Haneo wishes she had a network to talk to right now. If she had a network then she could think at them and they could think at her, and she could have feelings and thoughts that responded to hers but that weren't just her feelings and thoughts, and then maybe someone in the network would know what to do with any of this. But she only has the Elves, thinking lots of things at each other, and Sanae, trying to crush her own hopes and not to be terribly annoyed at Haneo's communication and the Elves' lack of understanding.

"It's not good to be broken. People who are broken can't do things anymore, and Sanae still has things to do. Probably. She thinks."

"I think usually some time off doesn't actually make it impossible for people to do things. It's okay with us if it does. But - it doesn't usually."

"It's not OK with Sanae, though." She pauses. "OK. Sanae says I have a mission. The mission is to go and have parents and see what having parents is like, and then I can report back, and if having parents and living with Singers is probably not something that breaks people, and she doesn't think you need help with the Alteri, then Sanae will go and have parents."

She nods decisively. She is determined to do a very good job with her mission.

"Uh. All right. I guess that works. If she changes her mind though, she can have parents any time."

Haneo smiles. "OK! You're nice. I think I'll be better at having parents than most of us would be, so it'll be a good way to see if it can work at all. Sanae doesn't think it'll be very dangerous if I do it."

"....it really isn't dangerous. All children do it and it works fine for nearly every single one of them."

Haneo scrunches up her face and tries to think of how to explain the thing the Elves don't know. It's hard, because Sanae isn't helping her and Haneo is pretty sure she's not that great at putting complicated things into words. She hasn't had very much practice recently.

"Sometimes," signs Haneo, eventually, "people end up broken because something really really horrible happened to them, or because a lot of little horrible things happened to them, or because - because their brains just stopped working eventually. But sometimes when people are halfway broken like Sanae, there are nice things that can break them, too. And sometimes people end up broken because people stopped asking things of them, or stopped letting them do things, or because they took away some of the consequences. And Sanae doesn't want to end up broken yet. So she needs to figure out whether having parents might make her the rest of the way broken."

".... I really, really don't think so but if this is the way she wants to check then that's all right with us."

"OK! It would really make her feel better."

Sanae tells one of the Alteri later that she can leave. She's not going to; she wants to help facilitate contact between the Singers and the Alteri. But she can, and they should keep this in mind.

She tells Haneo to be sure the Elves take her far away. They won't hit her kill switch if they think it'll sour relations, but there are situations where the Alteri might conclude that they have very little diplomatic goodwill left to lose, in which case there won't be anything but distance stopping them.

"We're working on disabling those chips," says an Elf, "but until then, absolutely."

Haneo is mildly excited about this, and very calmly notes that she would like it if people couldn't kill her with no warning. Sanae doesn't appear excited, but she hasn't appeared excited about anything for as long as she's been here. 

The Alteri are excited about making it down to the planet; they weren't planning on arriving so soon, of course, but an advantage of sending a group composed entirely of scientists is that they're really not going to complain about plan changes that result in them learning vastly more about their fields.

The Elves are excited to have them! They think it'll be really helpful for figuring out how to cooperate long-term. They have a whole underground area set up for the Alteri with an environment appropriate to their needs, and there are lots of Elf scientists who will be eager to hear all about them!

An Elf shows Haneo pictures of her prospective adoptive parents (well, looks at the pictures a lot and thinks about them loudly). They are smiling Elves with shimmery black hair, and they have a nice house with a big yard, a creek and a forest.

Haneo seems significantly more excited about this. She can't really tell much from the pictures, but the yard looks nice. Sanae has no problem calling up similarly-shaped memories (though most of them are memories of memories that she got from other people), but Haneo thinks it'll be pretty interesting to see something like it firsthand.

A shuttle comes to meet the ship. 

They land.

Haneo patiently waits to be introduced to her parents, though she does bounce on the balls of her feet every now and then. The Alteri gather their belongings and prepare to enter the underground area. Sanae stays with them. She occasionally signs things to the group's sociologist, though her messages are terse and don't consist of words the elves will be able to recognize.

"Your parents are waiting right outside," someone tells Haneo. "Would you like to meet them right now?" They will wait with her if she doesn't, and in fact have another place for her to stay lined up if she declines to meet her parents until late in the day.

"I can meet them now!" Haneo tells them cheerfully. She expects them to be about as nice as everyone else here, so they should be fine.

"Okay!" They walk with her to the other room. It has three open exits and two smiling people sitting on a bench. They wave at her. Their thoughts are mostly 'oh no is she in pain' but they are smiling.

"Haneo, this is Tehlan and Aicassë."

Haneo doesn't think that she's in pain, but maybe she's been in pain for a long time and has just forgotten what not being in pain feels like. Sanae would tell her that she's overthinking things, but she can't hear Sanae anymore. Hopefully that'll feel less lonely soon.

"I'm Haneo!" says Haneo, helpfully.

"It's really lovely to meet you! How was your trip?"

They do think it's lovely to meet her. She is so small and they want her to be okay. They are So Concerned about her injuries. Tehlan is wishing that they could kill all the Alteri and let Mandos deal with them but he's trying not to think about that.

Gosh, Haneo doesn't want to kill anyone, that doesn't sound like it'll help at all. She politely doesn't mention their thoughts, though; talking about things that people don't want to be thinking about is rude. She's not very good at not being rude, but it's important not to be rude when you're trying to make a good impression on people.

"It was fun! We saw lots of pretty things and people sang and everyone was nice."

"That's good! Was there anyone, aside from your friend Sanae, who you want to be sure to keep in touch with?"

This is not something that Haneo is used to thinking about at all. Mostly there are just people and she talks to them and sometimes the people leave and then she doesn't get to talk to them anymore.

"Can I see the dog again later?" she asks, after thinking it over for a bit.

"Yes, of course. He's pretty busy but we can make sure you can visit him whenever he is in town. I could ask if he can come home with us now, if you'd like to go home now."

"He can come if he's not busy. But it's OK if he's busy right now, he's very important. I'd just like to see him again someday. He's nice."