As good a project as any for whenever I'm bored with chatting with the marine biologists. I think I want to stay here for the whole month I intended to visit, barring ferrying Bloom and River. It's a lovely little island.

Actually, River would think it a fine adventure to take a boat instead of my ship.

I think she'd fit all right!

Properly adult Draak will have a harder time fitting into Amenta - both literally and figuratively. They're bigger because I don't think we actually ever stop growing, and more set in their ways. Being able to fly is the mark of young adulthood and she had her first flight only three seasons ago.

So they invite River to join them via boat heading back to Tapa.

She's in a better mood now. Sounds fun. She has a lot of questions about how boats work!

The boat greys can explain and what they don't know the others can look up.

Burning fuel to make something move is a neat idea. Maybe Draak can power things with their fire breath.

Caste is strange, she tells one of the boat greys. I can see differences between greys and blues but they're not even as big as between Bloom and I - Emerald and Sapphire - and you make laws about them.

- it's not about looking different, offers a grey. That's just convenient so we can tell who we're talking to.

I don't just mean the hair color. You think a little differently, you move differently. But still! I can breathe underwater and she can't and that's not as big a difference to our social roles as caste!

That seems more like an ability than like a purpose.

Then I don't understand castes. Maybe it's just how Amentans are. It's not like all kinds of people are supposed to be a certain way.

Castes had to be invented, volunteers the yellow who's chaperoning River.

Headtilt. ...Elders and Moots and Tradition had to be invented too. And that doesn't make them fake. Interesting!

Yup. They're not like needing to breathe air, but they're real.

So how do you change castes if you want to?

- you don't.

...Really? You can make yourself an Elder if you want to. If you're good enough. There's not an - unbreakable rule - that I can never call a Moot or change Tradition. You can't decide to be blue if you're... Blue enough?

No, you need to be born blue. Maybe you can fudge it if you're half-caste and move.

Invisible chains. Freedom is important to Draak and that sounds kind of horrible. But we're aliens.

I wonder sometimes, would it be better to have no law, no Elders, no Tradition, for more freedom? My answer is 'probably not'. After all, I could just ignore all that and do what I want. There's nothing controlling my mind. I would just have to accept the consequences - someone would kill me if I tried to live like there was no law. But I could.

I don't think out of caste violations are usually capital crimes. Maybe if you defrauded people for enough money.

Oh, right, philosophy is green. That's so weird to think about! Sports are grey, right? He asks the one who was explaining boats to her. I wonder if there's any sport I could play even slightly fairly.

Sports are grey. You probably couldn't do the kind of sports that have that as a concept fairly, but you could do some competitive obstacle courses or something?

I'm bigger but Amentans have much better hands. Obstacle courses sound fun. I bet I'm pretty good at them. I'm the best person I know at running away from things.

That's kind of like an obstacle course, if you pretend something's chasing you.

Yeah, that's why I think I'd be good at it. Covering ground really fast can be thrilling - you want to see a running-away memory?