“It’s so much less… intimidating,” Arthur said on the morning of the second council meeting. “Even though I know this is the more important day.”


    “Any idea why?” Milo asked, leaning back in his chair. “Because if we can figure it out what calms Arthur down, we can probably bottle it. Use it for emergencies when you see a very concerning flower, or something.”


    Arthur, Milo, and Mizu had arrived at the city center about an hour before any of them needed to be there. Milo and Mizu didn’t really have to be there at all, but had decided to come along as moral support and because Philbin had tweaked their schedules so they could be there for Arthur.


    And, miracle of miracles, Arthur had found breakfast burritos. They weren’t entirely the same because nothing on this world was, but some capital-based genius had gotten so close to the thin-oily-bread-filled-with-eggs-and-stuff experience of Earth that whatever variations were left didn’t really matter.


    “I think it’s because I know they’re fighting over snacks in there,” Arthur said. “The council says that they keep them for the guests, but you can tell it’s not. They just want their fair share of the cookies.”


    “And that helps?” Milo said. “They aren’t any less powerful or anything just because they like sweets.”


    “It’s hard to explain. I guess the first question is if you’ve ever asked yourself how weird all this is for me.”


    “Of course we have,” Mizu said. “We don’t talk about it around you because we don’t want it to be awkward for you. But coming here must have been a shock, and it hasn’t been that long. Everything looks different, there’s majicka and the system. It has to feel odd, even now. Right?”


    “Kind of. Actually, it’s not even so much all that. I mean it’s a whole different world, yes. But the weirder part is who I am now.” Arthur shifted the last bit of burrito-filling lower in his semi-tortilla and folded the last bit into a single bite before dropping it into his mouth. “I was a nobody on Earth. I don’t mean that in a bad way, exactly. I had most of what I needed. It wasn’t the best life, but it wasn’t terrible either. But when I came here, the old man in-between places reminded me that it was okay that I was dead, that people would be sad for a while, but I wasn’t exactly curing diseases or reshaping the world.”


    “Really?” Lily gave him a fishy look. “You weren’t? That’s like… your normal Tuesday here.”


    “That’s the point of what I’m saying. On Earth, I was just a dude. Here, I’m meeting with the emperors of everything. It was scary and strange to me at first but now that I know they bicker over who gets the last pastry. It helps a lot. It doesn’t make things more normal, but it makes them weird in a way I can wrap my head around.”


    “I guess that makes sense,” Milo said. “When we were giving our talk, some guy asked me what I was doing with the impurities from the iron after I refined it.”


    “That’s a weird question?”


    “The weirdest. You just stir them out when the iron is melted. You put in a big metal rod and they freeze to it because from the perspective of the impurities, the rod is really cold. The biggest problem is figuring out how to get them off the rod. Turns out he was a Reverse Engineer, which is a kind of researcher you hardly ever see. But for a bit there, before I figured that out?” Milo did a chef’s kiss hand motion. “I answered great. Not knowing what’s at stake is a perfect way to forget about how terrible it is to have to talk in front of people like that. Absolutely great.”


    “I would think you would like public speaking,” Mizu said. “You talk enough.”


    “That’s a good burn.” Lily nodded. “Good job, Mizu.”


    “Yes, excellent,” Milo said. “You are really good at it when you try. And, yes, I talk a lot, but about what I want to. It’s whatever comes to mind. Answering questions is hard, even when you know the answer. And giving a speech with actual structure…” Milo shuddered. “Yeah, I don’t want to do that anymore. So no more inventions.”


    “You think you can pull that off?” Arthur asked.


    “I can try. I’ll just be Milo Normalsmith, making normal things for the foreseeable future.” Milo looked behind Arthur with a suddenly interested expression. “Hey, Arthur, why is that guy coming towards you? He looks very official.”


    Arthur turned and looked himself, immediately recognizing the capital building attendant from the day before.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    “Oh, good, you are right here. I thought I’d have to run all the way across town to find you. The council has met up and, I quote, is ready for you anytime and can’t promise to protect the good things on the cheese and cracker platter much longer.” The attendant became visibly wistful as he mentioned the cheese. “I’d hurry if I were you. The woman who does those platters is an artist.”


    “Oh, yes,” Lily said, somehow still hungry after eating a day’s worth of burrito in ten minutes. She tugged on Arthur’s sleeve. “Can we go now, Arthur? He says there’s cheese in there.”


    “Sure.” Arthur stood up nodded at Milo before stooping to kiss the top of Mizu’s head. “Thanks for coming, guys. It helps.”


    “Any time.” Milo stood up too, brushing burrito fragments off his shirt and stretching. “Are you coming to the catapult thing tonight? I think I’ve just about figured out the calibration problems now.”


    “The catapult thing?”


    “Oh, right. I didn’t tell you.” Milo glanced at the attendant, who was waiting patiently but giving off an only partially concealed sense of immediacy as things wrapped up. “Just ask Lily about it. She knows all about it.”


    —


    “I said not right now, Arthur. There’s a catapult and Milo’s involved. That’s enough for you to worry about at the moment.” Lily held up her hand as Arthur began to argue. “Demon Council, remember? Your entire fate and all? We should probably handle that first.”


    Arthur nodded, obediently. She had a point. He took a deep breath before he opened the door. This was, even without the burritos, an important day. He would handle it with the dignity and gravitas it deserved.


    As the door swung open, that commitment dissolved. Pomm was standing on Neppo.


    “Just keep standing there, Pomm,” Skal said, blandly. “It’s the only way he’ll learn.”


    “Skal.” Arthur took a step forward and plopped into a chair he suspected was for the attendant. “I only have so much tolerance for this kind of thing. I was counting on you to be my anchor here. You do the wise-old-man thing so well at home. How are you involved in this?”


    Skal shrugged. “Neppo was trying to take two pieces of cheese for every cracker. I couldn’t let that stand.”


    “Not even two crackers for every piece of cheese?” Lily scowled at the downed squirrel. “Let him have it, Pomm. He’s a monster.”


    “Lily, there is a bear standing on that squirrel. An entire bear,” Arthur said.


    “He probably won’t die,” Lily said. “He’s getting off easy.”


    In a very real way, Arthur found he had no power over what was happening at all. He was vastly outranked by everyone in the room but Lily, and on a social level, was the only reluctant hold-out who felt that senator-types shouldn’t stand on each other during official business. Neppo, to his credit, turned out to be surprisingly tough. It took minutes for Pomm’s sheer mass to wring out the necessary apologies and promises the rest of the counsel felt were needed, and another little bit for him to catch his breath while Arthur finished making them all a nice, cracker-appropriate tea.


    And then things finally got serious. Before the tea had cooled off enough to drink, the tone in the room matched what Arthur had expected as he turned the doorknob.


    “All right,” Neppo announced. “The first order of business. Arthur, Skal brought up that you may very well not know what your own personal options are, should you not like the choices we present. Do you?”


    “I don’t. At least not exactly.” Arthur’s knowledge of the Demon World legal system started and stopped with a vague sense that all the laws seemed to work well enough that worrying about them wasn’t productive. “I can argue my case, at least?”


    “Better than that.” Neppo was already back into the crackers. “You can tell us to pound sand. You don’t have to do what we say at all.”


    “Really? Just like that?” Arthur asked. “And I don’t… I don’t know. You don’t lock me in a room to think about what I did?”


    “No?” Stygge looked appalled. “Why would we do that? It’s not an emergency situation, Arthur. You are your own person. The government has a very, very limited ability to tell you what to do. How would we even force you?”


    “You could ask Karbo. He could probably do it,” Arthur offered.


    Stygge snorted. “A very shattered portion of road outside my front door would claim otherwise. He visited last night, just to make sure we weren’t mistreating you. I am fairly confident who he’d side with, if it came to that.”


    “Oh, sorry.”


    “Don’t apologize for Karbo, Arthur. We are all used to him,” Pomm said. “Mostly.”


    “The point is, Arthur,” Skal broke in, “that none of what we ask you to do is binding. You don’t even have to listen to the council’s request, if you don’t want to.”


    “Huh,” Arthur said. “Why is that? It’s important, right? Or you wouldn’t ask me in the first place.”


    “Yes, of course.” Stygge said. “The health of some significant number of people hangs in the balance, and the safety of a few more. It’s far from unimportant. And I’m guessing from your questions that in your world, the government would have been more coercive. Correct?”


    “Something like that, yeah.”


    “The reason we don’t do that here is pretty simple, Arthur,” Skal said. “We’d never know when to stop. Believe me, it’s been tried. There are books about it. But sooner or later, more people than anyone planned on are doing not quite the thing they should. There’s just no way to feel what’s right for someone better than they can for themselves. It’s… how do you put it? It’s not a thing.”


    “Fair enough.” Arthur nodded. “And thanks, I think. Although in a way it would have been easier if you had just told me what to do, and I just had to do it.”


    “Isn’t that the truth,” Neppo said. “Some people even get that. Not the have to part, but the part where we’ve done their thinking for them. Like your stealthy friend. We talked to Eito about him, and we think we know the perfect job for him.”


    “Really?” Corbin said. “What?”


    “And that,” Skal said, as every other council member in the room spit out their tea, “is why he gets it. Corbin, this is the Demon Council. It’s not exactly against the rules to hide in the meetings, but that’s because nobody has ever even tried. You really should not be able to do that at your age.”