Thellim is trying to take in a lot of information from which important deductions may be made, mostly having to do with a visceral shock of what the phrase "lower GDP per capita" actually means that's making her feel like something just hit her hard in the solar plexus. What a nice town this is! The barely-transformed raw materials composing it might cost six whole months of her earnings!
...children have to live here.
They're living here right now. Look, there they are! Right in front of her. Children who either can't afford the raw materials for clothing, or can't afford to transform them, including whatever resources their adult relatives are willing to spend on their behalf.
If the whole world is like this, there can't possibly be any priority higher than more economic growth NOW.
She manages to turn her attention away from the children in ragged clothing and pay attention to the Vanyel grabber, enough that she's focused when she gets the Mindspeech.
:Hello. 'General' Lissa Ashkevron - that sounds like authority? Your brother is literally starving to death due to 'magic' making it hard for him to eat, and him having only what I'm guessing are standard emergency rations. He needs something much more palatable. I'm -: What level of restricted information is she? She forgot to think about this, so will default to 'high'. :- not from around here so I may have had an easier time of noticing this. I'm sure it would have been nice to meet you if I'd met you under kinder circumstances.:
