiction is my strong point."

"Nonetheless. I'm not even sure I could copy a book, even sloppily, in a day!"

"Well, um, it's not really 'copied'. After the first dozen pages, I started developing a short hand. There is now a translated version, but most of it will look like gibberish. On the bright side, I was able to write it down really really fast. I'll probably have to write it over in the regular script if it's going to be edited, though." She sighed. The job was never done.

"I wish our people had your command of languages. Astonishing."

"Eh, I bet you can do other things that I can't. Like, you said you'd remember a language even if you didn't use it for a year, right? I can't imagine someone having such a long-lasting memory for something they weren't especially interested in. I can barely remember mundane things that happened last week. Mind, this has been an unusually eventful two days."

"That sounds terrible. How do you have a sense of self if you forget anything you're not constantly thinking about?"

"Not everything. There is an underlying sense of continuity, but we're... Easily distracted, I guess? Things slip our minds pretty easily, unless they're related to a topic of intense fascination. Most of us have at least one such topic, and a few have two or three. Mine is history, so I will remember things related to history in great detail. Other things I forget more quickly. I remember the formula for gunpowder because it relates to the history of a specific military campaign. I don't remember how to make a gun, because I haven't seen that linked to an interesting historical narrative yet."

"Huh. That is as foreign to us as the minds of Elves, I should think. Well, would you like to go charm my old acquaintance?"

"Certainly! Lead the way."

So they head out of the city. Carmen, she decides, looks respectable enough and anyway should look like a mysterious foreigner, that being exactly what Gimlith had promised. They only collect a few stares as they head into the nicer parts of town.

She looks around, admiring the architecture and the oddly-dressed strangers. She realises, with a start, that she is an oddly dressed stranger. Maybe she should ask about local clothes? At the very least, she needs to do laundry soon.

And they're at the friend's home. She can't go in the front door, so she meanders around to a servant's entrance, opens it, and walks in like she belongs there. No one particularly stares. "We'll go to the gardens."

Carmen follows. "So, how do you know this person?"

"Acquainted when we were younger, went to find her while you were furiously writing your novel and said hello and convinced her to meet us and host us for a bit."

"Is she an Elrosian? Or are there other people with fancy houses you know?"

"No, Elrosian. Nearly everyone with a fancy house is."

"Huh. Do you not have anyone who is rich because they started a business or lend people money or something?"

"That'll get you rich, it just won't make you respectable. So then you have to marry some Elrosian family desperate enough for money to overlook your blood, and then your children have a shot at respectability and really valuable marriages."

"Ah. This seems to be a pattern with most societies with a reasonably large noble class, unless there is a strict rule about nobles only marrying each other. Actually, do you have any economically successful minority groups - ethnic or religious - that only marry amongst themselves?"

"Only the Elrosians. Is that common elsewhere?"

"The Zifartas in my country were that for a while, because we were mostly merchants. There are a few other examples I know of, which mostly involve dislocated ethnic minorities who ended up in new countries. But I suppose if you enforce religious Orthoxy, and your country is an island with limited immigration, you might not get such groups living here."

"Immigrants are very rarely approved, no. They're not of the original stock of Anadune and people think that's a godlier kind of person. People are terrible."

"Oh. Hmm. Should I be trying to look less foreign, then?"

"No, no, I promised my friend an exotic foreigner and we see too few of them to even have cruel stereotypes. Also I don't think you could."

"Really? Appart from the clothing issue, are you all homogenous enough that my physical features would stand out?"

"Only a little bit, but yes. The gods supposedly standardized our appearances when they supposedly gave us the island. Our geneticists think it was just a very strong founder effect."

"Huh. Fair enough. Back home, Zifartas are recognisable if you know what to look for, but we otherwise fade into the background. Anyway, where's your friend?"

"That's her home." They're in the gardens, which are expansive enough it's not obvious. She points. 

"Is this, like, the Elrosian district? Do they live clustered together?"

"Well, there's a lot of space between houses, but they live near each other, yes. They can't be around we smelly commoners. This is the garden; let's sit here and wait for my friend to say hello."

"Are there any rituals of respect I should know? Or can I get away with being an ignorant foreigner? If I'm speaking Adûnaic this well, will I be expected to have learned all your other subtle communication systems, too?"

"No, you'll be fine, Elrosian girls are very sheltered and silly."

"Hey," a voice says from a distance, and another young woman walks into view. "I resent that remark."

"No," Gimlith says, 'you just want assurance that I'm not speaking of you. You're silly, too, to be honest, but you have the potential to grow out of it, and it's not your fault. I'm sure being raised that way would make me silly and rather more impassioned than anyone about it."

"You? Impassioned? Who would believe such a thing." Carmen teased. She looked the newcomer over, admiring her aesthetics.

The clothing, of course. Definitely the clothing.

"Hey!" Gimlith says warmly. "I made it back as quickly as I could, Carmen was writing a book!"