"- isn't it obvious? I mean, for one thing, she has this entire second job as her Kitty's minder, every minute of the day she has to have her right there. And for another thing no matter how much money she makes she can't fix it! She can't buy the only thing she wants! She has to commit treason to get it, apparently!"

Swish swish swish. <They could live on Earth, if we win the war. Not that we're presently doing that. I am sort of unclear on how urgently she wants to leave.>

"Seems pretty urgent to me. I can't even imagine it myself, I'd be at my wit's end."

<Then I hope she finds somewhere acceptable. I don't know how aggressively they'll pursue the treason if they find out about it.>

"Is your brother not in charge, Aitim's in charge and Timothy has impressive amounts of sway and Merenre's brother is an absolute monarch."

<He is deployed as well. If he lives long enough he might be on the council eventually.>

"Picking your soldiers off gender seems real stupid."

<Matirin is good at his job and I don't think he'd be better utilized at home.>

"Humans do that too, it's not just them," Susannah points out.

"You don't have modern weaponry and men might legitimately have an advantage. I assume Andalites, possessing spaceships, mostly don't fight with the tails."

<It comes up occasionally.>

"I got here before I saw feminine tails, are they worse?"

<Less reach. A female Andalite will almost always lose a fight to a male one. Were this the only justification for not having women in the military it'd be admittedly silly.>

"I was gonna say, presumably you can just shapeshift the best-performing tail."

<You can do this but people mostly don't because it takes decades of practice to get good and you can't really get decades of practice in a morph.>

"No? Why not?"

<Most people can only morph twice in a day, and it's unsafe to stay in morph for more than one hundred twenty-two local minutes.>

"Huh. I'm surprised Eskillimi risked it, she must be having a pretty good day."

<What is ...her issue exactly.>

"- well, I don't know if they're all exactly alike. Kitty freezes up. She can almost always talk, but depending how bad it is she might not be able to run an errand, or sometimes even eat with a fork. ...you don't know what a fork is. Uh, but they aren't hard to use, for most people. Bullying her doesn't help, urgency doesn't help, having done it a million times before doesn't help, the only thing that helps is telling her what's next, in tinier and tinier steps till there's a step small enough for her. In a kid it just looks kind of lazy and contrary, lots of kids are kind of lazy and contrary. And I was a precocious and bossy little thing. Followed her around everywhere and told her I wanted to play store or princesses or whatever and exactly how I wanted her to and she'd do it because she could, it was the only thing she could always do -" She sighs. "So we were very close growing up, see."

<I think I do.>

"Sometimes I have to tell her how to walk. That must be awful with four feet. I hope she doesn't have to tell her where to aim her extra eyes, that'd be a nightmare."

<It is fortunate they're both women.>

"Sounds like it."

<I am not positioned to offer her any help but I hope she finds something satisfactory.>