"I can do better than that!" She pulls out her pocket everything and pulls up a picture of Shapto as seen from the air.

Jisa is captivated! 

“What does that building look like inside? Are there windows even at the very top? That’d be so high up. If someone lives in the very top do they have to climb up allllll the stairs to get to their room?”

"That building looks like - oh, that's the museum, there's lots of pictures of inside -" she navigates to some. "They don't have to climb stairs, we have tiny rooms that can go up and down by themselves and you just go into one of those and it'll bring you to your floor. There are windows all the way up!"

Jisa looks so intently at all the pictures! 

"...What's a museum for, anyway?" 

"Museums are for looking at and learning about things! This one is a natural history museum, so it has fossils, and neat rocks, and models of how our planet looked millions of years ago, and things like that."

"Ooh. What's a fossil?" 

"A fossil is a very old rock that has the shape of an old animal or plant or something in it! They can teach us about how life was long ago." Here are some pictures of fossils.

Jisa is so enthralled by this! And by the neat rocks! That one is so pretty and she wishes she had one like it!

"They sell them in gift shops at museums but we didn't bring any along!"

"Aww. ...Can I go visit your world someday please please please so I can see the museum and I can get one of the nice rocks?" 

"You'd need your parents' permission, but it would be fine with us! We'd like to have human visitors on Amenta."

“Have you had visitors from other planets you found before?”

"Nope! This is the very first one we've found with anybody on it we could talk to! The others are all just rocks, or have algae-ish stuff but nothing else."

“Huh! What’s ‘algae’?”

"It's a simple plant that grows in ponds and seas and things. You might have seen some here, I'm told there is some on the planet."

“Ooh! - Can you tell my mama that I should be allowed to swim in the fishpond so I can find algae? She says I’m not allowed to.”

"It's probably not very clean in there, I can see why she wouldn't want you swimming in it! When we want to swim we do it in special pools that don't have anything growing in them. Scientists studying algae keep it in tanks."

“Aww, and then they’re not even allowed to swim in their special pool? That’s no fun!”

"They probably sometimes swim to collect it!"

Nod. 

"- Do they have other tanks with other things that they study in them?" 

"Sure! Different scientists study different things, and some of those things live in tanks. Fish and plants and snails and stuff like that."

"What sort of plants? Did you know, my Uncle Van says that in k'Treva Vale they have flowers the size of BABIES?" 

"There are some flowers that big on Amenta too! I think those wouldn't live in tanks though."

"What if you made a reaaaaaallly big tank? Like as big as a whole town? That's sort of what–" 

The Amentans do not get to find what is sort of that, because this is the point at which a local woman, prowling the garden path, sees Jisa and runs toward them. 

     "Jisa! I've been looking for you everywhere!" 

Jisa squirms. "I'm just playing with the aliens, Beri." 

     "Yes, well, your mama's worried! You'd best come back now." 

"Awww." But she wriggles to be put down. 

"- I thought your mother was in space?" says Kesha, setting her down.