An open apology from Governor Impen Tauko to the crafters of Teani-3:

I wish to convey my sincerest regrets for the initial approach of the Amentan colonists toward the natives. It was careless, unworthy of our better intentions, and the greatest error of my career. My hope is that with this letter I can explain the mistakes leading to this tragedy and reassure those willing to read it of our commitment to do better going forward.

Amentans have dreamed for generations of meeting other intelligent species. We yearned for space and the neighbors we hoped to find there. We speculated, endlessly, about what those people from the stars would be like. We have some very creative imaginations among us. But I don't think I've ever seen a story that speculated that there would be a species to which trespassing would be as unthinkable, or to whom touch would be as dangerous - at least, not by any mechanism such as yours; we had made sure the first explorers were in full coverage outfits to protect you from microbes, while we began biological research to determine if the concern was at issue, but we hadn't realized how the trouble would manifest.

I should have reined in our enthusiasm, and gone with a more conservative, less bold approach, which might still have led to deaths but would at least have been fewer. We could have afforded the days or weeks it might have taken for a cautious landing party to be investigated by curious crafters, and we might have been fortunate to set down in an empty spot with our first landing if we had taken more care, and that we didn't wait for you to come to us was my mistake.

Nothing I can do now will restore anyone harmed by our actions, but if it is any consolation to the surviving loved ones of those who were killed, I have passed on my recommendation in the strongest possible terms to all the leaders of Amenta that future colony projects encountering native peoples should take particular care to remember that not all possible aliens have already been dreamed up in our fiction, and not every vulnerability to be found among the stars should be expected to make instant sense to our evolutionary psychologists.

I have instructed my people to remain within the boundaries of the city and its agricultural surroundings as marked with locally understandable symbols on penalty of expulsion from the colony and a seizure of their assets into a fund I have begun pending the discovery of appropriate reparations to be made to the remaining injured parties and their families. The fund will also be paid for by a percentage colonial credit revenue. It is my sincere expectation that this order will be followed with great care. I would ask that in the particular case of children gone astray that non-lethal means of repelling them from places they are unwelcome be tried first if at all possible; I will not request the same for my adult citizens, who by now have all been told that we will not protect them if they provoke our crafter neighbors.

As an excuse for my failure in judgment I can only offer that we had hoped very dearly and for so many years to meet you, and if there is anything I can do to restore the possibility that our peoples will become friends, I would be eager to know.

Your neighbor,
Governor Tauko

...Sun's species can be very cute when they put their minds to it, wow.

This is overall very good; the two things that lone sassafras would change would be to assert that they would have done things differently if they'd known, not just that they should have even unknowing, and to explain more clearly what the intended point of the fund is - she's picked up by now that their species does a lot of things by trade and considers it important, but crafters don't consider it so valuable among themselves, so it isn't going to be obvious that that's a meaningful gesture.

Sun will pass that along for revisions! Uh, what's cute about it?

It's very, hm, smoothly emotionally expressive? In a way that her species doesn't generally do, as adults.

Huh. What would it have looked like from a crafter?

A crafter wouldn't've talked about their emotional state except insofar as it directly caused their actions, just about their goals and intentions and opinions and assumptions and so on. She thinks the letter is stronger for including it, though - it helps drive home that they're aliens in a way that invites the reader to share their perspective and helps explain how they can have sincerely made such a major mistake, and it feels - not vulnerable exactly but inviting of intimacy in a way that's similar to that - she's not sure she could write something with this much emotion in it without coming across as demanding, it's very impressive that they managed it.

They probably teach blues how to do this sort of thing in blue school.

Well, it's well done however they do it.

Oh, and she expects the thing about children to be fine - she does recommend that they leave it as is, it's an error in the right direction, but assuming newcomer children look like crafter ones they shouldn't register as a territorial threat until mid to late adolescence - they might still see crafters nervous about having newcomer children in their territory if they don't trust adult newcomers not to come in looking for them, but she doesn't expect there to be any serious trouble over it if the children are reasonably well-behaved and the adults stay out.

Is there a good way for adults to retrieve disobedient children without entering a territory they've disobeyed their way into?

It's not a problem crafters have often, and the standard solution would be to ask the crows for help, but yelling at the border could work, or setting off an emergency drum if it's really urgent - she can bring them an emergency drum and some ear protection tomorrow, they should have at least one of those around anyway. Emergency drums are very, very loud - if you set one off without ear protection, you'll probably go deaf - and let crafters in range of them know that something's going on such that you need help to come to you right now; they're an implicit invitation to enter the territory where they're going off.

Okay. Crows, yelling, emergency drum and heavy-duty earmuffs, in that approximate triage order. (Has she mentioned crows are great? A crow is her baby's best friend now.)

Crows are very good, yes. She's been assuming they can't communicate with them any more than they can communicate directly with crafters, have they been making headway with that somehow?

The crows seem to be able to pick up spoken words! Not super fast but enough that they can guess-and-check back with the telepathy about details. The baby's crow can use the toilet, that was covered pretty early, and her husband is trying to teach it to read a clock. (They are not sure what sex the crow is, they don't know how to check and don't have sufficient vocabulary established to ask.)

Huh! She has a lot of trouble with telling their different communication-sounds apart and even more with remembering them, it's neat that crows are better at that. And not at all surprising that they're learning behaviors from the newcomers, that's crows for you.

Do crafters not use speech sounds for anything much? Can they make them at all?

Many but not all crafters learn to mimic some of the animals they're around often, that's kind of similar, and some of them hum and make similar percussive sounds recreationally; it's probably possible to learn more of the newcomers' sounds but the idea of randomly trying it in their territory feels inappropriate to her.

Maybe crafter kids would be able to learn it if they get to the point where any crafter kids are around Amentans that much.

It'll be interesting to find out, definitely.

The revisions don't take very long and are as well-crafted as the rest of the letter.

And lone sassafras writes out a cover letter and her own synopsis of the situation and sends them along.

It's not even a whole day later when a glimmering indigo balloon scuds into view overhead and begins to circle toward the ground.

Oooh. Sun makes sure to get video of the balloon.

It lands a ways off, walker legs unfolding shortly before it reaches the ground, and the balloon shrinks to half size over the course of a few seconds before it starts moving towards the encampment.

It stops a polite distance from the tents; the elderly crafter inside is almost literally vibrating with excitement watching them.

Sun waves real big!

Is that an invitation he thinks it's an invitation he can always back up if they're unhappy about him here he comes! Hello!

"Hello!" Sun replies through speech to text.