"To what point?"

“- I meant that it’s very easy to say and straightforward, I’m sorry, it was an idiom.”

"Oh. Thank you.

The person said people from this ball do not like children."

“I like children! They’re really cute and they were one of my focuses when I was in school and I worked in a creche for a while, it was a lot but it was fun. I don’t know what that person meant?”

"She said people don't have their children at home!"

“Oh. I don’t know what that... would involve? I lived in the creche I worked for...”

"Our houses have rooms for children and when we have children the children live there. Everyone likes children very much, they can go anywhere with their parents."

“- huh! That sounds like it would be really fun, actually.”

"I thought maybe your ball takes a wide time to go around the fireball. And that the smallest children were big now."

Koyumena processes this.

”... that doesn’t really make any sense to me, sorry. Are you... do you only have sex at certain times?”

"We only have children at certain times. The thing that makes children is called sex? If we do that other times no children happen."

“We can have children at any time, they just can’t be in most places because so many people are sensitive. Maybe if they’re only born once in a while, it’s harder for diseases to target them - like how cicadas only appear once in a while to dodge predators - so there’s no reason for lots of people to develop the flinch reaction?”

"I don't know if we have cicadas. But anyone can get sick, not just children!"

“... do children not - do gross things, in Amenta? Children here have to learn not to lick rocks and throw diapers and things, and they’re tiny, so they’re at a lot of risk and before modern medicine like a third of them died that way. I had to wash my hands a lot at the creche...”

"...children have to learn things, but they learn them!"

“I - yes? They do, it’s really cute?”

"And then they know them, and then they don't do gross things."

“And by then they’re usually eight, and then they can live in cities and vote and everything?”

"Eight is adults for us. Maybe different time of going around fireball... I'm six."

“I’m thirty-one. I’ll - pull up a chart?”

She twiddles with her hexagon for a bit and pulls up an illustrated chart of childhood development; one amentan year seems to translate to about four alien years.

Nuta reports this fact when she's calculated it out.

“Huh. Neat.”

"Amentans like babies very very very very much. There are -" She counts on her fingers. "Ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten tens, Amentans. More. And not places for many more houses."

“... do you... not...” 

"...do we not...?"