"Is it different than this planet?"

"Yeah, a lot."

"How?"

"It's cleaner. I think the people here aren't the same species as I am. We don't have a Maelstrom. We have more technology. It's so illegal to put little kids in cages and sell them."

"Why?"

"Why which?"

"Why's it illegal?" What do they do with kids instead.

"Every kid has a family who wants to take care of them. Kids whose families all die can get a new family who wants to take care of them. So when everyone tells the government how they want the laws to be, they think 'I wouldn't want anyone to steal my kid and be mean to them to sell them to somebody else'. They think that even if they don't have a kid yet, because nobody wants anyone being mean to any kids who could have a family taking care of them instead."

"What do they do with their kids?"

"They make sure they have food and a place to sleep and clothes, and they teach them to talk and read and count, and they tell them stories and sing them songs and play with them, and help them pick a school and give them advice and watch them grow up into an adult."

None of that answers Eefa's real question of what terrible things they'd do to Eefa.

"Why?"

"...there are kinds of creatures that don't take care of their babies, like bugs. They just lay a bunch of eggs and leave. But people aren't like that, at least my species. We're a kind of creature that has to take care of our babies or they die. Anybody who has a baby and doesn't take care of it, doesn't have any grandchildren. And people's children are usually like them. That's how a species changes over a long enough time - the creatures that do a better job having and taking care of babies have more grandchildren, and whatever it was that made them better at that, their grandchildren will mostly have it too. And for millions of years, Amentans - that's my species, I'm not clear on what's going on with the people here - have been getting very good at wanting very much to have and take care of babies, and the Amentans who were the very best at that a long time ago are the ancestors of all of us alive today. And we all have the traits that make us want to take care of babies and see them grow up into adults who'll be good at taking care of babies themselves."

"All babies?"

"Most people feel more strongly about their own biological babies. But there are lots of people who would love to have a baby even if it wasn't their biological baby, so many that no baby on Amenta is ever without a family for lack of one that would love them."

Eefa is so skeptical about this!

"That's in the modern day. Things used to be worse in a bunch of ways. And sometimes kids do sort of get sold, if their parents do something bad enough that they can't be allowed to have a child any more, but they'd be sold to someone who wanted a child to adopt and raise, someone who wanted them to be okay, definitely never anybody who'd be just as happy to get them starving and filthy."

"I don't think those people were happy about me being dirty?"

"Well, the folks who were toting you didn't seem to think it'd affect their reception."

Nod.

"The next people might have wanted me clean like you do."

"If they'd been delivering you to Amentan parents they would have kept you clean the whole trip."

"Okay."

Eefa appears ambivalent about this.

"And fed you." Dish dish dish.

"Places that are clean usually do that." 

Eefa doesn't look enthused about this either.

Well, if she ever wants to talk about who had her before she can. Dish dish.

She does not seem to be interested in doing so at the moment.