"Sure," says Aurin. "What is... uh... the point of having so many? Like... uh... examples... sprites, sprites sort of have three sexes, I haven't personally met any sprites but it's a thing, but they have them like that because of how sprites work elsewise, what's the way you all work that needs six genders?"

"I'm not sure I understand the question."

"Uh, I don't know if you're enough of a prude to object if I rephrase."

"I'm not a prude. Go ahead."

"So, do you actually need all six to reproduce, that sounds like a lot of hard-to-arrange orgies. And if you don't, why would it... happen?"

"Oh, no, of course not. You only need two people to reproduce. I'm still not sure I understand the rest of the question, though. Why wouldn't it happen?"

"What about other species in your world? Like... squirrels. Are there six sexes of squirrel?"

"I think most non-primate mammals only have four sexes."

"...Which four?"

"Well, not the same four as humans, obviously. I think there's one that's like desret and desan and one that's like if you crossed desan and desmi and one that's like if you crossed harret and haran and one that's like haran and harmi."

"That's weird."

"It's simpler!"

"Well, yeah, and not having any spices in your food would be simpler, but it wouldn't be as much fun."

"What's so fun about having six genders?"

"It's--it's who I am. I'm a harmi, not some kind of harmi/haran hybrid. And you don't get as much to choose from--I'm not terribly attracted to desret, so if desret was all there was I'd have to pick between marrying someone I didn't like like that and not being able to have children. And I didn't mean to say that having two genders was worse, just that simpler doesn't necessarily mean better."

"...If there weren't a harmi/haran distinction you wouldn't miss it," Aurin points out. "And there's plenty of variety even with only two? Like, I guess we don't smell like much, but people do all kinds of stuff with the 'being a guy' basic idea."

"And even if you didn't have spices, you could still have fruit sauces and cheeses and sparkleaf and stuff to give food extra flavor," she shrugs. "There's lots of ways to be a person with the system we have too. I'm not saying you're horribly destitute, or anything, but you're way, way out of anything I've ever seen before. And vice-versa, I assume, I'm sure I'm plenty weird to you."

"Yeah. I'm not getting anything substantially different-and-interesting as far as I can understand off the words - I mean, figuring out culture from words is not very reliable or in-depth but still."

"If you're not used to gendering people by scent, you probably wouldn't. I mean, someone whose species didn't have genders at all probably wouldn't see much difference between your desret/desan and your haran/harmi two genders either."

"I mean, there's the obvious, but yeah."

"And if your species reproduced asexually the obvious probably wouldn't seem to matter as much. I get your point, though."

"I can actually smell the smell," he mentions. "It's nice. Just doesn't scream 'major feature of gender' at me."

She smiles a little smugly when he mentions how she smells. "And a member of a sexless species would probably be able to observe that I have pectoral adipose reservoirs and you don't. It just wouldn't scream 'major feature of gender' at them."

"They wouldn't have a concept of major features of gender."