"I kinda want to say that if they take me less seriously because of my clothing, I don't care what they think... although formal clothing does signal things I might want to signal. I'd probably rather eventually have formal clothing from my own culture, but that might take a while."

"I look forward to your dancing and singing. When is dinner, actually?"

"Maybe I could help you make that, too! It'd be an interesting novelty. Dinner is thirteen zero to thirteen fifty hours. Right before most people's preferred bedtime. So... In about half an hour, looks like. Time goes quickly during excitement."

"I hope you're not expecting too much. I think I'll go with the start of Distant Mountain Exploration... Or maybe the Winter of Ash. Distant Mountain is much more thematically appropriate, the other's a tragedy, but I really feel like being Aulia- Winter of Ash's main character- Today."

"Uh, in Luo for dinner everyone gathers up and talks about their day, any important news gets shared, that kind of thing. It's custom for everyone present to say at least one thing about their day, and then anyone who wants to show something off does so while the rest of those in attendance watch, relax, and eat."

(As a reminder: Sixteen hour days, with 100 minutes each, 50 seconds in a minute.)

"The problem with the sort of formal clothing I'd want to wear is that, although I know what it's supposed to look like, I have no idea how it's supposed to be constructed. But if you want to try it, I'm game."

To Mori, "I'm not really expecting anything in particular. I'm sure it will be interesting to get a look at a whole new culture's traditions even if I'm not enraptured by beauty."

"I don't mind trying!" Chak says. "Maybe just talking about it tonight. I'm kind of tired. If you need one of the spare outfits let out to fit you while your earth clothes are in laundry though, tell me now and I can have it ready by bedtime."

"If you don't want formal robes, I think I'll go try to slap together an Aulia costume before dinner starts." Mori stands, does a tail and ear gesture that Sid is starting to parse as 'polite departure', and heads out of the lounge.

"Do you even need clothes?" Wonders Fei impishly. "You're a guest. It's not like you'll be expected to do any hard work."

"I would appreciate some spare outfits, but it's not urgent."

"Bye, Mori."

To Fei, "I don't actually know how you guys feel about it but in my culture it's considered rude to get your skin oils and body hair and so on all over the furniture."

He gets a pair of near-identical puzzled head-tilts.

Chak: "As a visitor- Different than a guest- That would be true, but also you're supposed to be comfortable in a home."

Fei: "Mika has already bugged us about a daily cleaning rotation. Hair is a fact of life, and so is daily cleaning in a group home."

Chak: "Anything actively unclean like, uh, snot or other things, you're supposed to deal with yourself if you can."

"I think I'll just keep wearing clothes. Or bathrobes. Fei can satisfy herself with her imagination."

"Do kitsune have non-group homes?"

"They're utterly miserable things," Chak explains. "I stayed in student housing for a bit and it was fine after a fashion, you could hang out in the lounges and there was the dining hall downstairs, but if you don't have a proper clan you get basically a concrete box with a bed and a sink all to yourself to go crazy in. I hear it's really hard to find a new clan if your old one doesn't want you anymore or you leave it without arranging things first."

"Clans can kick people out?"

"Also, am I correct in assuming everyone here is part of the same clan?"

"Yes?" Fei says. "Of course they can, if an individual is harming the group more than they're helping it. If you kill someone through negligence, or refuse to do any useful work or even act like you're going to later, or something like that. And yes, we're all of the Kliiu Clan- We used to be a steel making clan during the early industrial age but they do that in new basic-oxygen furnaces now, and we've been more working on cleaning up all the old mining tailings instead."

"Yeah, that makes sense. It's a conceptual difference, I guess—humans basically never get kicked out of their families. Even if they're in really poor standing and no one will do them any favors, they're still considered part of the family."

"To what degree are jobs and professions hereditary? Do all you guys have to do mine remediation work because you're Kliiu, or is that more of a clan-wide project that not everyone has to participate in?"

"Mostly, yeah. We can't just leave the clan- Who'll take care of you when you're a four-tail? You have to marry into a new one, or form a split-off."

"Things are changing in the modern world. There's so many new jobs in new places. The three-councils and four-councils offer clans new homes to move into sometimes, if there's work that needs doing in a factory somewhere, or tries to tempt ones and twos away for it. And we have city-clans forming- Not proper family, but groups doing the same kind of work. Grandma Rata will complain about it all day if you let her."

"If you're leaving to do something important or prestigious that's mostly fine if you visit, though. If Mika makes it as an astronaut we'll be bragging about 'The Kliiu Clan Having An Astronaut' for ages and trying to get her to drag important friends down here to Luo."

"That doesn't really answer my question... Chak, what do you mainly do for work?"

"I make and repair clothes- For the clan, and for neighboring clans. Especially formal robes. I might end up having to do something else, there's more industrial sewing lately."

"How many of the people in this house do mine remediation stuff? How many in the whole clan? How many people are in the Kliiu clan total?"

Fei answers this one. "Uh... I think Ka'do, Teko, Jann, and Tak all get hauled out to help carrying stuff around sometimes? Ka'do most often, he's a driver. There's a little cabal of aunties who's most in charge of it and they talk with people from the four-councils a lot. Self important engineer types. Probably twenty in total who work on it sometimes? Maybe five who do remediation related things full time? It's mostly done now- No way we would have tried swimming in that water thirty years ago. Oh, in total the clan rolls have seventy-nine people right now. We're, like, half the one-tails all in quarantine, everyone else is gonna be run a little ragged."

"So it's more of a clan-wide project thing. Makes sense. I was kinda worried that clans had assigned enterprises and everyone born into the clan had to work on that. Earth has a religion where people are born into castes and expected to have a profession appropriate for their caste. So the children of potters would also have to be potters. Well, not necessarily any more, and I'm not sure how strictly it was enforced it was historically, but that would be the expectation. Anyways, I'm not a fan."

"It's more of a 'from each according to their ability' thing."

"Religion? I used to believe in Nonism but after discovering the Makers... If the nine gods existed, they were probably Makers, not divine."

"Earth has a whole bunch of religions. I'm reasonably confident that all of the theistic ones are wrong, especially since none of them predicted the existence of Iwami."

"How recently were the makers discovered?"

"It was late in 26. And it's summer of 31 now. So four and a half years ago... It still feels unreal, honestly."

"So Iwami is right in the middle of a huge cultural shift, huh?"

"...I may end up exacerbating that."

"Oh, for sure! And that's a good thing. Maybe we can actually shake up politics for once, with a live mystery alien supporting change, instead of 'considering' new things for decades."

"Legacy may be important, but so is moving forward."

"...Being a political figure like that does not sound very fun, frankly. But I could be convinced to do it if the cause is important enough. I don't really know what Iwami politics is like."

"I was thinking that more culture change would mean political change, but that's, uh, reasonable."

His tablet beeps! It's a notification from Opinion, asking him to please answer a few quick questions in order to help determine the Central Plan's priorities.

"Aaand I guess now I can find out, because the computer is asking me questions."

What are the questions?