Do not mock the humble survey

[poll_the_stars]

Avet... has found herself annoyed. She has only one form. This isn't the problem, but this is what led to her noticing the problem. There is no way to preview what a dragon will look like. There are species books of birds and bugs and animals - but some of them are sub-par on noting where the dragon's colors go, and miscellaneous gods that she doesn't worship help you if you want to see what your color will look like on the form.

She is going to solve this problem. By taking some surveys. As in, grab photo paper, gather up a list of lines to go visit, and then knock on some doors and ask some questions and create a book series that organizes all possible forms, all known forms, what known lines look like in the forms - that sort of thing.

She starts with blue groups, because blue groups have the most available forms - she's gotten all of the big lines (well, all of the big lines that gave her the time of day) and is on the smaller ones. The ones with only one or two people. Or, in some cases, none.

This particular one's easier than some others; she doesn't need to fly to another country. It's Esmaar. She flies to the address of one 'Avar,' no line name. Apparently he had one and had some kind of explosive spat about it and gave it up. Not that it's her business. He's just another person for her survey.

She knocks on his door.

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

"We're going to fix the language thing," he reminds her. "Well, try, anyway, with at least as much effort as we try fixing shrens and probably first. So what's left is flight and lizards. I can fly, just not in my natural form. It's not really a big deal to me by itself. That leaves lizards, and honestly, if all the other shrens in the world were cured and I stubbornly remained, getting yelled at by lizards for my degeneracy would bring me immense perverse joy. No, the only real reason to stop being a shren is the tiny risk of accidentally infecting somebody else - and assuming a working cure that's any damn good at all, that's much less of an issue all of a sudden. So why would I want to stop being a shren? Just to stop being a shren? No thank you."

[poll_the_stars]

She looks at him very strangely. Sort of like he is a very frustrating puzzle that she doesn't understand.



"That would be proving them all right?" she tries, after a very brief empathy consultation and some very atypical-for-a-dragon thinking.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Sort of," he says. "Not even proving. It would be accepting that they were right. And they're not. If I decided to stop being a shren just to stop being a shren, I would be acting like there was something wrong with being a shren. And I have gone to a great deal of trouble my whole life to maintain that there isn't, in the face of intense and unceasing opposition from the word itself."

[poll_the_stars]

"Huh."

(If he were an empath, he would likely catch a brilliant flare of admiration, even when purposely not paying attention. But he's not.)

"I think I understand," says Avet slowly. "I would call it brave but that seems - condescending. Mm." Draconic. C'mon. You can do it. Ha, look, she has a word for this one! "Admirable." (In a moral sense, in the sense that what is being admired is what the world should be, in the sense of seeing someone fight for a cause and agreeing with it)

[thisvorlunatic]

"...Well. Thank you," he says. "First time anyone's said that about my weird shren opinions."

[poll_the_stars]

"Ha. I feel special, now."

[thisvorlunatic]

"So anyway. I'm crazy enough to want to stay a shren even if I figure out a way to stop. That is what we've discovered today."

[poll_the_stars]

She smiles, just a little. Then her smile falters. "You know people are going to hate you for it. If we ever manage it. You probably won't get any peace for a long, long time. Possibly ever. It sounds kind of exhausting."

[thisvorlunatic]

"So, pretty much the same as being a shren is now. I'm used to it."

[poll_the_stars]

"Well, as long as you know what you're hypothetically getting into."

[thisvorlunatic]

He shrugs. "It's all hypothetical anyway, at this point."

[poll_the_stars]

"Want to go make it real?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Of course."

[poll_the_stars]

"Great! Draconic first, though, if you don't mind."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah. We already know something about how hard the other one's going to be to solve; let's find out how this one compares."

[poll_the_stars]

"Agreed."

Step one to finding out how that compares: make a dragon magic analysis that shows what the dragon magic is doing, instead of where it is. This will likely take some time.

[thisvorlunatic]

Time, effort, and ingenuity. Luckily they're well supplied with all of the above.

[poll_the_stars]

They are! It will take longer than an afternoon, though. Is Mial amenable to having scheduled nerd days with Avet?

[thisvorlunatic]

Absolutely.

[poll_the_stars]

Well, good. Then she will be by every Chenen. That is not to say that they cannot have extra nerd days, but those are a bit less predictable; Avet does have a job that she needs to go to, and three books she needs to finish compiling.

Progress is... slow. Dragon magic declines to be easily analyzed. Inventing a spell for 'tell us what the dragon magic is doing' is not happening anytime soon, and neither of them are inclined to bang their heads against the brick wall of needing one specific solution.

It's much more reasonable to work on a dragon magic analysis that will tell them which part of the magic is moving when a dragonish does something magic. For example: speaking Draconic to one another, and seeing which part of the magic wibbles. They have charts, now. They can't narrow down everything that way, but they can certainly make progress. Speaking Draconic, shapeshifting, and singing a dragonish's dragonsong are easy. Green color group's empathy is similarly easy. A dragonish declining or trying to have kids is... Less easy. On account of no one wanting to watch a dragonish declining or trying to have kids.

A dragonish breathing fire should be easy. But Avet's wizard buddy is a shren. And she is a dragon. She could possibly go ask his mother to do the analysis on her instead of having Mial do it. But that sort of problem-dodging solution is not one she wants. She looks pensively at the chart.

[thisvorlunatic]

Meanwhile, Mial is looking pensively at the chart for an entirely different reason.

"...It occurs to me that my father is a dragon and my mother is a research wizard," he says. "If, um. If we wanted to ask her to gather data for the 'declining to have children' section of the chart."

[poll_the_stars]

That is not the sort of sentence Avet was expecting to hear. She blinks, twice.

"If it wouldn't be um, too awkward. Then yeah, that would be helpful." She pauses, looking at the chart. Okay, this is stupid. She takes a deep breath. C'mon Avet, you can do it, it's just a sentence. "And we can go take care of the firebreathing data in your yard, if you're. Um. Okay with it."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Sure I am. Are you? It's not very likely that either of us will spontaneously lose a form in the middle of my yard, but accidents happen. And my mother is a research wizard. If you wanted to ask her to do the firebreathing analysis, I wouldn't hold it against you."

[poll_the_stars]

"It's not really a matter of if you'd hold it against me," she says. "It's - I am poking at my reasons for not being okay with it and they're flimsy and I don't think they're good enough to have command over my life. I trust you. Finnah's at work and even if she were here, I trust her reasonably well. I don't think a random shren is going to show up out of nowhere and turn out to be the correct flavor of cruel and spiteful. I don't think either of us will spontaneously lose a form. There is no legitimate reason to be afraid. I don't want to have a, a flinch reaction to something in my head that I don't actually agree with, and let it control my life. I don't want to be that kind of person. If I were legitimately afraid I wouldn't volunteer, and I'd possibly be kind of upset with you if you expected me to, but this is - the sort of thing I am inclined to conquer, not cower from. So it's not, actually, involved with you at all, you're an innocent bystander." Pause. "So uh, sorry, innocent bystander, I am still attacking the lizard parts of my head, it takes a while. It's kind of entrenched."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Okay," shrugs Mial.