Nodnod. "I didn't mean to. I just saw a bright thing and then it was..."

Slow nod. "Does it help if you remember that they are not real birds? Like, they are cute, and it's upsetting when cute things go away, but they are not actually real."

"Are you sure they weren't real? Did you check? Maybe they did feel pain." 

"Sefoni... they can't make machines feel pain. And they wouldn't do that for a game."

She looks down at the plant again, gently twisting the cup between her fingers. After a few moments, she nods, "I guess you're right. That would be cruel."

Small smile, "Thanks, Karo." 

He smiles back. Karo's genuine smiles are so much better than Seni's fake smiles that it's hard to classify them as the same expression.

"You're welcome! Now, go eat something."

Her smile brightens a bit in response, and then she turns her attention to the menu as he'd told her to. 

After the meal, they're led down to the museum's theater to watch a documentary about a moon arcology. The film follows a group taking an expedition outside of the arcology, showing the process of suiting up and going out onto the moon's surface, the vehicles they use on the trip to a nearby crater, and the samples they gather there. There's lots of grand shots of the buggy speeding across the landscape with Amenta hanging in space above them. 

Wow, that's a lot of work, but moon gravity looks amazing. They should go up there sometime. Maybe improve up the place. Other kids have similar sentiment to this.

Some Deosikuri children are somewhat less impressed, other are more hopeful that they will get planets.

They're all hoping for that, probably, but making the moon nicer does sound fun while they wait for someone to figure out some way to get to other planets. 

The documentary ends with a wide shot of the blackness of space, the narrator's closing words a message of hope for the future, out there among the stars.

An announcement comes on as the kids file blinking out into the bright light outside the theater, informing visitors that the museum will be closing in ten minutes. The chaperones start herding the kids back to the hotel.

Where the kids are encouraged to journal about their day, and then go to bed.

Most of them go do that! 

Most of them. 

Mika notes down a couple things in his journal, including a doodle of one of the birds, and a little string of numbers that Lesi recognizes as part of the Light enchantment when she looks, and then rolls off the bed and creeps over towards the door connecting their room to Tepam and the blue triplets' room. 

Tepam and Teo are laying down in a bed, watching something in a pocket everything. While Seni and Karo are at the table apparently doing the journal assingment.

"Hi!" Tepam acknowledges when Mika comes in.

"Hi!" He waves at Seni and Karo before climbing up onto the bed to peer over Teo's shoulder, "What're you watching?"

"How they build stuff on the moon, and looking for ways to do it with magic, but easier."

"It's very hard to take things up and down there! Crystal magic could help."

"Hm! You'd have to take up less things if we just used crystal magic to make copies of them. Hey, do you think we could make a crystal that copies air to fill a dome?" 

"It's really hard to assimilate gases into crystal."

"But not impossible? Still, darn... At least your idea still works." He flops down on his back beside Teo, "We could do a lot of useful things if magic was public."

"You can freeze air solid, but then you have a problem with regulating temperatures? But yeah, it would be great."

"For the moon specially. Even if we took stuff up there it would be so hard to hide. Everyone would be watching."

"Yeah... how long do you think it'll be before we go public? Maybe when we're four?"

"Mom and grandpa are preparing, but at least until then. Depends on how useful our year's powers end up being too."

"Hmmm..." He nods, "I hope it's then. I don't like..." he trails off, not sure how to put it in words. "...Being stuck," he says after a moment. That's not quite it, but. Being limited, maybe. "I think it'll really suck to have superpowers and not be able to go out and do anything with them."

"Yeah, that would be the worst."

"It's bad enough."