"Oh! Okay, right, I kind of interrupted you didn't I? Sorry. Ah- This is called a three stalk grassfingers. There are two and four and five stalk versions too. I'll just do a quick chorus."

She sets it down and closes a valve on one of the poles. Her foot fits neatly into a sandal strap on the bellows. She pulls it up with a soft whine, then leans the tallest pole on her shoulder and puts her hands on the other two. 

She works the foot pedal to start and stop, using her fingers to change pitch. It sounds a bit like bagpipes- Lots of sustained tones playing over each other in a droning sort of sound. She plays something slow and relaxed and cheerful, tapping a steady beat on the wood floor with her other foot.

"Thank you, that's quite nice."

"It's not that you interrupted me—that's not a problem—it's that, uh, hearing what a brand new musical instrument sounds like is obviously the most thing about it, right? And I'm not usually very patient when something interesting is right in front of me. I guess I could have been more clear about that, sorry."

"Did you have anything in mind that I can sing along with?"

"There's a song called Burning Fields that I like- The burning is good if you're doing it for fertilizer. The grassfingers part is tricky but the vocals are really simple and I have a singalong app on my tablet. We can just turn percussion and strings tracks on too."

Then Sid can, with some practice, sing along to her performance. He's not a bad singer, but obviously not trained in any way.

The song is about hard work, and how something can be both good and bad in different places and contexts! It has the cadence of a work song.

"I looked for anything like an 'electric guitar' and kind of went down a rabbit hole* about synthesized music. You can do guitar noises from a synthesizer just fine, but I think you meant things where there's no acoustic chamber, and vibration goes directly to a microphone instead? That makes a clearer, sharper sound most of the time?"

*The Kitsune language of Unified does have this exact same idiom, actually.

"No microphones. It's a guitar with steel strings and magnets below the strings such that the vibration of the strings creates an electrical signal that can be modified and amplified. You can get a cleaner sharper sound if you want, or you can make it more distorted, or do a whole bunch of other things with it. It might be possible to achieve a similar sound with an acoustic guitar and a microphone, but I think that would probably be more problematic."

"I'll search the internet more but if it doesn't already exist we should totally try to make that some day."

"It's fairly high up on my todo list right now, actually. Although my todo list is likely to be completely different in a week."

"I have an oscilloscope. For work. And other electrical tools. Or, technically they're not mine-mine, but I have access to them for work and I don't think it'd be too terrible of a fuss to get them delivered here. So I'm maybe the best person to work on this with. Maybe not right this second, though."

"I'm not in that much of a rush."

"...We should maybe have a more serious conversation, though."

"Hmm? About - alien stuff?"

"Isn't all my stuff alien stuff?"

"But no, I wanted to ask you about—both how romantic and sexual relationships typically work in your culture, and also what we want to do."

"Oh. That subject is, uh, fine by me. If you never wanna touch me again, that's, uh, it's your choice... I'm not sure where to start..."

(This particular wobbly-ears body language might signify embarrassment but it's hard to tell.)

"Why would I want to never touch you again?"

He cuddles up to her, realizing he had no good reason not to be already doing this.

"I know you probably don't, but I was a little anxious you would... We touch each other a lot, but are aliens the same way? Was I weird about it? Did I not give you time to think? Did you feel obliged to have sex? I don't know. I was reckless..."

He gives her a serious look.

"Fei, I am entirely, unequivocally, capable of speaking up for myself. I do not do things when I do not want to do them. I had sex with you because I wanted to, I do not regret it, and I almost certainly will do so again."

"Setting that aside, I don't think your behavior would have wronged someone more pressure-able than I."

"...Thanks for reassuring me. I keep being surprised at how... Not weird you are. To the point where I almost forget you're an alien. Some science fiction posits aliens that are way out there. There was one that didn't have long term memory and relied on writing for everything... So maybe the differences are just more subtle and gonna hit worse when we find them."

"The differences are probably going to be more subtle, yeah. Although I don't think that necessarily means they'll hit worse."

"And that's a big part of why I wanted to talk to you about this. To figure out what some of those differences are and not get surprised by them."

"Okay. First, romance is a totally different thing to sex. You can have one without the other and lots of people do. But they're, uh, correlated? If I was imagining explaining it to an amnesiac... Sex is something that feels good and relieves stress, and it makes babies sometimes if males and females do it. Romance is when you like someone specific a lot and want to spend a lot of your time around them and talk to them and have them like you, too."

"That makes sense."

"Romance is between people who aren't directly blood related- Who aren't children or parents to each other. If they're directly related it's almost always indulgent type feelings and it's just called a parent-child relationship... There's basically three kinds of romance. We call them lifepartner, fascination, and indulgent romance. It can be more than one, or none of these, but most people find it useful to use those words to describe how they feel.

Lifepartner romance is with someone you think makes you a better person, or someone who you like being around because you admire them and want to help them, or someone you feel a personal connection and loyalty to, whose life-routines mesh with yours well. It's a quiet, calm, and... Intellectually happy, I guess, feeling?

Fascination romance is with someone who you find interesting, compelling, someone who makes you emotional and adventurous, who you want to prove yourself to or find thrills together with, or who you want to entice, flirt with, and seduce. It's an intense and thrilling feeling, like winning a closely matched game. Some fascination romances look like friendships and some look like rivalries. I have a fascination romance with one of my classmates who writes fanfiction in the same sites as me- I almost hate her but I'd be really sad if we never talked to other again because the rivalry is so compelling! That's textbook rival-type fascination romance, honestly!

Um. Indulgent romance is with someone who makes you feel loved and comforted, who you think is beautiful or accomplished or amazing. Someone who being near feels warm and pleasant just because. Someone who you want to make smile and laugh and happy and comfy. It's a sweet, sappy, and sentimental feeling.

Sex comes paired with all three romance types often but not always, and also sex happens a lot outside of what you'd call a 'romance' but it's- It feels different, it's less... Meaningful and heavy? It's not important. It's just stress relief or passing time if you're not pursuing romantic feelings. Except you need to be on birth control pills most of the time and avoid sex with close relatives, uh, the elders keep track of that and give you a list of people to not fuck."

"Is not having sex with close relatives just to be extra careful about avoiding inbreeding, or is it taboo separately from that? Also, how does the conception of children factor into all of this?"

"This is obviously not part of the stuff I wanted to talk to you specifically about, I'm just really curious."

"I'm not sure if it's... Separable like that? There's- These are old, old traditions, you know. Like keeping gardens, like tail ceremonies. There's things you can do and things you can't do. Though, I guess that just means it's taboo separately... The main thing about having children is that there needs to be a healthy clan around you. You can risk a pregnancy if you have a clan, or specifically aim for one, and it'll be fine. It doesn't really matter who the father is, and it's, uh." She pauses. "There's even sayings about 'fresh blood' and 'foreign vigor' and stuff. It's not unusual to have sex with guests and visitors. It's a trope in a lot of historical dramas even. Most people would rather not be pregnant all the time though, and every clan growing as fast as it can is bad too, so there's more customs about how many babies is a good number. Some guys and some couples really want to know they're specifically some kid's father but it's, hmm... A little rude? It's seen as selfish to want that. You're supposed to not care that much."

"...Do people generally know who their father is? Seems like it would be tough to keep track of who's related to who without that."