Sun would like books about history, parenting, and crafting, and maybe some of the most popular fiction.

The main government building looks like this from the air.

She sketches the government building on a tablet of her own, and sets her book printer going with a collection of crafting books; she'll leave when it's done if that's all for today.

That's fine with Sun! She and the grey escort have their dinner.

One of the dogs follows them over to watch them eat.

Would the space dog like a bit of this egg thing?

He would totally like a bit of their space egg-thing.

Then he can have some! Hopefully he won't die!

Nom! Tailwag!

What a good dog. Weird none of the other animals around here have the territory thing like the people do.

In the morning the greys start packing up camp.

The dog is hesitant to leave when the rest of his group does, but comes along when the native insists.

She's back in the morning with another twenty crafting books - these come in both 'how to' and 'what you can ask of your specialist neighbor' varieties, and she's favored the latter for everything complicated - half a dozen books of childrearing advice, and fifteen old memoirs of peoples' lives and communities plus two tomes of compiled observations from memoirs in particular regions in particular times that attempt to find larger regional patterns in things like weather, animal species populations, and migration patterns among the local people.

The dog is doing well, she reports.

Sun is very glad of that. They'll be gone for two days and then come back! Maybe with more people along.

Her household will watch for them, and she expects to have the feedstock dump ready by then.

Sun goes home. Her husband's been feeding a crow and calling it Shadow. The baby loves Shadow.

Shadow (sure, why not; she even answers to it sometimes, when she's not too distracted and pretty sure that's what they're saying) likes Sun's husband, too, and the baby is great. Which, of course, they're a baby. It's very strange that the adults don't communicate normally with her - she's pretty sure at this point that they can't, none of her flock's other newcomers do either - but maybe the baby will figure it out if she talks to them enough, and anyway it's less weird for a baby not to. She tells them all kinds of stories and narrates her clowning and the husband's puttering around the house and the things they can see out the window, and generally has a very good time.

Sun introduces herself to Shadow in case that helps get her used to Sun being around and snuggles her baby VERY MUCH and lets her husband get some sleep.

After a nice long break at home she and her escort and a purple with a bagful of vehicle controls hike out. The greys drag some sacks of rocks.

Lone sassafras meets them a little farther from her territory this time, with half a dozen dogs, one of which is harnessed to a small walking shed.

The greys and purple unpack while Sun types out a cheery greeting.

Yes, hello.

The feedstock dump is ready; she'll bring out a utility vehicle tomorrow to haul the things they've brought her home. The crows tell her there's someone else who's theoretically interested in meeting them in the dogwood stand flock's range, but having problems keeping their household going so that it's not an option right now; she's waiting for more information. They've passed the message on to the next flock around the househive perimeter, too.

What kind of problems?

She's not entirely sure; it sounds like a feedstock shortage but could be something taking up all their time so they haven't been able to convert what they have - crows are not the best at identifying important details to share and she's not in direct contact with the crafter yet, they should get the network-connection she sent over in the next day or two.

Sun would like to be informed if there's anything the Amentans could do to help!

She'll pass along the offer.

Why don't the natives use stuff like trees and dirt as feedstock when they're running low?

They do convert trees, though that runs the risk of disrupting the local ecosystem if they do too much of it, so they're careful about it. They'll convert dirt in an emergency but it's hard to restore an area that's been converted like that and it's not a great material to work with, it's too grainy and heterogeneous. If the person the crows told her about is having a feedstock shortage, she expects them to still be fine personally, just not willing to damage their surroundings to run a surplus that'd let them leave home for a significant length of time.

Hm, if heterogeneous things are undesirable then they might not be as much of a miraculous solution to waste disposal as hoped.