Ita finds all the attention a bit overwhelming, but diligent studies enchanting and alchemy.

(Her brother is rather put out about it).

Tepam is just very excited about yet even more magic to play with.

Sefoni would also find this all very overwhelming, if she let herself pay any attention to all the attention she is getting. She's a bit too busy holing herself up in the greenhouse figuring out the perfect way to raise these new plants for that, however. When she isn't doing that, she's in the alchemy lab with Ita. She only leaves for school and when Keolin comes to drag her home to sleep. 

(Keolin is supportive, of her new magic if not her desire to plant herself in the gardens like one of her flowers.)

Mika learns some alchemy, but he mostly keeps to enchanting. Ita and Sefoni will mostly be working on that, after all, and there's only seven of them. Alchemy is interesting, but he likes enchanting better.

By the beginning of winter, Mika, Alesin, and Tepam get good enough at making the three simple enchantments that Liarae lets them start working on making their own. Tepam's necklace Boon is, as expected, extremely useful for this.

Which only motivates Tepam to try harder, it gets more difficult to pry her from magic. Not because she doesn't want to do other things, but because she just gets carried away. Even when she misses or almost misses things she is Excited about.

Things like the class trip! The first time they're leaving the island, ever, class trip. They're supposed to go in fifteen minutes and Tepam isn't at the school yet! Mika tugs on a teacher's sleeve and points this out. 

"I think I saw her earlier," Alesin tells them both. "Mika and I could go get her?" 

The teacher decides not to send Mika, given his distractability. Instead he sends Alesin and Dasenifer, reasoning that the most responsible of the triplets will hopefully be able to keep them on track. 

Seni accepts this and follows Alesin to wherever Tepam is likely to be.

"I'm not that bad, am I?" She asks him as she leads him up to the labs. "Mika's the one who runs off all the time..." 

"You are not, but two people is better at keeping each other on task. And we have a short time."

"Mm," she nods. "That's true." 

Up the elevator to the enchanting labs they go, where they will hopefully find Tepam. 

They in fact find Tepam in the enchanting labs, actually at the door, fiddling with her Boon.

Alesin calls down the hall towards her from just outside the elevator, "Tepam! You're late, we're just about to go!"

Tepam looks up. "Oh, sorry. I just..." she stares at the thing again.

Seni, without any ceremony, just goes over and takes Tepam hand to conduct her to the elevator.

Lesi snorts, "I guess that works, too." 

"What kind of enchantment were you working on?" She asks as they take the elevator down. 

"I was fiddling with the light one to make it bright or dimmer."

"It'd be good to be able to give them brightness settings," she muses. "I think that might need more than one enchantment, though... Or a layered one, or something. At least with the pieces we have right now. Maybe it'll be easier with something from a spell or other enchantment. But we've got to wait," sigh. 

"Did you get any progress?"

"Waiting is terrible," Tepam tells Alesin. "I didn't really make any progress. I got distracted when I did a variant enchantment that starts bright and then dims until there is no more light and I was trying to poke at it to see if I could make it behave."

"Yeah. And that's something I think might need stuff we don't have, too. Controlling what the light does after we've cast the enchantment, besides just turning it on and off. Maybe you can figure it out with the Boon, though."

(It's really annoying that it was only the four of them at Milliways! Who knows what kinds of Boons the rest of them could have had... they could have brought back a lot more if more people had been there.)

(It's a terrible tragedy, nearly ever kid is wondering what Boon they would've gotten.)

They return and the teacher makes a head count before the kids are loaded into cars.

The cars sit six kids, along with the two adults in the front. Lesi and Mika are in the same one as Tepam, with Lakini, Aden, and Migah in the other three seats. Mika chatters excitedly with them on the way, Lesi chiming in every so often as well. The drive isn't too long, mostly involving crossing the bridge connecting the two islands, driving around to the other side of it, and then making their way through the city to their hotel.

Once they enter the city limits, Mika stares out the windows in wide-eyed wonder. Of course he's seen pictures, but it's so different from anywhere he's been! 

"There's so many people," he says, watching a horde of pedestrians cross the street while they wait for the lights to change. 

"I know! I want to talk with a few!"

"Me too! Actual new people that don't live with us! I wonder what it's like living here."

"Crowded, I bet. There's so many people, I bet you could practically never be alone."

"But you would never run out of things to do."

"And we could go anywhere we wanted," he sighs wistfully. 

Lesi pats his hair. Pat pat.

"Do new things, meet new people, everything." Tepam says in a similar tone.

"You guys know that we can't just... wander around, right?"

"Come on, Aden, let us dream! Anyway, they can't watch us all the time," he adds more quietly, glancing over at the two chaperones in the front seats. 

"They can't?"

"He means we still can have some fun too."

"Yeah! I wanna see more than just the places they're taking us to." 

"Me too! They are not planning to take us everywhere."

The cars are parking at the hotel they are staying.

Lesi looks a little conflicted, but doesn't voice any complaints before it's time to grab their things and head into the lobby, and from there up to their rooms. 

They've rented out a whole floor. It's a nice one, with interconnected rooms and a large common room in the middle. The adults have four rooms to share between the eight of them, while the 23 kids on the trip share the other eight. Mika and Lesi get assigned a room with Tani and Ovali, while Tepam is shuffled in with Seni, Karo, and Teo next door. The other triplet set get a room to themselves, and from there the rooms are filled with pairs of twins. 

Mika runs out on the balcony as soon as he's dropped his bag on the bed, staring out at the city from the high vantage point with stars in his eyes. The hotel is close enough to the waterfront to have a view of the harbour and the ocean from this height, as well as the tall sparkling high-rises which litter the skyline of every Amentan city.

"Wow!" 

Ovali follows him. "So tall! Tani, come look at this."

Tani comes along. "Oh, cool." She says, looking more around than down, trying to identify things.

"I really hope I get a flying power," he says, leaning half-way over the balcony railing. 

Tani pushes back a bit by the waistband of his pants. "Ovali too."

"Well, duh."

"I hope someone gets it as a crystal power, so everyone can fly," he adds, trying to wiggle out of Tani's grip, "Come on, I'm not gonna fall!" He tells her. 

"Maybe, but still, we should get ready or we will be late for the tour."

"Oh yeah," he lets go of the railing, letting her tug him back. 

Lesi meets them in the bedroom, and then they head out into the hall to meet with the others.

They wait a bit in the hall and then the kids are herded towards the museum.

It's a very nice interactive museum, with displays that they can walk through and explore and learn about natural history, biology and the universe.

Lesi finds a display with sensors which turn proximity to things into different pitches. She is quickly very focused on figuring out how to play it like an instrument so she can make music with it. 

Mika is drawn to the storm simulator game, where you mess with environmental conditions to try to make the biggest holographic storm in the little bubble in the middle of the table. He pokes at the dials at his station, mouth twisting as he concentrates. 

Seni watches what Mika is doing.

Aden tries to help Lesi with what she is doing.

Ovali is distracted by a display on how a spaceship is sent to space.

Great! With two people they can try stuff with harmony! Another sensor makes sounds that are higher than hers makes, she passes that one to Aden. Music~!

After a bit more fiddling, Mika glances up at Seni, "Could you take that station over there?" He points to the one just to the right of the opposite side of the table, "This station's only making wind come from over here, and I think it needs to come from other places, too, so it'll spin the clouds." 

Anekasi stops a small distance away from Ovali to read the display as well. 

Does Kasi want to play with the interactive part of the display that simulates a rocket being thrown into orbit?

Seni will take position and fiddle the controls carefully.

Music!

...Sure. He steps up next to Ovali, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, and presses the button to start the interactive bit. 

Through their efforts, the clouds begin to spin, and with a few more adjustments the storm begins to form an eye. 

"It's a hurricane!" He bounces around to Seni's station, peering at the storm from a bunch of different angles, and then pushing himself up so he can get a good look from above. 

"It is. I wonder if we can make one stop once it's going?" Seni says, also pushing himself up a bit.

Then Ovali and Kasi can play with simulated gravitational forces to guide the tiny ship up towards its destination! The first attempt ends with it lost to the void of space.

"Hmmm..." he looks down at the buttons at this station. "I had to heat up the water underneath it to make it form... maybe if we cooled it down?"

Kasi frowns, trying to figure out what they'd done wrong. "Let's try again?" 

"Sure. Wanna switch places?"

"...Okay." Maybe they'll be better at the opposite ones. 

They switch.

Seni tries that at his station, watching carefully for the results.

It takes a bit, but the simulation is sped up quite a lot, so they get to watch as the hurricane slowly dies in response to the cooling water. 

"Cool! Wonder if we can do that in real life?" 

And they try again, Kasi paying more attention this time so he can hopefully catch any mistakes they make.

It takes three revolutions across the solar system, but they eventually get the ship to its destination safely, and manage to shave the time in the next try.

"It would be neat. We could stop hurricanes before they hit shore."

Kasi gives Ovali a small satisfied smile after the third try, "I wonder what the fastest time you can get on this is?" 

"Yeah... it'd be pretty hard to cool down the ocean like that, I think, but there's gotta be ways to do it..." He hums, thinking about it.

"I guess if you could do with technology they would have done it."

"Let's find out!"

"Yeah." He presses the button to start again.

"Mm," he nods, "Or maybe it was too much money or something? Maybe we'll figure out a way to do it, when we're older." Maybe they'll get magic for it, he means. 

"Yeah," Seni writes that down on his Pocket Everything. "Wanna try again to see how big we can make it?"

(He glances at the Everything and grins.)

"Yeah!" He scampers back over to his station and turns the heat dial up so they can try again. 

A while later, there is a practical exhibition on natural selection for people (meaning, mainly kids) to attend to.

Lots of kids show up! Keo tugs Sefoni along to take a look at it, pausing beside Karo on the edge of the circle around the museum green who's going to explain.

Lesi points the group out to Aden from the sound display they've been playing with, "Want to go take a look?"

"Oh, yeah. I lost track of time." He goes towards the presentation.

Karo decides to retrieve Seni. Teo nods and smiles at Keo and Sefoni.

The Green explains how natural selection and random mutations play a part in evolution. Allowing creatures to adapt to their environment and what niche role they occupy.

Of course, evolution happens in stages. And the presentation is meant to be a practical demonstration of that.

Holographic birds spring into life, while the walls have pictures of a forest.

The birds have a goal, come down the forest floor to feed on delicious mushrooms, while trying to avoid predators: the kids.

"Me too," she admits, following him. 

As soon as the birds appear, she reaches out to try to catch the nearest one. It darts out of her reach, and she lunges after it, weaving between the other kids. 

Keo goes after one, too! He catches the first one easily, and then moves onto another, which is a bit harder. 

Teo manages to corner one, but loses it at the last moment when it manages to escape.

Karo manages to slide down the floor and take one bird down.

Tani, Tepam and Lakini all coordinate to take down quite a few.

After a round of this, the birds go to their nests and have new birdies and the Green explains how the evolutionary pressure caused the fastest birds to have more babies than the slower ones (this is displayed by the birds having larger wings). And the next round is harder on the kids.

Keo goes straight back to work, catching as many birds as he can. He's a little more interested in the hunting and catching than he is in the science behind all of this.

Mika, though, has a thought. He stops Lesi from catching any and looks around for the blue triplets. 

They are way over there, trying to send a bird towards Seni to catch.

He drags Lesi over, "We need everyone to catch the fast ones, right? And leave the slow ones alone."

"What?" Lesi protests, "But we'll get way less birds each turn if we do that."

"It would make the next generation slower."

She blinks, actually pausing to think about it, "Ohhh... I see now." She looks around at all the kids, busily snatching up all the birds they can catch (though some of them appear to have had the same thought as their group). "How are we gonna convince them to go along with the plan, though? It won't mean much if everyone else keeps catching all the slowest ones."

"Maybe we could give some kind of reward?"

"Hmm... Mika and I could make something for the kids from the islands... And the other kids might just go along with it if they see all of us working on the same thing, if they notice..." There's a few kids besides the Deosikuri group here.

"We could also just try that first? Some of them are already doing it," Mika points towards Kasi, who is carefully creeping up on a large-winged bird feeding on the mushrooms, and then towards Lakini, Tani and Tepam. "We could just talk to them about all doing it together. And... I think most of the rest will probably listen to you guys if we have a plan."

"That might work. And let's just try before we run out of time."

Back to catching pixilated holographic birds!

Cooperative bird catching! 

The group as a whole catches about as many birds this turn as they did last turn, between the increased difficulty of the task and the increased skill of the catchers. A larger percentage are faster ones than last time, though, now that some of the kids are focusing on them. 

When the round ends and all the birds return to their nests, Mika looks around for Tepam, Lakini and Tani and bounds over to tell them about their idea and invite them to help with the plan. 

Tepam giggles at this and is game. Tani reluctantly agrees once Lakini also decides to join.

Some other kids ask why they are doing this. Some try to follow suit, some don't.

They explain that if they keep catching the fast ones, eventually the birds will all be so slow that they can catch them all in one turn. 

Kasi, already having deduced this and having been working on it on his own, adds his agreement. Keolin is a harder sell, particularly since he lacks the patience to focus in on one really hard to catch bird when he could instead be catching a bunch of easier ones. He does try, though. 

(Sefoni has retreated to the edges of the room and hasn't been catching any birds, fast or otherwise.)

Some kids are not that good at catching the fast birds. Since, they are, fast.

Aden is a bit worried that they might get into trouble, but eventually relent and catches a particularly hard bird and it was only 40% an accident.

Well, it's not as though they're doing anything wrong. They're just trying to win the game. 

Also: what an impressive catch! She is impressed, and so are a few other kids who noticed. Some of the ones who aren't having much luck ask him for tips.

Timing? The birds' AI is just counting down between actions and the "evolution" is just speeding the count down. See how it twitches that way and then that way every time before eating the virtual food? It's faster in the birds that fly faster too.

Some of the kids understand what he's talking about and go back to trying with this new knowledge. Some of them don't quite understand but get enough of it to try paying attention to the patterns in the birds' movements. A couple of them complain about Green stuff and go back to trying their own way. 

Lesi's in the first group, "That's so cool! And it'll make this way easier." She watches a nearby bird cycle between looking around, eating, and hopping about for a little bit, darting forward to catch it right as it bends down to peck a 'mushroom'. It dissolves into pixels in her hands, caught, and she grins up at him, "Wanna try catching one of the fastest ones?"

"Sure, why not." They proceed to catch more birds.

The Green and other minders caught wind of what they are doing, but are not mad about it. He mentions that this is, in a sense, related to the concept of domestication, though he will give the full explanation by the end of the presentation.

Final round!

There's still some fast ones left, but most of them are pretty slow! With all the kids back to catching everything they can this turn, they manage to mostly clear the room by the time the deadline approaches. 

There's just two left, some kind of super fast mutants resulting from the few fast birds which survived the past few rounds. The half-horde of kids chasing them both is making catching them very difficult. 

And Seni can see exactly the problem here, too many people, the birds just have too many targets to potentially spot and then fly away.

That does seem to be the problem, yes, and not one anyone seems to be able to influence. A few do lag behind and eventually give up, and eventually there are few enough kids in the one group that they get organized enough to try to herd their bird into a trap, eventually sending it directly at Teo. 

The other one, however, gets lost in a pile up of kids trying to catch it while it's 'eating'. It glides over to the side of the room and lands. 

Sefoni, sitting curled up against the wall, only notices a bright flash of colour out of the corner of her eye. Her hand flashes out to touch it automatically - and she looks up just in time to watch it dissolve into fading pixels. She stares. 

And Teo catches the other bird!

The Green congratulates the kids and explains the effects of their hunt on the virtual critters evolution.

The presentation concludes and it's time for dinner at the museum's attached restaurant.

Teo gets a lot of cheers! There's lots of excited chatter about the game on the way to the restaurant. 

"Could we make a game like that at home?" Lesi wonders, "Maybe even better with ma-" she stops, "Um. With... that stuff. We have." 

Seni smiles, he is not good at faking smiles. "The word you're looking for is extraordinary resources." It's great that in their language magic and extraordinary start the same way. "You know, I bet we can rig something like that."

"Huh. We might even get the same program they do. Maybe we could even collaborate with the museum to improve the program or something."

People take seats and checking the menus.

"Riiight," she nods in a Very Convincing Manner.

"We can ask the teachers about it later," she suggests as they turn their attention to the menu. 

Sefoni, unlike everyone else, is Very Quiet throughout the explanation and the walk to the restaurant. Keolin scowls at any of the kids who try to complain at her or congratulate her for the catch. He herds her into the corner of a booth and sits next to her to prevent access, though there's still the seat on the other side of that table.  

There's a little water plant on the table in a clear rounded cup. She tugs it over and pokes at it morosely.

Karo tentatively approaches. "Hi, Sefoni? Is everything okay?"

(Keolin... doesn't scowl at him suspiciously. It's kind of hard to be suspicious of Karo. He moves on to reading the menu instead.)

Sefoni glances up at him, "...I caught the bird," she says, still looking very unhappy about this. 

"And that upset you? Why? Did someone make fun of you for it or something?"

Blink. Head shake, "No one was mean," she assures him. Or at least not that she noticed. "I just... I didn't want to hurt them." 

"The birds?"

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."

"It really is."

There's a long moment of silence, and then Mika sits up, turning to throw his arms around Tepam and flopping over Teo's back in the process, "We should go exploring to cheer ourselves up!" 

"We should!"

"We should!" Teo agrees.

"Come on, then," rolling off the bed! He bounces over to the door and opens it a crack, peering out into the hallway to check that the coast is clear.

It's not. They can spot a security Grey talking to Tepam's grandmother, who also came for this visit.

Darn.

He shuts the door again, turning back to the others with a pout, "No luck, your grandma's out there with a security Grey." 

"Aw, man. We will never be able to leave."

Flop, back onto the bed.

After a moment, he sits back up, "Maybe someone could distract them?"

"Distract how?"

"Hm... just... go talk to them so they're looking away while we sneak past?" He glances over at Seni and Karo, then to the door to the other room, "Lesi'll probably do it if I ask, but she doesn't like lying, so I don't really want to, even if she doesn't really need to lie, exactly..."

"They are bad at lying for blues." Teo says of his brothers.

"I am not."

"Ummm..." He hesitates. It's true that Seni is not the best at lying. And Mika really doesn't want to get him in trouble... 

But he doesn't think Tani will do it, and Ovali will just want to come with them... 

"You wouldn't really have to lie, anyway, just distract them," he ends up saying, shifting a bit unhappily. 

"Why do you want to go out now? It's kinda late." Karo pipes up.

"Well, they're gonna be keeping us busy with stuff all during the days," he points out. "This is the first time we've really had free, I think?"

"You do know you will get caught, if not on the way out in the back in. And that might ruin future trips for everyone, right?"

"...Oh, that's true."

He wasn't really thinking about the consequences. Just the chance to go explore somewhere new without someone making his choices for him on where to go and what to see. But the chance that they'll never even get to leave the island again if they ruin this trip...

He glances at Tep for her opinion. 

"Aw, I want to go out."

"Well, you can't succeed. And you were fine with just the trip until now."

Mika is now very conflicted!

"I wanna go, too, but... He's right. We'll get caught. Um... maybe we can bring something to let us sneak out without them noticing next time?" 

"I mean, you shouldn't sneak out next time too, but that would be more likely to work and less likely to get everyone in trouble."

"Yes, we shall bide our time until it's the right moment to enact our plan." Teo says dramatically.

He's distracted from replying to Seni by Teo's proclamation, too busy giggling to speak. 

Which sets Tepam off.

Teo laughs maniacally which then turn into actual laughter.

There's a knock on the door, and a chaperone peers in, "Time for bed, kids," she says. "Mika, back to your room," she adds, once she realizes he's not assigned this one. 

Mika pouts, but nods, pausing to hug Tepam and Teo before running off through the door between their rooms. 

The next day the chaperones wake them at 8:00 for breakfast at the buffet, followed by a visit to the botanical gardens near the science center they'd visited the day before.

The gardens are enormous, and organized to appear almost-wild to an untrained eye. There's an artificial waterfall near the entrance, from which point streams snake out through the building, lending the soothing sound of running water to the otherwise quiet room. 

Sefoni is much more excited about this trip than she was about the last one, though she's barely paying their guide any attention as she's so busy examining the plantlife itself. Eventually, the chaperones set them loose to wander around by themselves, though they warn the kids to stay on the paths. She excitedly pulls Ita along to see some things which remind her of the magical flora they have in their own greenhouse.

The flowers are very nice looking! But Lesi's not really sure what the point of this trip is other than that. She finds a nice sunny spot near the waterfall to sit and read on her everything instead.

Ooh, Ita even points out two plants that have a symbiotic relationship, and are similar to two alchemical ones. That's interesting.

It is! She points out some other similar plants as they walk through the gardens.

...And then, as they walk past the water lilies, she points out another familiar thing.

"Is that...?" 

The familiar thing person glances up from his clipboard as they near, offering them a polite, if slightly awkward, smile, before going back to his work. 

Ita squints. "Oh, yeah, but with normal- clothes." She hastily changes to not say 'skin and hair'. "And working with plants too."

"...Should we go tell one of the grown-ups?" 

"Maybe? I can... keep an eye on him and you call someone?"

Nodnod, "Okay." She glances in his direction once more, and then runs off back towards the entrance, hoping to find some adults from the island there.

And Ita... approaches the person. She is not sure if she should be looking at him directly or not. So she alternates between staring at the plants and at him. And thinking that she is probably coming off as the least bright sort of purple.

Sefoni can find Patiri on a bench while taking pictures.

About the fourth time she looks up at him, she finds him looking back, a somewhat amused look on his face, "Need something, kid?" 

Sefoni, meanwhile, tentatively hovers in front of Patiri, waiting for her to finish taking the latest picture before speaking up. 

"S'cuse me, Miss Patiri?"

"Yes, Sefoni? Do you need anything?"

"Uh... yeah, could you wait... and tell me what are you doing?"

"...Alright, I can do that." And he'll show her his clipboard and the instrument he's using to check various factors around each plant in the area. She can try it, if she wants, this button here measures humidity...

She steps up real close and leans in to whisper, "I think we found an alt," she says, "Come see?"

Patiri leans and whispers back. "Sure? Who is the alt?"

Ita pays attention. "What's your name?"

"Uh, Aton Aradir. What about you?"

"He looks like Erandur, from Milliways. The person who gave us all the plants? And he works here, I think. So..." 

"Thank me to him, sweetie."

"Ita! I am from the Deosikuri School group."

She nods, taking Patiri's hand and leading her towards Ita and the Erandur alt. 

"Oh yeah? Nice to meet you, Ita." He continues showing her what he's doing with the plants. By the time Sefoni and Patiri reach them, they've moved a few meters down the path from where they were, and he's answering a question about a vine winding up the tree he's poking at, "They are symbiotic, yeah. The vine uses the tree to reach sunlight, and when it..." he trails off when he notices Patiri and Sefoni, "Are you who she was asking me to wait for?"

"It was!"

"Hello, Patiri Kered. I am heading an alternative education and took the kids to a city trip. I am not sure you heard about it?"

"I... did, actually. The staff is notified of all field trips." He looks down at Ita, then back to Patiri, "I guess you're with the Deosikuri school? Do you need help with something?" 

"Not specifically, but the girls thought they recognized you, except he wasn't a Green like you."

"He did give us some plants and was really nice."

"That's... nice? I don't think I've met either of you," he tells them. "I did some acting on the side when I was younger, which could account for my hair being another colour, but that was over a year ago." He glances up at Patiri, "I don't think I've ever been a guest speaker at your school, either." 

"Girls could go back to the group for a moment?"

She shares a look with Ita. Then she nods at Ms. Patiri, and runs off - deciding to keep an eye out for the blue triplets or Mika or Tepam as she goes. 

"Sorry for that. It's a security thing, not something to be too worried about in normal circumstances. But, Janon Jonoro's grandchildren do go to the same school."

One of the blue triplets, Ovali and Ita's brother can be spotted trying to climb a tree. The girls can see them from this angle, but they are hidden from view by most people at the park.

Sefoni frowns at them, distracted from their original purpose.

"Hey, um... They said we weren't supposed to touch the plants..." she says. "You might hurt them." 

Mika peeks out of the foliage at her from about fifteen feet up, "We're only climbing the trees, they should be fine," he insists. Climbing is what trees are for, in his humble opinion.

"And more importantly, I reached the canopy first."

"No, even more important is that I am higher."

Mika giggles at them, "You'd be even higher if you'd stop arguing and climb." 

"Yes, but Teo doesn't want to admit he lost."

"The bet was someone to first climb the tree, and Teo did that." Parik smiles at Teo, but the later ignores him.