"Now is a fine time! The big questions on everyone's mind are going to be - is this just a couple of visitors or contact with a whole civilization; and do you represent a hope of colonizing more planets. Our understanding is that the answers are 'just a couple of visitors' and 'yes, but not immediately,' respectively. And then on top of that everyone will want to know every detail whether it matters or not, like what your favorite fruits are; those don't make a difference to anything much and everyone knows it but it can still take up attention and airtime, and right now, we could really use that if you're up for fielding that kind of question."

"I can answer lots of random questions, yeah. And we're just two people here on accident, not anyone official or purposeful, but mom's a pretty good person for figuring out portals." Especially because of the fox god thing, who is probably essential to doing that any time in the next few hundred years.

"That's great! Some of the greens we have here are videographers, if you want to start working out an introductory video right away, but there's plenty of time if you'd rather have lunch or ask more questions or anything like that first."

"I'm still full from breakfast! I'm out of questions but I think there's still a lot of stuff I don't understand?"

"Well, feel free to ask anybody here any questions as you think of them." They introduce the videographer greens, Viko and Ziard.

"Hi!" she says, enthusiastically. "I think I wanna do a vlog!"

"That sounds great! We can set up one of the extra bedrooms in the house for that so you'll be all lit up and everything. I heard you're a shapeshifter, is this what you want to look like on your vlog most of the time?"

"Maybe when I'm talking - making Amentan sounds is hard without being a shoggoth or an Amentan shape since I don't know how parrot vocal chords work yet - but I like turning into bunches of different stuff when I can."

"Yup, I'm just thinking about the lighting conditions. When you turn into stuff is it usually shiny? Do you ever glow?"

"Glowing's hard and I'm still figuring that out. I'm usually about this amount of shininess if I'm not wet."

"Okay, that makes it simpler. Can I hear a little shoggoth language to see if it'll want a special microphone?"

"Sure!"

And so she recites a poem that's for practicing making sounds and has all of the really common shoggoth ones.

"Okay, I think that'll all pick up fine on a standard mic with a little tweak to the gain. Beautiful."

"What do you think you want your first video to say?" asks the second one.

"I wanna say hi and explain that me and mom are here on accident but we'd still like to make friends, and what shoggoths are and where we're from and that our society works really different so I'm gonna not know everything right away, and I wanna show off my shoggoth form so people'll be more likely to believe I'm not an actor."

"That sounds great!" says Ziard. "Do you want to practice saying all that before we start recording you?" (Viko has found a purple from somewhere and is rapidly relaying instructions to her on how to set up the vlogging room.)

"Yeah! It's important to practice stories before you tell them."

"How about I have my pocket everything transcribe what you say so we can look it over and see if there's anything you'd rather do differently after you're done with your first pass?"

"Okay, I think that works."

He sets his everything up.

She thinks for a little bit, then deep breath, and: "Hello! I'm a shoggoth!" She turns one hand into an orange tentacle and waves with it. "I'm an alien from a planet called Earth. My mom and I got here on accident. My name is," long fluting noise, "Which means 'child of the sorrow whose ancestor the spiraling one came from slavery who begat the floodwaters of the place of ice whose strength bound the fire who begat the one who combs the long strands of the future fame who begat this one, whose people's hope is bright.' People who aren't family would call me 'Bright Sorrow' in their own language. Shoggoths are shapeshifters, and most of us live in the ocean on Earth, but we can live on land, too."

"Mom and I are trying to figure out how to get home now, but would like to make friends with Amentans while we're here! I don't know a lot about Amentans yet, since shoggoths are really different, but learning about new friends is one of the best parts!"

"I'm wearing blue hair because I want to be a diplomat when I'm older, though we don't really have castes the same way Amentans do. My native form is like this!" And she turns fully into an orange and blue tentacled blob. "I can use Amentan words like this too, but not in most forms, since it's hard without lips." And back to Amentan.

"Thank you for listening! I'm going to make a lot more videos about shoggoth stuff, too."

"That was great," says Ziard. "Everybody's gonna love you. One question that version leaves me with is, 'best parts of what'?"

"Of making and having friends!"

"Okay, I bet there's a way to phrase it that would make that clearer. Do you want to come up with a way or should I?"

"I dunno how better to say it than sticking 'of friendship' at the end?"

"How about 'learning about new friends is one of my favorite things'?"