What good crows.

If it's likely to be popular they might do something like a tunnel into a dedicated building, would that work?

She doesn't expect it to be popular soon in any case, but there's nothing inherently unacceptable about that idea. Having it indoors suggests more intimacy than they presumably intend, among her species, and some of them might be put off by it if they're having trouble with the concept of the newcomers as a truly different species, but that doesn't seem like a downside to her.

Intimacy like sex? If natives want to have sex with Amentans it can probably be arranged but she wasn't especially expecting it to be worthwhile to set up, buildings just let them get out of the weather.

Not like sex, just that letting someone into a house in your territory is more of a sign of trust than just letting them into your territory at all, they'd be skipping a step or two in the ways things are usually done among her people.

(It's not impossible that they'll get to a point where some people of her species are interested in that sort of relationship with people of theirs. She's not interested, and she definitely doesn't expect that to be soon at all either, but it's not impossible. Probably someone will take an interest in figuring out cross-fertility, if it comes up.)

They could do an awning instead, maybe, with outdoor-style heaters for winter. Cross-fertility would be neat, Amentans were not expecting to find any species with whom this was remotely plausible but the biospheres here seem kind of similar.

She notes that it would be rude of her to express opinions about what they do with their territory.

She does expect fleshcrafters and genecrafters to be interested in their species in general, if they can be assured that it's safe to be around them; that may not work out to crossfertility being possible, but it's the sort of thing they'd try.

Sun explains that all the Amentans in the colony have been firmly told never to make the first violent move with the natives, they just don't consider trespassing to be violent. If meetings occur on Amentan-occupied territory presumably that will work out fine?

There's a similar sort of harm to trespassing on someone's territory that's done by touching them without their permission; that's not as likely to get a violent response but it's still possible, and would be a big problem in any case. If the people of her species are in enclosed vehicles like hers it should be fairly safe. She can make a miniature of it for them to share with any guests they'd like to invite, if they'd like.

That would be very handy. Amentans usually don't consider non-injurious touch by people who aren't sick or anything to be violent either, though it can be impolite; what's the issue there?

Her species' sense of ownership of themselves works similarly to their sense of ownership of their territory; expressing some kinds of opinions about them is a minor to moderate sign of not considering them to own themselves, and unwelcome unnecessary touch is a major one. Losing that sense of self-ownership is much harder to recover from; it's not always possible at all.

Do they have any idea how they happened to become this way? See, species have traits they pass on - they seem to know about genes? - and the genes that work well become more common because the genes that work badly will tend to make it hard for their owners to survive and reproduce. There is no obvious advantage to shutting down if touched.

That's true but it's not that simple, genes have all kinds of side effects. She's not a genecrafter but she'd guess that it's a side effect of the regular territoriality, which keeps them from causing problems for each other.

How does that advantage the possessor of the gene, instead of just advantaging their neighbors?

...well in normal circumstances if you wander blithely into someone's territory they'll probably kill you.

A genetic trait allowing an individual to choose the time and place of conflicts and granting them resistance to touch-induced cataonia seems like it would be pure advantage even if they still had to be circumspect.

Getting into a conflict at all is a bad idea compared to going and doing your own thing, in any normal circumstance, and the problem with being touched almost never comes up.

Amentan geneticists have discovered resistances to even very rare diseases in their gene pool, but if Lone Sassafrass doesn't know why they're like this that's fine. Sun has been asked to inquire after the possibility of trade in general?

She assumes they won't have much use for most miniatures, and she's not running enough of a surplus right now to trade away anything significantly bigger, but did they have something in mind?

Well, they have transmutation magic and there are raw materials Amentans would want, and things Amentans would want to have transmuted by way of disposal, and Amentans will also trade for land from anyone who's up for working that out nonviolently, and they could get technology and whatnot from Amentans. Amentans use "money" which is basically a number to smooth out trade; if you have land and want a phone and the person with phones doesn't want land, you make the trades with money.

Transmuting material for them probably won't work at the currently available scale, but if and when people start moving back in they might, and she can designate a spot near her territory for them to dump things for her to use as feedstock if they'd like. Trading for land only sort of makes sense as a concept and she doesn't expect anyone to go for it. She'd need to know more about their technology to know if they have anything she'd want.

Sun can explain some things her pocket everything can do.

Some of them are interesting - the calculator, definitely, and the camera once she feels more comfortable leaving her territory, and she doesn't have much use for the map or communication features right now but if other members of her species move back in and have them too they'd be handy. Can Sun give some examples of things she'd expect her people to be willing to take in trade for one of those?

A pocket everything retails for about 200 tap these days, which can be earned with a few hours of unskilled labor and probably even less of Lone Sassafrass's magical labor though there will be overhead in figuring out what she can trade to get it.

She'd be interested in that, yeah.

Also Sun can pay her for her anthropological cooperation, there's some funding for that if she wants to keep meeting!