...Every single one of us has been told the history of being nearly driven extinct. Twice. Also, being ready to defend one's home is a fairly core motive. You defend your territory or you lose it. I do hope for peace but making sure we will not lose a war makes perfect sense to me. Another Fleeing seems more likely than a serious war against Amenta even if things spiraled out of control to such a disastrous level.

"I understand it would've had to cross your minds... it's my own biases making it sound more momentous than it is, I suppose."

I'm sure your generals are considering how to kill us, if only theoretically. It's perfectly natural even if everyone hopes it will never come to that. And I'm sure we have biases too, being 'mighty predators' and so on. That might even be one of them.

"Oh, yes, it's only that telling everyone to have as many children as they could - or even just enough to bring a country up to carrying capacity; we try to stay comfortably under it - would be - incredibly out character for any post-Imperial government on Amenta. And obviously that hasn't been your historical trend, and obviously everything we've seen from you so far has been friendly. But if one of our Amentan neighbors announced a policy remotely like that - well, when I was in school we learned about politics and diplomacy with the expectation that that's what we'd be dealing with. Neighboring Amentans."

I quite literally can't imagine how the Draak government is going to work. Though I did hear a lot of stories about how dealing with humans was almost always counter-intuitive. I know most of the usual stories about them, though of course I wasn't there and I'm probably missing lots of insight. I am not old enough for that. Apparently they saw exterminating Draak as a theological duty, thinking we were the manifestation of chaos and our deaths were the same moral category as clearing farmland or breeding livestock.

"That... sounds pretty hard to do diplomacy around, I'd imagine."

Yes. We don't understand what their initial priorities and intentions were and the Oldest Draak never publicly talks about the first war, but my personal theory is that after the great war they were left with vague hearsay and old stories, and pattern-matched a wholly new theology onto it. They were also fairly obsessed with outer space, sacrificing animals while chanting about the stars, and calling out to the black sea. As if requesting reinforcements was garbled into a badly misunderstood practice.

"...I don't know how to interpret that at all."

They were very strange, by all accounts.

"It sounds it. I'm glad we're off to a more promising start here."

What makes you say I am famous already?

"...I think most people on the planet know you exist, and have an idea of what you're doing here."

 ...The internet doesn't feel real. Seeing a number of curations or approves go up doesn't feel like anything. I suppose I am famous. I will calm myself.

She de-springs people.

She writes, and she had been writing the whole time. There's plenty of material, both the actual things that happened to her and what she thought of them and long philosophical rambles or digressions about biology/ecology or Draak social mores and memes or history and old stories.

When she was four Amentan years old she was driven out of her first territory because she used to hibernate for a longer time than other Draak in winter and another took advantage of that. When she was five she met Darktooth the Wise and was rather overawed, but the incredibly famous and accomplished Elder was very humble. When she was seven her colors started coming in unevenly and she was challenged by another who thought they were better-looking, and even now she still takes great care to be pretty. When she was nine she suddenly decided to learn Earth magic and traveled for multiple seasons (multiple years on their planet) looking for a teacher and then a way to pay for lessons.

When she was twelve she made friends with a strange Onyx Clan Draak called Ink who taught her celestial navigation (extremely useful) and also theoretical astrogation, which was intellectually fascinating but useless at the time. When she was fourteen she flew for the first time, a late bloomer. When she was sixteen there was a horrible wildfire spanning half the continent she was on and she estivated for a full Amentan year and had some dreams about the Onesong which she assigns great spiritual meaning to. When she was eighteen and nineteen she learned Enkindling and made a terrible mistake (and here she tells the story of Forever, the deadly rabbit) and vowed never to be so careless again.

She talks with the greens working on the project as they poke at the new genome and theorize, and endlessly hesitates to try it again.

Those unreal-feeling numbers go up more. The Baravic people are accommodating of her nervousness around doing more of the hereditary version, and study the results of her one instance aggressively.

Before Bloom feels confident enough to try again and before the southern spring ends, the alien spaceships reappear out in interplanetary space.

That black egg-shaped ship the Wing of Change is accompanied by two other vessels. One is clearly a space-only vessel, a silver cylinder with spindly offshoots that cannot possibly hold up under gravity. The other is even larger than the others, a wedge covered in some glittering translucent material. Both of the new vessels are pretty, in a very alien sort of way.

They are ready to talk about exploration and colonization. Shining Truth, that spindly one, would like a parking orbit nothing else is using. The Wing of Change would like someone, preferably Tapa or Voa, to volunteer a landing area with the following specifications for that big wedge-shaped ship (Ice Scale). It can't land in the ocean safely.

The Shining Truth can go over there. Ice Scale can have its pick of spots, including Tapai and Voan spots.

They pick a southern bit of Tapa. Shining Truth docks with Ice Scale for a while before all 3 ships are suddenly much closer to Amenta. The two that are landing come in to land.

Draak start to spill out of the two ships, led by Seeker.

There are Amentans there to greet them!

Hello! We mostly have a government now and we are ready to talk seriously about exploration and things. It's very exciting.

"That's great to hear! Do you want to come to the capital or should we set up here?"

Staying here might be best. Less chance for incidents than if everyone who came is in a city. We could go to a village or something instead of an open field if that is better, probably.

"Maybe something a bit closer to a train station so all the Amentans who need to be on tap for the discussions can get hotels and commute in," says Amseli.

That will work. I can introduce some relevant people to everyone in a bit. Some will stay behind as guards. Do you know how Bloom's spring project is going? I could look it up but you probably already know, yes?

"It's going really well! No bad side effects, at least from patient perspectives, and she's gotten quite quick about it. Baravi's starting to talk about letting foreigners bid for slots. Do you want some greys to watch the ships too?"

Either way. Our guards will keep everyone away from the ships themselves. Maybe they'll have an interesting conversation about guarding things or something.

Good. I knew she was the correct choice. Choosing people is a skill I have new appreciation for after visiting Amenta twice. The selection was a bit limited by who was easy to convince admittedly, but she is good at it and her personality is stubborn in a way that I thought would do well at the goal 'make only this very tiny change with absolutely no other effects'. Plus her history. Has she told the story about her rabbit?