I have very little idea what they'll make of the long year here. Or what my body will make of it, for that matter.

"Hopefully you do better with a funny year length than we would, ha ha!" says the docent.

Yes, I hope so as well. Winter is the worst season for me. Draak hibernate, and occasionally estivate. I once slept for four of your years!

Amentans would fall into a permanent spring, correct? Watching someone experiencing that or coming out of it would be valuable insight.

"Right, if we go someplace without seasons," says the docent.

"It's on the list. We'll probably be able to get you some people visiting from orbit or the tropics," Ruan says.

I will probably end up learning to push people into the current local season as I try to observe enough to change springs. Without side-effects. It's not a permanent change, just a realignment.

"That'd be good for people who don't want to wait for reseasoning!" says Ruan.

Yes... How many different plants do you have here? You've collected immense diversity, it's inspiring. I count dozens of species of this desert-thing alone and it's only one category!

"Oh, there are a couple thousand species of cactus! We have more remaining diversity in cacti than some plant families because deserts, where they grow, aren't very hospitable to Amentans, so people don't move into them much."

There's immense diversity on our planet, but I don't have access to all of it. I keep a small territory in dry scrublands and hate travel. But Amentans work together, so you can venture all over the world to collect... It's a shame your farms and cities have driven other things extinct. You could at least preserve them in places like this even if their ecosystems have to make way, would that be so hard?

"Oh, we do try to do that! Whenever a new wilderness area's about to be developed people from all around the world try to get a chance to go in and collect specimens. We don't always get everything, and some things we don't figure out how to care for well in time, but we have captive instances or at least frozen samples of most things."

It's still a shame. I am not hypocritical enough to suggest that your kind ought to have left nature alone and not expanded at all - Draak would like to expand, and we change nature all the time. But vast swathes of city and farm without a real wood or glade within hours' walk makes me feel like the beauty in the world is irrevocably diminished. The creations of nature declared garbage.

"Well. I hope you like the garden anyway!" says the docent.

It's quite lovely.

The tour continues, then?

It does! They go past a greenhouse and here are the bonsais in their decorative pots.

Bonsais are very beautiful! Tiny, delicate perfection!

These are Treasure! I've seen things like Bonsai but they were individual works, not examples of an art form. They will surely be popular projects. I want to grow one myself, now! Would you like me to show you the things from home they remind me of?

"- show me?" asks the docent.

I have been careful to sing pure concepts that your mind easily turns into words. The Seeker says that anything else would be startling and impolite. But I can also sing sensations. Sights, sounds, scents, memories.

"- all right, I'd like to see one."

Here is a small grove of alien trees that look sort of like elms, standing straight, short and thin and not very bonsai-like. But the trees' flowers are a riot of color, fading from white through orange, yellow, and red like candle flames. White and red and grey butterflies fly around from tree to tree in an effect that makes them look like sparks and motes of ash, drinking from the buds.

It is not quite bonsai, but the ember-trees stay no taller than an Amentan their entire lives and flower beautifully for almost the entire year.

"Oh, that's so pretty! Is it hard to make them like that?"

They're an entire new species, selectively bred and gently Enkindled over several decades. I don't know the details but they do take a fair amount of maintenance, I think. The butterflies as well.

"Not one of your projects?"

No, much to my chagrin! I alter other Draak, animals, and flowers. They were the first thing bonsai reminded me of. Their creator guards the secrets jealously and rightly so, they are beautiful and utterly unique to him until someone replicates them.

"But what if he dies before anyone else learns it?"

Then they may well be lost, and that would be a shame, but it still makes sense to keep the secrets. If they weren't unique, they would not be nearly so great a Treasure. I don't think he is likely to die any time soon, though.