Revenn sat back and regarded Keo. "I must confess," he said, "I'd very much enjoy spending as much time as you have to spare asking you questions about your world and your people, but I imagine it may not be very comfortable for you here. Your brother was a little nervous, as I recall." His eyes glinted with suppressed curiosity. "If you wish to return, I can understand that."

"I'm not in any particular hurry," she said. "I have a continual mental linkup with my husband, which also works transworld, so it's not as big a production to summon me back when I care to go as it was for Narax. Also, Narax is a wizard whose spells don't work here; I'm not a wizard, and all the things I can do normally - except cast spells I pick up through my husband's knowledge of them - are still functional here, so I don't have that discomfort either."

He nodded. "Rhysel mentioned you were a - what was the term - highly-unusual dragon, that was it. What's that mean, precisely?"

"Well, there are thirty species of dragons divided into six color groups," Keo began. "Each color group has an ability the other groups don't have, or is better at something that all dragons can do than other color groups. Unusual dragons and highly-unusual dragons have further advanced abilities in the same sphere that their color group is normally good at. I'm a jade dragon, in the green group. Regular green-groups like my little brother are empaths. Unusuals are telepathic too. And then there's me - I don't even know for sure what all I can do, but there's lots of it."

"Not fully explored your abilities, then?"

"Well, the thing is, highly-unusuals crop up extremely, extremely rarely, hence the name," the dragon said. "So rarely that I'm the only green-group one alive right now and probably will be for at least most of the rest of my life. Highly-unusual green-group dragons who are willing to muck about in other people's heads just to see how many different ways they can do it are even fewer. All of the things that I can do that unusuals can't do, I learned from a highly-unusual who's dead now, and who, because our abilities are nearly impossible to write technical manuals on, planted what he knew directly in my head when I was very small. I'm still turning up new possibilities whenever I have a stray thought along the lines of 'Wouldn't it be useful if there were some way toÉ' And there are almost certainly things I could do that he didn't even know about."

"Curious. I would expect you could duplicate anything a true Master of the mental disciplines of our magic could do, then, which would make you formidable indeed. And a great blessing to your people, I expect, as well."

"I have made myself useful in the past," Keo said modestly. "But in turn, a lot of the things I can do are at least theoretically reproducible with wizard spells - although they'd require a lot of fine-tuning to get the kind of intuitive feel and finesse I tend to have with these things."

Revenn nodded thoughtfully. "Cross-study could be useful to both you and your world's wizards, though. They can figure out how to duplicate your abilities to the benefit of others - which would last long after you've passed on, whenever that would be. And it could open up areas of research that could give you ideas that wouldn't have occurred to you, but would be obvious to some other wizard, helping you to learn your capacities as well."

She nodded. "Of course, a lot of things that are possible to do with somebody else's mind aren't things I particularly wish to be able to do, even of the ones that I happen to have stumbled on," she pointed out.

"Well, yes. I don't imagine you'd be inclined to strip someone's mind of every memory since birth - as an example - you don't strike me as the type. And if you were, Rhysel wouldn't associate with you, assuming she knew about it."

"Of course, if I were the type to do something as drastic as that, I could also tell anyone I wanted and erase the memory if they reacted badly," she said. "Or fiddle with their memories and attitudes until they thought it was a perfectly acceptable thing to do. It would be only too easy to abuse things-I once calculated that it would take me about three weeks to conquer the world."

"By implanting the belief of it in the minds of the right people? Although I don't know why anyone would want to - it would be more bother than it would be worth."

"Oh, I know, and you can probably guess from the fact that I do not rule the world that it doesn't interest me much."

"We magi are taught ethical behavior along with our learning of magic. There are a fair number of forbidden magics, for instance - I suppose your world is fortunate you seem to have been naturaly ethical, or learned to be so at a young age."

"I half-suspect," Keo said, "that the aforementioned highly-unusual green-group dragon who planted the information in my head may also have firmed up my ethics enough that I am highly unlikely to get around them at any point in my life."

The kama laughed. "Sounds like he was a good person. I can think of one or two potential ways that might bypass that, but I don't think I should share. Are the other highly-unusual dragon powers equally versatile?"

"There is some debate about whether the blue-group highly unusuals have 'better' powers," Keo said. "It's generally conceded that the remaining four color groups don't come close in versatility, at least."

"What do the others' powers entail?"

"Blues are better shapeshifters, reds breathe better fire, whites are better fliers, violets are better swimmers, and blacks have better senses," she recited.

"Hm. Yes, I can see why yours and the blue's powers seem more versatile - unless the reds can control their fire beyond just breathing it. I would expect that the ability to have better senses could be quite versatile as well."

"Reds and blacks enjoy their powers very much - so do the whites and violets - but yes. And red highly-unusuals have a lot of fine control over fire in general, but in most ways they're not superior to the average fire mage."

"Fire mage - sort of a one-element-only specialist?"

"Well, I wouldn't call it a specialization, since mages don't choose their elements."

"Ah, I see. At least I think so. Sort of an inherent-born power?"

"After a fashion. Mages have to awaken their powers to have them at all."

"How does that work?"

"Depends on the sort of mage. Say somebody's born with the potential to be a fire mage. There are wizard spells spells to find that out. If they then get into a situation where a normal person would burn to death, they don't - it just awakens their powers."

"Seems like a painful way to do it."

"Well, yes, and a lot of potential mages don't awaken their powers, especially fire mages."

"I assume that you'd have mages of the other three elements - correct me if I'm wrong - but do they come in other varieties? Like animal mages or plant mages or anything like that?"

"No, just the four elements."

He nodded. "Getting back to your kind, what are the ratios of standard, unusual, and highly-unsuals? You say you're the only highly-unusual of your group alive, but I don't know if there are hundreds of dragons, or thousands or millions, or billions on your world."

"Multiple thousands of us, all the species put together," she said. "I don't know the exact figure, but I'm sure that it's more than ten thousand and less than fifty. Unusuals are about one percent of the population and highly-unusuals crop up one about every three or four thousand individuals, among the set of dragons who live past infancy."

"There's a high early mortality rate?"

"Yes. We put off naming our babies until they're about a month old for that reason."

"What's the usual cause of death? If it's not a sensitive subject."

"If we knew," Keo said sadly, "we could avoid it with better success."

"So it's not an illness or something similar?"

"No - although they're susceptible to illness early on, too. They just die." She looked briefly depressed, and then brightened. "But my little one's going to live. Her naming ceremony was postponed because of the family crisis I mentioned, but we're having it very soon."

"Oh, well congratulations, then. Rhysel didn't mention anything about you being a recent mother in her letter." He stood up again rummaging through his shelves some more while he continued to speak. "What does the naming ceremony consist of?"

"Close friends and family sit in a circle and pass the baby around, and tell her her name," she said. "It's good luck if she repeats it at some point during the ceremony."

"I see." He pulled two more texts from his shelf, both bound in black leather. "Give these to Rhysel as well. It will be some time before she'd be well-versed enough to work with them, but they may hold some chance of keeping your infants from dying - dependent on the root cause, of course."

"Well, she does seem able to do one or two things that we have yet to duplicate," Keo said, "so I suppose it's not impossible, but you'll forgive me for not holding out a tremendous amount of hope."

"No, no, that's certainly understandable. The principles inside may not apply at all. Or it may be something that the death magics can't do anything about, but it never hurts to investigate. And she's in a much better situation to attempt to address the problem than I am."

"You're welcome to visit," she said. "But I see your point."

He grinned boyishly. "Well, it looks like I'll be visiting rather soon, anyway. But I couldn't stay for an extended period of time, what with my students. And I'm getting too old to do the sort of research necessary anyway - I could start it, and die before I finished."

"I see," she said, not sure how to react to this pronouncement.

"The sort of research involved could take decades or centuries." he added by way of explanation. "While I have some few decades left to me, centuries are beyond my reach." He smiled kindly. "It's the way of things, and I'll be ready to go willingly when Mendar comes for me."

She nodded.

"Have you decided on a name for your child yet, or does that decision come at the time of the ceremony?"

"We've decided already, but I can't tell you," Keo said.

"Oh, that's quite all right. I was more interested in the process. Do the parents discuss it in private, or does one parent make the decision alone?"

"It's a decision between both parents," she replied.

"And no one else knows until the ceremony, then?"

"That's right."

"I see. I hope you don't mind all the questions. I find this all positively fascinating, however."

"It's quite all right," she said.

"Is there some purpose behind the ceremony beyond tradition?"

"Well, it gets everyone who needs to know the baby's name together at the same time," she explained. "Since we delay naming them, we can't announce it at the same time as we announce their hatching."

"I see. How long does your species live?"

"At least two thousand years, barring accident or illness," she replied. "Sometimes we top three or even four, but that's considerably rarer."

"Intriguing. Longer than dragons here, but not by much."

"How long do dragons here live?" she asked.

"Generally between 1800 and 2200 years. I've never heard of one living more than 2500 years."

She nodded.

"Does Rhysel stand out much over on your world, or does she look like your halfbloods do?"

"We don't call them halfbloods, but she passes for a half-elf easily," Keo said. "Although she doesn't look like most of the ones in the country we live in, where humans are darker in coloration and therefore the half-elves are as well."

"I see. And do elves and other species have variations in skin color as well, or are your humans unique in that regard?"

"Humans have more coloring variation than other species, but there are still a few elven ethnicities, and similar subtypes of most other species that I know of," she said. "I'd say Rhysel looks most like a cross between a western elf and a Linnipese human."

"Western elves are fairer skinned as well?"

"Yes, and they have light hair for the most part, which wouldn't overwhelm the Linnipese human tendency to red hair."

"Ah." He smiled. "So many questions, every one I have answered seems to open up a dozen more."

"I've got plenty of time," Keo said with a smile.

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