a profusion of whistles

[self_composed]

"I didn't wind up interacting directly with Micaiah much," says Stella, after returning home from a certain visit. "Does he deviate from template significantly? He didn't have wings, so I imagine it was by less than Angela deviates from my template."

Comments

[truthwright]

"There's nowhere better than dead you can put any of us where we won't be dangerous," he says. "Unless you mean something way different by 'dangerous' than I do."

[self_composed]

"What do you mean by it?"

[truthwright]

"Dangerous is something we just are," he says. "We don't have little rulebooks in our heads telling us what we're not allowed to do. We just do what we want, whatever that is. So if you want it to be a rule that we can't hurt anybody, you have to either put us where there's nobody to hurt, or kill us. And being where there's no other people is one of the worst things that could possibly happen to us."

[self_composed]

"Whether it's a rule doesn't matter. What matters is that it doesn't happen."

[truthwright]

"I'm gonna live forever," says Kas. "Of course I'm gonna hurt somebody someday. I won't even have to mean to. There's just too much of forever for it not to happen."

[self_composed]

Stella triangles away a burgeoning headache. "The it that has to not happen is not all forms of hurting all people forever. It's hurting people who ought not to be hurt. I don't care that you blew up your parents or that Golden set the woman who mind-raped her daughter on fire or that Amariah assassinated the president of Panem. Those people were not innocent. Would I slightly prefer it if, say, Golden had had the ability to strand the relevant mind-rapist with her mate somewhere? Sure, but she didn't, so execution was reasonable."

[truthwright]

"Yeah, and my sweetie killed the guy who was torturing Path," says Kas, hugging Petaal briefly. "I don't mean that stuff, I know you're okay with that."

Petaal turns into a glass-winged butterfly again and perches on the back of his hand, which he keeps still on the table.

"I mean in all of forever, I know someday I'm gonna do something that you, that Amariah, wouldn't like. Because I forget, or I'm not thinking, or I think she'd be fine with it but I'm wrong because I don't have the rulebook and I can't ask the alethiometer because it can't look in her head. Or even just by accident. And I'll be sorry after, because I love her and I don't want her upset, but I'll still have done it."

[self_composed]

"If I meet her, I'll mint her and give her starter coins, and it's a reasonable bet that she'll start reading your mind, which should help," says Stella.

[truthwright]

"What if we don't want her to?" says Petaal.

[self_composed]

Blink. "Don't you?"

[truthwright]

"Sometimes, yeah," says Kas.

"Not all the time," says Petaal.

"Not every minute just to see if we do something we're not allowed."

"We love her, we love her so much, sometimes I want to just curl up in her lap and go to sleep with her hands in my fur, but—"

"—we know what would happen if she tried to make us a,"

"a kept thing."

[self_composed]

"Well. That sounds like something you should be working out with her, not me," shrugs Stella. "I trust her to have her own world under control."

[truthwright]

"That's what I mean when I say we're all dangerous, though," he says. "I think."

[self_composed]

"Alice doesn't live on an asteroid," points out Stella. "I have an emergency mint-gone-rogue containment protocol, which is designed to work on him, but I don't really expect to need it. For him, anyway, there are other mints. There are levels of danger. Anyone can -" She fumbles for an example. "Make a poor driving decision and hit someone with their car. Slightly fewer people will successfully resort to violence to rescue their girlfriend. Neither of those things is a problem. A tiny subset of people blow up hospitals to get the attention of a masked vigilante."

[truthwright]

"Oh, if you just don't want him blowing up hospitals, put him somewhere there's no Bat," says Petaal. "All the really big showy stuff was for her. And you don't fall in love like that too often."

[self_composed]

"I'm sure the Bat would be thrilled to learn that the terrorist attacks were all her fault," says Stella. "What do you think would happen if I dropped the Joker off in Angela's world on that continent full of Edori?"

[truthwright]

"I don't know," says Kas. "He might like it. He might not. He wouldn't start blowing up Edori."

[self_composed]

"That's good, because they sound like very friendly people and I would not like to be responsible for their exploding."

[truthwright]

Kas laughs.

"You're cute," says Petaal.

[self_composed]

"Thank you."

[truthwright]

Petaal lets out a butterfly-sized giggle.

[self_composed]

"Am I still scary?" she asks.

[truthwright]

"Dunno," says Kas.

Petaal turns herself around until she's facing Stella directly.

[self_composed]

"Boo?" attempts Stella.

[truthwright]

Petaal giggles again, fanning her delicate wings.