"The gardener will be here tomorrow if you want to ask her about taking care of our real plants."

"Oooh."

"Bedtime story?"

"Yes."

Bedtime story!

And sleep.

Her parents tiptoe out and go to bed and cannot sleep.

Aitim starts idly poking through legal investigation files.

"What are you looking for?"

"Competent doctor who ended up accused of some kind of misbehavior, is substantively innocent and was cleared, but now of course can't find work. Bonus points if the accusation had anything to do with their keeping confidentiality when this was personally costly!"

"Well, that's very specific."

"It's a big country, I bet there's someone."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

Lintalai eats breakfast of her own accord the next morning (an orange and half a banana) and sits in the courtyard to read.

Tapa is the biggest country in the world! It has almost twice as many people as Anitam. That's big! Tapa is a rich, educated, peaceful and orderly country and a good neighbor to everybody. Many small countries count on Tapa to defend them.

Anitam is not a small country at all, and we have enough greys to defend ourselves. But we still have a special relationship with Tapa. Why?

A long time ago Anitam was a peaceful, quiet country whose cities mostly governed themselves. We had a King, but he did not have the power that some Kings wield; he mostly just settled disputes between city leaders when there were some. Anitam was not as rich as it is today, because central governments do lots of things that make countries rich, like plan transit and infrastructure, keep the laws uniform, and ensure that the credit auction goes smoothly. 

That is when the Oahk Empire decided to invade Anitam! They killed lots of people because they were selfish and evil and they planned to give themselves more children by killing our people. But the Oahk Empire was badly run, and after only a few years of trying to rule Anitam it collapsed.

It was very good that the Oahk Empire had gone away. They were terrible and ruled very badly. But Anitam now had no King (he was dead, and all his children) and none of the old city leaders, and there was a lot of chaos because of the theft and misbehavior of the invaders. 

Tapa wanted to help! They sent us lots of money and resources so that we could rebuild and restore order as quickly as possible. Their soldiers trained Anitami soldiers so that they could help to restore peace. Their companies invested in Anitam so that new things could be built here. And they advised our blues on how to build a rich country with an effective government. 

It worked! Anitam grew rich and peaceful and successful. Because of all of Tapa's help, we had lots of business ties with Tapa. Many companies operate both in Anitam and Tapa, and it is easier to move workers between our countries than anywhere else. Our militaries sometimes do training exercises together, so we can help each other in a crisis. When someone poisoned Tapa's food, Anitam was there to help.

There is a saying that anybody wants to be friends with a rich and powerful country. But your real friends are the people who will help you when you are not. Tapa helped Anitam at a very scary time in our history, and we know that they are the best kind of friend.

"...somebody poisoned Tapa's food?"

"Hmm? - oh, they put that in that book? Yes. Somebody poisoned everybody's food. They thought they were doing the right thing but a lot of people died."

"...how did they think that?"

"Is pollution new or not-new."

"New."

"So almost all people are really really bothered by the thought that anything in their environment might not be clean. If we think about, I don't know, if a dog got into the toilet and then ran around the house getting toilet water everywhere,  that feels completely horrible and awful and even thinking about it makes people not want to go home. Does it feel that way to you?"

"...no..."

"Okay. There are Amentans who don't feel that way, and they are usually diagnosed with a disability called hyposensitivity, because they often have a hard time keeping clean. But I don't think they diagnose one-year-olds, it is possible that you'll have no trouble at all with it and if you're not struggling in any way there's no reason to get a diagnosis. In order to have a society where everyone is not miserable all the time over things being disgusting, we have strict safety rules about contact with disgusting things. Someone decided that we didn't need the strict rules because disgusting things won't actually make you sick, and because the rules made it hard on people who work in disgusting jobs. I think he was right that it would be good if we had rules that were not as hard on people in disgusting jobs, but the way he did it was really bad. He made all of the food in Voa disgusting, and then announced it on television to prove to people that they were fine so the food couldn't actually be disgusting. And most people can't eat disgusting food, it's horrible, so instead they went hungry, and Tapa and Anitam went to war with Voa over it."

"Oh. - is it like if I tried to eat, um, things I can't eat?"

"I don't know. Maybe. If the way you feel about those is that you could put them in your mouth and maybe even swallow and technically that would be better than starving but then something would be bad and wrong and it would stay bad and wrong and it would be a long time before it was okay again, that would be pretty similar."