Probably he should take it slow but he super wants to try that fruit tomorrow!

Draak would probably be very impatient if they only got forty years, too.

(If the rule that a Draak's size is their age holds, that one flying in now may be the Elder.)

Wow that's a very big Draak. Some of the cameras that are constantly recording everything point at them.

She's flying fast, fast enough that it still looks fast even with that sheer size. She doesn't quite move with believable physicality. Too nimble, too light.

She lands with a rush of air and peers at the shuttles, then at the gathered Amentans and Draak.

I am the deep one with a thousand secrets buried underground. I have delved into Earth's Blood, the Mantle, and returned alive. I have caused and prevented earthquakes. I created the Archive Halls for my own use and turned them over to my kin for the good of all. Together with the Great Seeker, I caged the power that burns within stars. I am often called the most cautious of my peers. I am the Architect of Vaults. Who would hear my song?

The Amentans who volunteered to go to an alien planet are all totally down to hear her song.

Then here is some wordless telepathy: An unremarkable landscape. A day passes, and a grazing creature is dead, eaten by a Draak. A month passes, and the flowers are in bloom. A year passes, and the Draak faces a dozen challengers and dangers, which pass by faster than the blink of an eye. A decade passes, and the woods have advanced. Something is watching, utterly still.

A millenium passes. Every animal that was once alive here is long dead. Most of the plants are too. The Draak who lives here has created powerful artifacts and discovered deep magic and eventually died. Even the hills have been worn down. But really, nothing has changed. The landscape is different in the details, but the same in overall picture. The True Spirit of Earth abides. Everything on the surface changes, but the way of the world is fundamentally the same. This state of affairs is familiar and comfortable and good.

Draak lived on Oldhome for millions of years, following the way of their people. It was not peaceful or easy or always happy, but it was right and good. In less than a thousand Amentan years, a cosmic eyeblink, so many things have changed. The Way of Draak remains fundamentally the same. Even as change is a part of the world, it should be a slow change, a change of the details that leaves the overall shape of a thing intact.

The wordless telepathy-story concludes with the sentiment that she is deeply anxious that Amentans are going to make her world and people unrecognizable within two centuries, whether deliberately or not.

One of the blues steps forward to volunteer that they would like to learn more about Draak so they can disturb as little as possible while they visit, and Draak who want to live in this way on this world will be unimpeded even if ones settling new worlds invent other ways.

If Amentans spread to the stars with my kin, this other-way will become a vast and powerful force who could then turn here if they ever wished to. You are not Human, but they are all I have to compare you to. Human empires, great and powerful and peaceful, often lasted for mere dozens of your years. Even the greatest ones did not keep their commitments for more than a century. They curdled and rotted from the inside. The politics of recent times, the current immediate crises, make one question how important old promises really are. The great-grandchildren of those who made those commitments have their own hopes and dreams and curse their foolish ancestors for making promises they don't want to keep. Large political organizations will be unrecognizable in a few centuries unless the same people are at the head of them after all that time.

"It's regrettably impossible for a single Amentan to head a nation for that long."

"Also probably incompatible with democracy," murmurs a green.

Democracy is dangerously whimsical and I fear my peers are unwise for embracing it so.

My goal is for the Old Way of the Draak to remain powerful, relevant, and unchanged in essence. Exploration, colonization, and terraforming pose a possible long-term threat to the Old Way. And yet, it would be unspeakably cruel to attempt to forbid and prevent these things. And yet, the freedom to choose and the joy of creation is an essential part of the Old Way, too. And yet, there are other aliens who are utterly unknown to us, and they pose an equally grave long-term threat to the Old Way - a New Way offers a second perspective and additional resources to levy on any threats that may appear, even as the New Way may turn against the Old Way.

I do not judge it beneficial to my goals to do anything except watch, wait, and fortify at the moment.

"Thank you for addressing us," says the blue.

The Elder nods solemnly and settles down at a good distance from everybody to watch.

Anyway, the botanist wants seeds and to be told the proper growing conditions for them all and how they reproduce so they can make sure the specimens don't turn invasive.

The Draak talking to Amentans are excited engineers and whoever else was close by. Few of these Draak actually live around here long term and those that do aren't really botanists but they can make some probably pretty good intuitive guesses as a group? They don't want to collect seeds for him either, he can do that part.

He can do it himself. The one with the fruit doesn't know where the fruit is from?

Oh, that one comes off this one bush. It likes direct sunlight and grows most often in sandy soil and sometimes gravel, here's some other info about it. It flowers and is pollinated by flying insects.

Cool. The botanist will hang out with Fruit Draak and learn about fruit.

Fruit is not her life's work or anything, she just heard that the aliens eat it sometimes. She makes tree branches grow in interlocked patterns as art most of the time. Fruit is a perfectly fine topic though.

Even a non-fruit-eater's knowledge of fruit could help them grow the tasty ones on Amenta! The tree branches thing is also neat though.

She wants to know about how Amenta does plant breeding, the pictures someone showed her of an orchard looked kind of absurdly luscious.

Someone else hears that the Amentans want live animals! He thinks a zoo might actually be a terrible awful place for animals and wants to protect them from this fate.

"We're not set up to take care of animals on the return trip this time besides maybe some bugs. We try really hard to make the zoos comfortable for the animals so they don't do stress behaviors or stop breeding, though."

Animals can be very stupid, but that stupidity and taking care of them doesn't change the fact that keeping them penned up somewhere is kind of unnatural and therefore obviously bad, just like cities!

(Some of the other Draak seem to be nodding along to this one's rant.)

...for whom are they positing that cities are bad? wonder Amentans. One of them helpfully tries to draw an analogy to various animals that also build themselves structures to live in, like birds with nests and burrowing things with burrows.

Okay, maybe cities are fine for Amentans. And yes some kinds of animals also build things. He digs tunnels. But he'd torch parts of an ant colony that got too grabby with nearby land. Zoos are probably still bad because the animals can't leave or do what they want to and don't encounter the same things they would in a real ecosytem. Their Way goes unfulfilled!

Well, they don't... have to let the Amentans take any animals home, if they don't want. Is this related to the objection to pets?