"Maybe, I guess."

"It's not weird anymore?"

"I've gotten more used to it. If I'd gotten to decide whether to spring or not I'm not sure I wouldn't have."

"Huh."

"It was scary but I wouldn't like to never know what I was missing and be strange to everybody of my species and so on."

"I guess that makes sense."

"Thank you."

"Are you going to think I'm annoying when it stops being spring?"

"We still like kids other times of year. And kids who are too old to be instinctually in the baby category. Just not as obsessively."

"Oh good."

"It'd be so awkward otherwise for the kids who were still dependents when summer rolled around."

"They could just hide. I do that a lot."

"Babies are at most three months old when their first summer starts."

"I guess those ones couldn't really, then."

"It wouldn't work very well."

Shiver.

Hug. "You okay?"

"Yes. I was just thinking how it's good that even if you are weird and some of you are mean you are weird in the liking-your-kids direction because it would be horrible if I landed somewhere where everybody hated kids."

"It would be very unlikely for an evolved species to hate kids. - I guess it wouldn't be as weird if they didn't like alien kids."

Cling.

"But you are very adorable to our sensibilities, and even if you weren't we'd help you."

"Because of the magic." Sigh. "I wish I was grown up and good at thinking about things that aren't languages and magic."

"We'd also help you even if you didn't personally know how to do anything in case more aliens came along looking for you," she clarifies. "What is it you're having trouble with?"

"I'm not sure. I had a plan and now we're doing a different thing and I think that makes sense but it's just a lot to think about and I'm not very good at it. I hate not being good at things. When I'm big I'm going to be great at everything."

"That's quite an ambition."