"There's also 'good morning' and so on, but yes. What do the different hellos mean?"

"Well, there's one for strangers, and one for people you haven't met before but you know of them, and one for people who you might not be sure if they're who you think but it doesn't actually matter for the interaction you're having, like for public officials, since as long as they have what you need to copy it doesn't actually matter if they're the same person as yesterday.  And any time you're meeting someone you know, you shouldn't just be using a regular greeting, you should be saying a phrase the two of you agreed on or referencing an inside joke or asking about an episodic memory you already know they have."  They list the relevant words.

"It's a lot less bad here than some places because it's super illegal to impersonate someone intentionally and everyone's at least a minimum amount of nice.  But everyone still does it; I think it might be a bit of a holdover from before things were like that."

" - Well, and that foreigners are allowed in most of the rest of the country, and they don't necessarily have minimum amounts of - do you really want to translate that as just 'nice'?"

"It's close enough, isn't it?"

"I suppose so."

"What are the nuances of what you're translating as 'nice'?"

"Couldn't someone overhear me greeting Kyeo with an inside reference and copy that if they wanted to impersonate me to him?"

"Just pretty much the same as what I said before for why you can't be here, it's um, niceness and kindness and respecting the law and wanting to follow it and, um - ooh, 'prosocial' is pretty close actually; I didn't notice it before - yes, they can, and that's why you switch it up sometimes, but again you don't have to be that paranoid here, it's just a basic check because it's polite."

"Sometimes in other places people only whisper them, or write them down and show each other, or come up with various convoluted things for each different person they know."

"I suppose we'll come up with something. Thank you for explaining."

"We're only doing what pretty much anyone would!"

"Do a lot of people move away, if they don't want to be that much like everyone else?"

"Some, I guess.  More people move here or to places like here than move away.  This is one of the largest cities in the world."

"It's lovely," says Kyeo. "What is it famous for?"

"Well, it's our capital!  It isn't even the largest city in Creta, though; there are two bigger and one of them's the biggest in the world.  But we have nice weather here and everyone's prosocial enough so that life's very stable.  Things can be - a lot more uncertain in other places.  Plus we have the best laws, especially about, um, what traits people can have."

"Besides being prosocial what traits are people in Creta supposed to have?"

"You can pretty much be whatever you want!  Especially with how you look; lots of places have really strict signalling for it but here you basically just have to avoid or have vitiligo.  But um - this is slightly complicated to explain - you mentioned about people resembling their parents, and we have that too, but it's from how they are at the time they make the kid, from the conception with the father and - wait.  What's up with that word why is it so loaded, that's freaky."

"- what word? I'd thought you were about to say 'mother'?"

"That one too!!  Why is there so much - stuff - on it?"

"Stuff?"

"It - means more things?  Than I meant by it.  But I don't know what they are."

"...people on our planets normally have a mother and a father who raise their children together..."

They look frustrated and somewhat upset.  "People here - have . . . a mo - they have two parents - well, mostly two - and.  The fa - the one doing the fathering - no."  They take a deep breath, and after a thought do a couple consecutive handsprings.  "Of the two parents, one of them has to have male genitalia when they conceive, and one of them has to have female genitalia for the duration of the pregnancy.  It - doesn't matter what shape they are the rest of the time???  I know you can't change stuff but why are there that many extra connotations on these?"

How disconcerting! "Kularan isn't my first language," he demurs.

"People can medically change stuff but it's an involved and usually one-time thing."

Gesture to Sarham.  "Well I got it from him.  - Of course it's on your pronouns too.  Why not."

". . . . . I don't think it's that bad, really?"

"Yeah well you wouldn't, would you."

"Most people have genders and most of them are the same all the time."

"Terrible."

". . . Some people here prefer to be a certain shape all the time?  Very strongly, even.  But that also applies to, say, their height or their hair or their physique, usually, and those don't seem to have quite the same - baggage."

"So I take it you don't care at all if the parents of a child, or anybody for that matter, are still involved while they're both female or both male -"