Shake shake. It is apparently a sufficiently convincing tentacle.

Now the ambassadors all want more information on the timeline on FTL.

She's reconstructing a portal system she only ever saw the remains of, having only studied them from an archaeological perspective, without lightning a big beacon over Amenta's metaphorical head. It's long, delicate work. Amenta has the natural resources needed to complete a portal, and Combing has the background needed to do this, so she's fully confident she'll get them sometime, and moderately confident that 'eventual' will fall within a normal Amentan lifetime, but she doesn't know yet where on a scale of easy to difficult this will be.

Is there any support or expertise she'd like to import?

She's still getting used to the Amentan state of affairs with the relevant fields, so she doesn't know yet how the specialties differ from what she's used to.

The ambassadors have been given an executive summary on what fields they might have comparative advantage in and what they are about.

She'll listen to those, but demur from making any promises, though she's not necessarily good at doing so extremely politely.

If they are offended they don't make a fuss about it. They are all delighted to meet her and having each made their pitch for the use of their country in the project of getting onto other planets they're happy to move on to smaller talk about how they're liking Amenta, do they plan any international touristing, etcetera.

Amenta's really neat, and it's cool how it's like Earth in some ways but in others the people are all different! And Bright would love to travel! She wants to see all the things!

Maybe she can take a break from school sometime and tour the world! It would certainly be educational!

Yeah! And that's the kind of way Bright learns lots of stuff, anyways!

They'd all be really happy to have her. She could be in parades and if she's into public speaking she could do that too and they'd throw parties and stuff.

That stuff sounds weird! Bright doesn't think she wants a parade and stuff? Just - talking to people, seeing cool things...

Okay! No parades have been actually scheduled, they just figure lots of people would like the opportunity to be in a parade.

She might consider it, but it's - not the type of interacting with people she usually likes?

They're all happy to tailor the itinerary to the celebrity guests' preferences.

Yeah! And she doesn't really know yet what all there is to see!

They will chatter about their big tourist attractions. Tapa, for instance, has got a bunch of ruins in a desert and the world's largest waterfall and nice beaches and a moon colony (though Voa has a moon colony too) and some fantastic museums and hosts many cool international conventions though which she could visit would depend on timing. She's also pitched on an aquarium that has whales, some caves, a historical reenactment village, amusement parks, and architectural points of pride.

Oooh, yeah, she'll definitely consider those! They all sound fun, so she'd have to plan visits carefully!

And they break for lunch - well, the Amentans break for lunch, the aliens just get a break and an invitation to nibble if they want at this government building's food court - and then there's a really similar meeting with another batch of ambassadors in the afternoon.

Bright is charming and Combing is reserved, entirely unsurprisingly!

No one is surprised! They are all charmed by the charming little alien.

Then the day will probably go by pretty fast!

And then they are taken back to their house and the next day is school again.

School means friends! Bright spends morning recess working on her dance with Onis, and afternoon recess playing with Zon, and every other lunch with each of her friends.

The dance is going pretty well, for being a recess thing just when they feel like it, and Bright manages a few recreational things after school so she's not always bored and restless. She works on scripting and sometimes filming a few new videos, mostly summarizing some of the basic earth facts she told the greens that first day, or going more in depth into human society (with her mom's help) on a few points, or talking about Earth animals and plants.

One day Onis invites her to come over to her house. "My mom talked to your security and says it's okay," she adds.