:What? The way a society tells stories about love is important cultural context and we should know it: 

Matirin picks out a book about the Crusades to go with the biography of President Clinton because Crusades sound like the kind of thing one wants to be on top of. Cayaldwin is sorting the National Geographics, looking for ones that will be interesting to the Velgarth crowd.

"If I may interrupt," Matirin says to the guy at the front desk, who wonders if he's British or something though he doesn't have the accent, "how do we take the books from the library home with us."

        "Oh," he says. "I dunno if Cherry's in. If she's not in you can't take them."

"When will she be in?"

         Cherry is a not very functional alcoholic. "Your guess is as good as mine, buddy."

"Hmmm. Can we maybe pay for the books?"

         "I don't think we're really set up for that."

"Can we work something out? I'd really like to take these books home today." Specifically in the next fifteen minutes. 

         "I don't wanna call Cherry, she'll be cranky."

"We could - leave money as collateral? And take the books now, and come back and get the paperwork straightened out once she's back?"

         "That's ...not really how we do things...you know what, if you want them that bad, just take them, leave the library, uh, a donation or something." Cherry will probably pocket it but whatever. 

"Great! Thank you." 

He leaves the library a hundred dollars of donation. "Let's get out of here."

Leareth carries his precious National Geographics and a handful of nonfiction books Nayoki found for him - one on something called the Second World War, and a 'travellers' guide' to various Earth countries. 

:If this is the kind of library they have in a very small city then I cannot wait to see what they have in the biggest cities: 

Nayoki is reading her romance while walking, absently using Thoughtsensing to maintain the right distance behind Leareth and not run into anyone. 

<There is so much at stake> Matirin says, fervently. They get back to the shuttle. They demorph. They take off, and head back to where everyone else is.

Nayoki has her nose in her book and occasionally giggles to herself. 

Leareth starts looking through one of the National Geographics, trying to puzzle out headlines and read some of the text, until he notices a couple of minutes later that he has a headache and feels kind of sick. 

He puts down the book and shakes his head. "...I think I am getting seasick from this? Well. Shuttle-sick? That is such a stupid problem." He switches to looking out the window again.  

Thankfully it's a fairly short trip. He hands off the maps to a different group which can go scouting for mines, and then hands out the more suitable human clothes for everyone to practice with. 

Also they should practice eating chocolate now, in case taste otherwise come up in some context where it's distracting.

Taste is the BEST THING IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE

It's like sex except it LASTS FOR AS LONG AS YOU CAN KEEP YOUR MOUTH FULL OF FOOD

All of the Andalites are COMPLETELY UNABLE TO FUNCTION NOW

Nayoki samples the jellybeans and a bit of chocolate, and determines that while it's very delicious and possibly more delicious than anything you can make in Velgarth, it's a normal amount of distracting for food and probably the Andalites just need to get used to it? 

Honestly this is too much sugar concentrated into too small a volume and Leareth would prefer a normal cake or something. 

(Possibly 'while slightly motion sick' is not the best time to enjoy jellybeans.) 

Since the Andalites seem to need a while to get over the existence of chocolate before they can have conversations about anything else, Leareth asks Nayoki to help him read the book on World War Two so he can improve his English reading. 

She rolls her eyes. :Can I do Mindhealing at you so you learn it faster. Or I could just do the language-sharing thing, then you would have a headache for a candlemark but would be able to read as well as I can afterward: 

Sure, fine, that's probably worth it at this point. 

Leareth gets Nayoki's command of spoken and written English shoved very hard into his mind and then, in fact, has a headache, which makes reading kind of intolerable. 

Nayoki takes pity on him and starts reading it out loud in the meantime. 

When the Andalites have calmed down a bit about the existence of taste they will in fact also listen to reading about World War II, it seems like a good thing to know about when you're preparing to start World War III.

World War II lasted from 1939 to 1945, involved more than 30 countries including all the really powerful ones, organized into two alliances called the Allies and the Axis, and led to between 70 to 85 million deaths. Many of these deaths weren't of soldiers in battle at all, or even collateral damage to cities, but were due to deliberate genocides, the most well-remembered of them called the Holocaust and killed well over ten million people. 

(Leareth is making such a face.) 

The war began when a country called Germany invaded Poland, after which France and the United Kingdom declared war on them. Germany ended up controlling much of continental Europe, and allied with Italy and with Japan (not part of Europe at all) as the Axis group, which for a while included some sort of treaty with an empire called the Soviet Union, dividing up nearby conquered territories. There was also fighting over territory in Africa, the nearby continent, that apparently people who look from Nayoki come from. In late 1941, Japan attacked the United States, the country they're apparently in now.

At some point the Soviet Union turned against Germany and started retaking territory, eventually culminating in the invasion of Germany by both the Allies and the Soviet Union, ending in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler (the dictator responsible for the horrible genocide) and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.

When Japan refused to surrender on the Allies' terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Faced with imminent invasion, the threat of more nuclear bombings, and the Soviet Union joining forces against Japan, the country surrendered in August 1945. 

The Andalites were actually broadly aware of this, it was in the intelligence briefing. It's really really horrible when species have internal wars, though, and it's a very bad one. They sit and listen quietly (and suck on the remaining jellybeans). 

The people on the shuttle come back and announce they think that some of the abandoned mines might do, can they have a Farseer to scope them out in more detail? - why's everyone so glum. 

The tragic, unbearable, pointless, stupid part is that all those people died - they died efficiently, Nayoki skimmed some bits but real effort was put into ensuring that - and it didn't accomplish anything at all. No power, no new god from the ashes. Not even goddamned basic infrastructure projects or weather magic, like back in the awful early days of the Eastern Empire. A man rose to power and arranged to murder millions because, what, he felt like it? He hated them because of their ethnic and cultural background?

And Leareth wasn't there, there's no possible world in which he could have done anything - and this was already true before he learned of it, take the world as it is, it's been reality, immutable past, for half a century - but it still feels like losing. Something he hadn't even known was there to be protected, and it's not a helpful feeling but it feels so unfair and he's so angry. 

Leareth says nothing, he's not ready to produce coherent words. 

"They have had some wars on this planet that were very horrible."

Well, that doesn't mean the Yeerks should get them, thinks one Andalite who is completely misinterpreting her tone. The other one gets it a bit better, nods. 

Farseers want to come help them explore the underground base?

Sure, Farseers are ready, they're both mages too for mage-related things. Leareth is presumably sitting this one out because he just got English shoved into his brain with Mindspeech and has a headache. 

Then they can head off! 

Matirin has unfolded a paper map and is trying to make sense of World War II and present geography.