Awwwwwww.

So cute! Aliens are less baby-focused than Amentans but that doesn't mean we're immune to adorable.

Picture of Peka with a sleepy bald baby.

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

Oh well there's more where that came from. A lot of the ones with the baby smaller than she is now don't have Peka and have other family in there instead but she crops out their faces.

She's the cutest little thing! You must be so proud.

She's a sweetie too, very easy as long as the formula keeps coming.

Formula?

If you can't breastfeed there's stuff that works fine instead.

Oh huh. That makes sense. Back home if you can't breastfeed you get a wet nurse.

I dunno who I would have gotten, none of my friends have babies this year. It's more expensive than breastfeeding but I was in the army so.

Yeah.

Aliens--my species at least, there could be others--usually want kids, but we're not baby-focused the way Amentans are, so we haven't hit a level where we have to institute population controls yet. Like, I live in a flying city with only so much room that's a really desirable place to live, but we only have limits on immigration, we're not policing how many kids people have or banning immigration without swaps or anything like that.

I don't get terribly baby crazy, I get the sex drive part really bad though. How do you limit immigration but not with swaps?

Like, we have applications to immigrate, and outside emergencies we only accept so many a year.

Huh. Which ones?

Some combination of the people who need it most and the people who'll be most useful to the city.

Why does the city fly, is it just 'cause it's awesome?

Well, it is awesome, but no. The city's founder and leader is a Great Mage, and there are rules against those meddling in international politics, but he got away with it by making a flying city instead of having a city somewhere that already existed.

What's a Great Mage?

It's a mage that's really powerful and can basically do magic whenever instead of rationing it.

Ooh.

Otet's going to be one.

Cool!

It's going to be great!

What will she do with her phenomenal powers?