And off he goes.

Over the next few days Bright Sorrow gets to visit the aquarium, go for strolls around the neighborhood, and see an art museum after hours. Viko and Ziard walk her through making a response video for the more substantive of the comments she's gotten.

And the schools all turn in their proposals! They're in video form and attempt to showcase the students' favorite teachers and classes and facilities to make their school look best.

Her response video is mostly thanking people for being nice. She does say to the comments asking why her mom's letting her do this, that among shoggoths she's old enough to decide to do this on her own, and shoggoths maybe have more hands-off parenting? Plus a few short answers about basic shoggoth stuff, though she says she'll be covering most of that in more videos.

She watches the school videos, politely going through all of them but paying the most attention to her short list.

This one has a really nice playground and ballfields and a pool. That one has a ton of clubs in all these games and crafts and interests. In this gifted magnet you can take some college courses at these neighboring colleges, even if you aren't that college's caste! That school has a good theater program, plus "not just oranges, but all of us, because we're future parents!" get to hang out and volunteer at the daycare next door. This one is playing up the intercaste sports, starring a yellow who's good at track. That one has a warmfuzzy presentation on all the kinds of disabilities they accommodate and how (so-and-so stays inside for recess because she doesn't like to get sweaty! this kid has seizures and all her classmates know how to respond to that! that kid is in the slow classes, but that's okay, look, he's good at art!).

Which video is "star-square-triangle" (rainbow school with accommodations, hyposensitives, two recesses), which one is "star-circle-diamond-triangle" (rainbow school with accommodations, open caste classes, hypersensitives, two recesses), and which ones are "star-circle-square" (rainbow school with accommodations, open caste classes, hyposensitives).

She also looks a bit closer at the allowed castes, accommodations, classes, and recess situation of nice playground, clubs, theater, and disabilities schools, plus if they specify taking hypersensitives or hyposensitives. 

Star-square-triangle is the one with all the clubs. Star-circle-diamond-triangle is the warmfuzzy one. Star-circle-square includes the theater program one and the one with the nice playground.

Oh good. Those are the ones she liked best.

She's still mostly leaning star-square-triangle, though the two star-circle-squares look good, but is willing to do a visit to all four of those, and emails Ude to this effect. 

Ude gets back to her twenty minutes later with a visit itinerary! And if she doesn't mind, her videographers want to be able to put together a release about her visits and will accompany her bearing cameras.

She reads through it.

Two of the schools are close enough together that she could try one in the morning and one in the afternoon; the others would each get a day to themselves, though she won't be obliged to stay the whole day.

That's an okay schedule, then.

The first school is the one with clubs and hypos! It has student artwork hanging up in the windows and it's nine stories tall and has a ball field on the roof. Bright is assigned a blue two year old student as a buddy; he introduces himself as Sardun. He blinks at the video camera that is following Bright around, but doesn't comment on it.

There is a perimeter maintained around the school checking student IDs as they arrive, inconveniencing adjacent business owners.

"I'm Bright!" she says to Sardun. (She's not super aware of the perimeter.)

A nine story tall school is kind of weird but lots of buildings here are super tall...

She likes looking at the artwork, and is generally very peppy about the whole thing.

"Welcome to Northwest Halde Rainbow! We're all really excited about you visiting," chirps Sardun. "My classes this morning are science and gym, but I take science taught in Cenemi, so if you want you can go with my friend Parbe to her review blitz that period instead. Review blitz is a thing we do because we don't have every class every day to be able to spend more time on stuff, but it's easier to remember a lot of things if you at least kind of touch them every day, so there's a period where you spend ten minutes doing review exercises for all your subjects."

"I like new languages, so I might come along to your class!" She also already has Cenemi but can avoid showing this off. 

"Okay! Science is this way." He leads her into the school, pausing to smile at a three-year-old taking photos on her everything en route.

She smiles too!

And continues asking questions about what some of the artwork's showing, especially if it's an animal.

Sardun tells her about the artwork! They have a little buffer time before they get to his science class. The class has him, four greens, three purples, two yellows, four oranges, and one grey who is still finishing her breakfast when she walks in.

She waves at them, smiling. "Hi! I'm Bright Sorrow. I'm visiting!"

There is a chorus of greetings and smiles and waves and welcomes from all the kids and the teacher!

Good!

Where should she sit?

Next to Sardun right here! He tells her that they're talking about how air and water move recently. They get a few air- and water-related toys to mess with, water wiggles and air pumps and stuff, while the teacher explains concepts from their book and explains how they can verify them with the objects. She has slides.

Toys are more interesting than slides but Bright makes a very big point of listening. This is a lot of new information, so some of it's a bit over her head, but playing with the toys makes things concrete.

The kids vary pretty widely in how much they're using the toys. There are breaks in the presentation for questions every twenty minutes.

She has a few, though mostly she's observing. Especially questions about temperature and whirlpools and such.