One is mending clothes, two are weeding their little garden, one is spraypainting something, some are just sitting in the sun, a bunch of kids are playing with some very miscellaneous toys and empty boxes. One of the sunbathers notices his pocket everything going off and leaps up to run back into the building.

Not very different from any other newpeople, really.

Hey newpeople! Why can't he come in?!

The gardeners look at each other. "Can they - understand us?"

"I don't think so."

"Which means it's no harm to explain, I guess."

"Sure."

"You can't come in because it would make you polluted," says gardener the first.

He can understand them if they use words he knows and talk slow!

"What words do you know?" asks the chattier gardener, switching tasks to putting the other's picked weeds in their weed bag since that requires less attention than picking them herself.

He knows lots of words! (He puffs up a bit about it.) He knows, uh - bird, and no, and yes, and understand, and treat, and can-you, and good, and baby, and meat, and toy, and here, and...

And shortbeak said hawkbotherer said threehawks will give treats to crows who tell her about the other-color newpeople! And he found them!

...oh dear.

"We could tell the social worker."

"Do you think that will... help?"

"...no, but I don't know what else..."

"We could tell Stam."

"I know you like Stam but what's he going to do?"

"He could make out like he heard a bird talking to us himself."

"...I guess that could work."

Hey! Why are they worried all of a sudden?! Are they secret newpeople? Should he not tell threehawks?

"...don't tell threehawks," tries the red.

He won't tell threehawks. He doesn't think threehawks is bad, though? Hawkbotherer and shortbeak wouldn't've said things for her if she was bad.

"We don't think threehawks is bad," says the red slowly, "but don't tell people."

He won't tell threehawks.

He will tell shortbeak to tell hawkbotherer to stop telling the crows to look, because some of them wouldn't ask before telling.

Why are they secret?

"That's... complicated."

Why are they so worried they're getting him all worried too.

"It's complicated, I'm sorry."

Do they have a problem he can do something about. He's a very clever crow, he knows lots of tricks and words and things.

"I don't think so, but thank you."

He fluffs up grumpily and flies off to find shortbeak.

A couple hours later, Sun mentions to lone sassafras, "The governor's office thinks I should try to explain the seventh caste now."

She can't really hide that she's not all that surprised by this, though she doesn't mention it.

Yes?

"Apparently some of the crows are interested in them, and we're not sure how to best explain that they need to stay away. The reds are polluted and it's important that nobody else touch them, and we're leaning towards crows counting as people for that purpose."

That might be tough, even cooperative crows don't have the best attention span for that sort of thing, especially if they haven't personally seen the consequences of it. She might be able to help explain it to them if she understands the problem a bit better?

"We're not making it hard for crows to avoid them, but someone saw one picking at the netting over their rooftop, and if some poor crow got in there it would be so miserable while it was washed off. Reds do unclean jobs, like incinerating bodies, removing garbage, and dealing with wastewater. We've been assuming you craft those things away, but we can't, so we just do our best to keep all the dirty substances contained."

Ah. Well, crows don't have the best grasp of contagion as a concept, but they know about diseases and plenty of them will have lost someone they cared about to one, it shouldn't be too hard to get the idea across. Also if they end up washing a crow they should make sure they can fly properly before they set them loose again and bring them to a crafter if not, it's easy to damage their feathers with too much handling.

She's a little confused why this subspecies was secret?

"It's not exactly a secret, but most Amentans prefer not to look at or think about or interact with reds, so it hadn't come up."