The sky and flowers are indeed beautiful. I make my own flowers. Plants are less risky to experiment on than animals. Our hatchlings are mostly not beautiful, though there is something very pleasing about eggs. 

I have tried to make my body a work of art. Symmetry and color. Would you agree that my feathers are beautiful?

Yes! See, the pictures of you we've posted have lots of people approving of them - that's the number of people who've remarked that they approve of this one, it keeps going up.

Good! That's exciting! Are there ways I could stand that would make better pictures?

They have lots of suggestions now that she mentions it!

Yes, this is a good use of time. She'll preen and pose happily.

She has an idea for a pretty flower she could make for Amenta, a towering cluster of tiny buds that fades from blue-purple-dark green-whitish grey-orange-yellow-red down its length like so- Here's a mental image!

It's pretty! If she's going for the symbolism they think she might be going for maybe leave out the red?

...But the red caste exists? They sound pretty important really. The way you deal with waste underpins everything else, even if it's ugly.

They exist but people would rather not think about them and her flower will be more popular if it doesn't make people think about them. Red flowers are fine, but doing it as part of a caste rainbow is another matter.

It's no good to willfully ignore part of a whole system. I only received a simple explanation of pollution, though. (Waste, peoples' corpses, reds: Do Not Touch). Am I missing something?

That's the important part, but we remember that as much by an instinct we have as by having learned it; it's an aversive instinct, sort of like pain.

Flowers that cause people to feel something like pain would be terrible. But a caste-representation that excludes a caste would also be terrible.

...I will not make a caste-representation flower.

That seems like a good resolution.

Seeker tells me that the treatment of reds, the tendency to destroy ecosystems, and the way you get meat are the three things most Draak will not like about your society. I don't know how much we will have to change for each other, though. I'm sure you won't like some things about our society.

There's certainly things we wouldn't like for ourselves, but I don't know that we have much impulse to try to dictate how you conduct things within your own species assuming it's not interfering with being neighborly. I suppose some people might be moved that way but it's certainly not going to be a policy priority.

I'm no Elder to decide these things but factory farming sounds quite horrible. I do animals more than plants, and flowers more than any other sort of plant, or I would be thinking about a sausage tree. Weaver-Of-Essence, who well deserves his title, is trying something like that, I believe.

We'd love a sausage tree, as long as we'd still be able to feed everyone off them.

Plants are more productive than animals. I think you would probably be able to feed more people than before on the same land. Meat-bearing plants are a drastic step, but helping nature along is understood to be acceptable in cases where there is already severe imbalance.

Maybe Weaver-of-Essence will be able to straightforwardly solve the problem, then.

I hope so. If the problem is not straightforward to solve, he'll probably call a Lesser Moot once everyone interested has had the chance to do some groundwork uninfluenced by each other's ideas, and then everyone can work together and share the benefits from the completed project.

What's a Lesser Moot like?

A few dozen to two hundred or so people who share common interests make temporary homes close to each other and gather every day in a shared work-space to work on a project. It continues until the work is complete or enough people abandon the project for one reason or another. They're not so formal as Grand Moots. For example, Seeker called a Lesser Moot and got people to start building a lot of starships - bigger than the one he made for himself. He left, but the Starship Moot surely continues even now, and it will probably reform once the Grand Moot is finished, too.

So it's a little like a convention or a conference.

I've never been to a convention or conference. You all probably work together more than we do. There is a definite mood to Moots that is absent in daily life, though. It can be invigorating in small doses. Tiring in larger ones.

Well, I hope all the planned Moots are productive and don't tire anyone out too badly.

Seeker addresses Amseli,

I have discussed privately with other Elders some of the things that will be decided at the Grand Moot. One thing we are uncertain how to approach is controlling the behavior of Draak visiting Amentan countries. I am confident that River and Bloom will not make trouble, but they were both carefully selected.

If a Draak commits inexcusable crimes in Amentan territory like unprovoked murder or grand theft or willful and deliberate spreading of pollution, we will not care if they are caught and executed. They will deserve it. However, any case of laws being enforced on Draak less clear-cut than that has potential for... Discontent. I am well aware that this is a problem. I would like to discuss what satisfactory solutions would look like to Tapa.