"Thanks."

She gets up to check the front door, Bright bouncing along a bit after her.

Here's one of the greens! "Good afternoon! I'm Letra be-Sobin, Southcentral University anthropology department."

"I'm Combing Sorrow, human cultural anthropologist."

"Apparently humans are a lot like us - what were the first differences you noticed?"

"Hair color. Humans have browns, mostly - some on the yellow side, some black, some leaning a bit orange. Technological differences after that, and then that some areas had just purples or just yellows and greens. Amentan children also appear to cluster in age more than human children, which struck me as odd."

"Those all make sense. - Sorry, I think I was called here to tell you more about Amentan cultures. Where do you want to start?"

"I don't mind sharing about the cultures I'm familiar with, either - it'll help illuminate areas we're miscommunicating. As for Amentan culture... I've gotten a jumble of things so far. I think for now I'd like to start with basics, as well as what's most relevant to what I'd need to know for negotiating what Earth sapients in general and non-Earth shoggoths are likely to want out of inter-planetary contact, and for advising Bright as she grows into a diplomatic role."

"I think I probably need to know first - how ideas are communicated, especially if there's a potential conflict of interest. Humans have a few distinct cultures around how they'll tell someone something like 'I'm uncomfortable.' The one I'm most familiar with considers it rude to directly tell people many things, especially problems you have with them. Shoggoths are usually more blunt - if I don't like someone I'll tell them, and we'll ideally then arrange to not meet for a while, and if something I'd do is contingent on something I want them to do, I'd say that - but I've been unsure whether direct communication would be taken as hostile here, like it might with humans."

"You know, I should see if there's a good Voan translation of that one Cenemi document they have prepared to send to aliens - unless you've picked up Cenemi too somehow, then you could read the original - it's an attempt at describing our species and it's I think pretty well laid out, though you'll be able to tell us where it falls short.

"Anyway, on social directness there's a lot of variability interculturally - nationally but also along caste and class lines, and dependent on context to boot. In your case in particular if there's anyone in particular working with you who you want out of your way, you can tell any of the rest of us, we'll forward it up, you'll never have to see them again. That's not standard social practice, it's specific to your situation, but if something like that's why you asked, that's what you're working with. If you were a foreign blue here on some more ordinary diplomatic mission you could still get that concession outside irregular circumstances, but you'd ruffle feathers if you did it very bluntly, because native Amentan blues are expected to have training and socialization appropriate to conveying requests gently in whatever contexts they're working in."

"I haven't had that problem yet, but it's good to know before it comes up."

"I haven't picked up Cenemi. Bright might have, though." Bright definitely has because Bright made a deal with an Elder God for all languages, because children live to worry their parents.

"Well, I can find both versions. Anyway, a blue foreigner in your situation who was very blunt would be indicating through that bluntness not so much hostility per se but more, hm, carelessness, a willingness to be careless, which might be attributed to emotional overwroughtness of any kind, or distraction, or inadequate competence, or a desire to rile up the people around them. Whereas if you were a green academic here to give a lecture series, say, no one expects us to be especially polite." Smile. "It's not assumed we've been taught how, so it means much less when we aren't, even when as individuals we happen to have the skills for it! Because for every soft-skills type who took electives in international affairs there's a mathematician who asks every purple they see for coffee and starts talking about topology in the middle of somebody's personal anecdote."

She laughs. "It's nice that professors are familiar, at least."

"Oh, is that like - shoggoths or humans?"

"Humans, mostly, but the shoggoths I'd call 'career academics' are all similar."

Letra grins. "We're universal!"

"I'm hoping I can maneuver myself into 'seen as Bright's adviser' so no one much expects diplomacy out of me."

"That'll be slightly uphill because you're her mother, but it doesn't sound impossible."

"I think I'd also like to know how people expect Bright and I to interact, and what children's rights are like - humans see children as belonging to their parents, in the culture we were last interacting with, and as directly representative of them. Shoggoths see children more like how humans view university students I think - they don't know what they're doing quite yet, but they're certainly their own individuals, and responsible for their own behavior."

"Well, children aren't property, but Amentans do consider our children to reflect on us. One thing you might run into that you might not expect based on that description is that if Bright Sorrow does something that someone else considers out of line they're likely to go to you about it rather than directly to her - both because they expect you to have leverage but also because behavior that looks like parenting another person's child is a pretty intrusive overreach. Especially with littler kids, who it's pretty normal for everyone to want to fawn over all the time and who parents can get quite defensive of their right to, but even at Bright Sorrow's apparent age."

"That makes some sense - I'm more like... A comparison might be her first professor? I'm expected to teach her her family's history, and ethics and social skills and safety, and the basics of shapeshifting, and other simple things, and that is a responsibility I signed up to when I made her. But it wouldn't be an overreach in my own society for another adult to teach her things, including about how to behave - if they went to me it'd be because I have insight on her. It'd be strange for her to seek out a primary teacher not in our family before she knows her history, and that would reflect poorly on me, but it'd be because of an assumption I did something to drive her away or that I was an insufficient teacher."

"That's interesting. I wonder if we have very different motives for choosing to have children in the first place?"

"Likely. Shoggoths don't seem to want nearly as many children as Amentans, at least. How would you describe the typical Amentan motives for having children?"

"Well, there's the atavistic, essential thing of just - wanting to hold a baby and know it's ours. Many people are at least partially satisfied by babies that aren't biologically their own, but some aren't. There's the desire to see ourselves reflected in the next generation, for a legacy that not just anyone could have produced."

She has to solicit a definition for 'atavistic', then: "There's an element of wanting to see our story continued in a way only a new writer could, and wanting to be part of someone's history? Having children isn't essential, though, unless you're afraid your story would otherwise end with you - my mother claimed she made me because she had a premonition of her own death and, having had no siblings, didn't wish for our story to end. I wouldn't call holding a baby satisfying, but... Seeing how Bright's been handling Amenta has filled me with... The best translation is I think 'prideful happiness.' It's not atavistic, necessarily - I'm certainly nothing like my mother, for all that I came from her, and Bright's fortunately nothing like me."

Her mother actually made her more because her mother had been the one to trap the Elder God that Combing's now tied to, and if she'd died without an heir, it could have been disastrous for their people. Which had been part of why Combing so easily agreed with her husband's desire for a child.

"Family resemblance varies a lot among Amentans, but I think if you just reduced it across the board and didn't change anything else, we'd want kids a bit less. We don't only like our children to be like ourselves, we also like to see our other loved ones in them."

"We usually reproduce by budding, which I think changes that for us."