"Thank you. We are very motivated, very organized, unified. Almost everyone works. We are doing something we did before, from books. And we have an automaton!"

"We're lucky to have you. Do you think your food stores will last till harvest? Have you gotten your living spaces hidden?"

"Probably. There's hunting, and greenhouse soon. Farm and harvest will take time. And yes, hidden now. We didn't think of it at first. We sent Kenneth to go find an illusion mage when Nik mentioned it. We're living like an army camp for now. Payin' folks in food and sleeping spots, unless you're sick or a kid. I think a girl named Mary went to live near your place instead? Something about cooking for people. She has some savings, and we'll find a place for her if she comes back, of course."

"Oh, I heard about that, but I haven't had a chance to try her food yet. I mean to!"

"If she can make things taste better to agerah and beluli that will show some skill. I wouldn't know where to start. But I'd bet it's possible."

"It might be! I can't wait to find out if your food is like Hylian food."

"Everything going okay on your end, governor? I'm worried. Sooner or later someone's going to do something stupid or forget the laws and customs are different... It's better than freezing to death, still..."

"I'm doing okay, yeah. What sort of incident are you worried about?"

"Probably something involving... Marriage and what comes after marriage. You people are so liberated about it."

"Yeah, you have your legal thing. If it's important to you, you can have a contract that covers just about anything, as long as there's consideration for both parties. You can enforceably agree that you won't have sex with other people and that you will cooperate in raising your kids, just have to make a permanent record of the agreement and be clear that it is a contract."

"There were marital agreements back home. A little more complicated than that. We've been warning people not to get involved with the locals unless they think about it a lot and explain marriage, that's more the kind of thing I would worry about, someone gets a girl pregnant and is terrified at not knowin' his kid, wants to marry her and raise the kid."

"Yeah, that could go badly, if the mother didn't want the father involved and they didn't come to an agreement beforehand and have different ideas of what should be default. I can try warning people on my end too. I'm a little worried that warning them too strongly will get in the way of people getting to know each other and make friends but there's probably a way to balance that."

"I'm just a botanist. My powers are botany, not honestly really difficult social conundrums. I can't throw topsoil at the problem of marriage expectations."

"They might find it hard to have kids to disagree about how to raise if they were buried in it. Well, I can try to figure something out, I guess. I have some ideas. Thank you for bringing up the problem."

"Just don't let it explode on you like some undergrad's chemistry experiment."

"I'll try. I might fail but I hope I can make everything work out."

"People do stupid things all the time. Warning them doesn't always stop that. Hopefully we'll be able to deal with whatever comes up. Because something will. I had better get back to work, but I can find Rogers or Christopher for you real quick if you like."

"If they have anything they need to talk to me about!"

"Christopher wanted to ask you how to send a letter in to the imperial government."

"There's two ways for him to do that. He can write the entire thing and send it by courier or he can go somewhere public, say something really distinctive before saying what he wants them to hear, then just send a date and a place and a turn of phrase. Any physical mail he sends could get delayed while they examine it for any traps or anything and then delayed some more while they get around to looking at it. We don't have imperial mail coverage yet but we probably will eventually, that'll make it a little more convenient to get it sent but not much faster."

She nods and writes this down. "He wants to tell them about a concept of medicine we know about. Probably going to ask for help developing vaccines - which can prevent people from getting sick at all."

"I can get that seen faster, but I suspect it'll just get forwarded to some medical organization and you can probably save time by asking Mahan who it'd get forwarded to and sending it there directly."

"Well, I'll tell him that, too."

A loud bell sounds from somewhere. "Oh, hey! It's lunch time! Want some, as long as you're here?"

"I would! How much will that cost?"

"We wouldn't complain if you defend some things for us, but we wouldn't charge you, guv. Come on, this way."

People talking happily and laughing are streaming towards a particular tent.