Good plans all around! They'll be busy for a while.

Yes. Yes they will.

And eventually there will be cuddling!

So much cuddling.

Adorable great amazing cuddlepile!

But eventually she asks, "So did you find a good enough Earthly equivalent to Ceirene politics?"

"Oh, right!" he says. "I'd say Ceir is... if you imagine a category including the United States, the European Union, and the Commonwealth of Nations, Ceir is in that category somewhere. If I'd paid more attention I could tell you more about how it works - I think they have a common currency but it wouldn't surprise me if there were a few holdouts; I know there are lots of different governmental structures at play, but they mostly all still think of themselves as Ceirene before they think of whatever part of Ceir they happen to be from."

"The 'everyone's the same species' part probably helps."

"Mm? Isn't everyone on Earth the same species too?"

"Yeah, but we're the only sapients as far as we know, I expect if there were another species or whatever here people would think of themselves as 'members of that species' first and members of wherever they're from second."

"...Ceirene and Aluvai are both human," he says.

"Right, I mean..." She struggles for words. "Okay, so, people often have an us vs. them sort of bias? Humans do, anyway. Many Americans see themselves as Americans first, and whatever state they're from second. But there is interstate rivalry and stereotypes and such, it's just, when compared to an outsider, Texans and Californians identify with each other. The fact that Ceir and Aluvanna exist and are different enough that the humans have developed different phenotypes would be the same general kind of thing, is what I'm saying."

"Hmm. Yeah, I see what you mean."

"Also what word do you use to distinguish the... whatever-it-is that's different between Ceirene and Aluvai?"

"It depends? In some contexts it comes under the same heading as ethnicity, in some contexts it's more like nationality. Not that those two concepts are completely distinct in Earth culture either, but the - relationship between them seems a little different. The word we'd use for the - categories of phenotype, specifically - would be something I'd translate into English as 'type' or 'kind', but I might say 'race' if I didn't have time to summarize the cultural background first."

"Do you guys have any idea how you even evolved those in the first place? They're the kind of phenotype I'd associate with thousands, perhaps millions of years living in isolation."

He shakes his head. "No, no idea."

"Well." She reaches for his tail to pet it. "I still find it unutterably charming."

He giggles.

Kiss! "I love you."

"I love you too." Kiss. "We're going to save the world."

"We aaare!" she singsongs. "And speaking of which, these duplicate makeouts have sort of interrupted something..."

"Yes. But now I'm all cozy." Snuggle.

She giggles, and her boy copy nuzzles his neck from behind.