"I'm not sure if that has some very specific meaning."

"Oh, just-- you make enough shoes that you can afford to give everyone so many shoes that they always have a spare even if they wear out too fast. Cascadia can't do that, we're poor."

They don't look that poor. "Are a lot of people here going without shoes? You have housing managed."

"Oh, no, but lots of people only have a couple of pairs."

"I have not seen anyone with more than two feet."

"Right, but you're going to want more than one pair-- you're not going to use your workboots as regular shoes, or wear them to a formal dinner party."

"I've mostly been in environments with uniforms, on Ibyabek, I suppose I don't know how many shoes everyone else has."

"You... wear your uniform shoes all the time? Even when you're going to, I don't know, a theme park?"

"The owl did not teach me 'theme park'."

"It's-- a place where they have rides that spin you around or make you go very fast, and various shows, and sweet food, and sometimes people in costumes?"

"Perhaps if I had been invited to one before I would know what is worn to them."

"...what do you do for fun on Ibyabek?"

"I used to sing. There are movies, and books."

"--I'm guessing it won't make sense to ask about how rich you were because everyone on Ibyabek has the same amount of money."

"That's right."

"...what are the movies like?"

"Do you want - a plot summary of the last one I saw -"

"Sure, I'm just curious. There are-- a lot of things that people wouldn't necessarily think to say, because it's just a background fact about their lives, so you can't really ask about it. You just have to ask them to describe things about their lives in detail and then you'll stumble across it."

"The last one shown on the ship was an action movie about a ship's crew crashed on a planet with hostile wildlife. Another crew from another planet is also crashed there, I forget why there are so many crashes on this planet, and the Ibyabekan ship helps them and brings them back to Ibyabek when they defect from Xeren."

He is quiet for a minute and then says, "we have movies like that in Cascadia too."

"I was mostly watching children's television, for the language."

"Oh?" he says. "What did you think?"

"There were a lot of farm animals."

"Oh, yeah, that's a thing. We all have our own animals here."

"Why is that?"