The greys can relax a bit, he quickly tells them, the little ones won't bother him.

Many of the toys are similar to ones crafters make - baby walkers and blocks and plushies and toy tools transcend species, it turns out, even if the specifics are a bit different. He peers at the other offerings without touching them, only sometimes managing to make sense of what they're meant to be.

His escort will translate any labels he lingers over, though the machine translation doesn't have enough to work with to make more than a vague attempt at "EXTREME CHOMPING BEAK ACTION" and "Discover all 572 unique Creature Containers and the friends within!".

That helps!

He's slightly perplexed by the alphabet mat, but thinks he should get one after the concept is explained. The magnetic toys are very cool in his opinion; crafters don't magnetize things often and haven't hit on the idea of giving them to children. Board games are a very interesting idea and he wants one of those for himself, to play with whatever other crafters move into the area - it seems like a nice gentle introduction to the idea of the aliens being here. He's curious what their art supplies are like but not interested in getting any, exactly. The baby will definitely need a toy spaceship. And he might want one of the remote controlled creatures for himself, he's not sure; they're definitely neat, though.

Does he want all these things right now or does he want to figure out a way to earn some money and swing back to buy them?

None of that is time-sensitive except the board game, which it'd be nice to have time to figure out before he's in a situation where he wants it.

In that case the blue will buy him his choice of board game as a gift.

...can they give him a recommendation? It seems important to get one that's simple to learn, especially, and he can only sort of guess at that from the box art.

How about this one where you jump pegs over other pegs?

Sure, that's reasonable. He appreciates it!

Game is bought! Now it is his.

He reshapes some of his spare crafting-material into a bag - he's been wearing it as a heavy collar and epaulets over his robe - and tucks the game inside.

At some point he's going to want to sit somewhere and sketch the architecture, and also get something to eat - he's been sort of assuming he can eat their food but he's got seeds with him too, he'll need maybe half an hour and a patch of dirt to grow himself a meal that way.

He is welcome to try their food but they can also find him a park for the seeds thing if he doesn't want to take his chances. Restaurant?

Sounds good!

The blue will treat him to lunch at a place with picklepot and onion steak and interesting filled breads.

He makes such a face about the pickles: why would they do that to themselves. The ribbing is good-natured, though, and the steak is fine. Bread is new, and he's a little performatively suspicious of it after the pickles, but he turns out to quite like some of the milder varieties.

He notices that they don't have any fresh food on offer; is that something they have a hard time with?

Most Amentans don't really like their food raw, except for some fruits and vegetables; they can get a salad if he'd like, though. Amenta has much longer years than this planet, which might have given them an evolutionary incentive to enjoy foods made from ingredients that keep well, since the winter lasts a long time and they don't like to live at the equator if they can avoid it.

That makes sense. Crafters do cook, but raw plants are so much faster and easier that they eat a lot of them, even in winter - they can make lit heated plant houses for the more fragile kinds and they've bred or genecrafted others to tolerate being crafted from all year outdoors, there's only a few food plants that are seasonal for them.

That's really neat! Amentans have greenhouses but are also usually not eating things that were grown especially nearby; things get shipped all over the planet, and now between them, though they're trying to keep the cargo space for things less locally duplicable than food.

Yeah - crafters don't have to have more than one or two of any given plant, he's sure that makes a huge difference; it's easier to put things close if they don't need to be so big. It sounds like their way works all right for them, though.

Their way works fine but it's exciting to have the possibility of so much innovation!

He certainly doesn't expect it to be hard to get crafters growing produce for them around the edge of the city. And the genecrafters and fleshcrafters are going to be all over the new sorts of plants, he bets.

If they can get enough trade with the crafters going to reduce the area they need to allocate to farms they can put in a botanical garden with Amentan plants that aren't just for eating, and maybe a zoo.

Sounds exciting. He'll have to get writing; books are one of the main ways crafters find out about things they might want to travel for.

Eventually they can all have their own pocket everythings and satellite internet, if their network thing isn't that efficient at spreading news.

He hasn't heard about those yet.