"The - gendered pronouns - do you want us to use those to refer to you?"

"- okay, so, let's have Toy-Mun bet, or not, and sex ourselves, and then I was going to try and figure out the convergent breasts mystery further but that's clearly just leading us into the weeds and anyway I was originally aiming at tigran psychology because that's vastly more important and, oh yeah, we're a psychevo cult, so we'll cover that next."

Murmers. Abashed assent.

Toy-Mun clicks her tongue.

- No, there's definitely no need for a change in pronouns… I am rather accustomed to pretending to be whichever sex fits the situation. Which my body thankfully allowed - if I were like this, - her finger caressed the C-cup girl picture, - it would be much more difficult. So use whatever's convenient - although, if you're interested, what you used before got translated as the male one. And… As you may have noticed, I don't share your proclivity for bets. I've stated what I thought, now just tell me where I was mistaken. Unless, of course, you are now uncomfortable sharing this information, which wouldn't even be strange if you outgrew such inequalities centuries ago and now see me speaking about them as something real.

Cough. "Well, you clocked me." Stupid smirk. "Girl." Bow. 

He's nursing a bruise about it, but only evidently so to co-cultists or skilled people-readers.

Snicker. "Shut up oh my sir. Boy."

"Male."

"Female." Not grimacing! He is not grimacing. This is like the doctor's office. That's what interviewing an alien is like.

"Female." Asic is second-tallest next to Pel, and not very distinct from him facial-bone-structure-wise either. 

"Right, so, tigrans! Can they generally integrate seamlessly into human institutions? How could you tell if someone was a tigran, if you just had an epistolary relationship with them and they were adopted by your relatives, say, as a baby? And somehow it'd never at all come up what they looked like.

Also feel free to ask your own questions anytime you want, we've been slacking on that."

Toy-Mun turns to Kwaiets and Asic. She might not be from a betting culture but focusing on mistakes is evidently still among her habits. Looking between Asic and Pel and not noticing any substantial differences, she sighs.

- Tell me if you want me to use "he" for all of you anyway… Tigrans tend to be violent and fanatical to their Blood Goddess - I wish I were making this up, they literally call her that, other peoples call the same goddess by name. But, I guess, if a tigran were adopted and raised in another culture, it wouldn't necessarily transfer. It's just… not a frequent situation. I am a vagrant, but most people stay with their races. Or go to the city of Brute, which is… a hellhole of its own. One interesting tidbit is that they never kiss each other - but that's probably because of how their faces are, well, cat-like and not quite suitable for that. This also explains why they always retain some accent in Common - but I guess it wouldn't show up in writing. Now… this does make me intrigued. Is adoption to a faraway land a common practice among you?

"- the mode around here definitely isn't to 'she' anybody, we don't have that any more than we have breasts.

Um, adoption - I think adoption from a faraway land is more common than adoption from a nearby land, modernly, just because it's not much inconvenience to transport a baby to you from the other side of the world, relative to how much the baby costs, and if you're a prospective adoptive parent you're definitely going to search the whole global market and probably your optimal baby-match is not going to come up anywhere very nearby."

<💭>Balls, tigrans are a distant outgroup to him, and he wouldn't know them from a dirty sock.   . .  Well, more fun for us, unraveling it all!</💭>

- Why? - Toy-Mun looks at Scoryu in clear surprise. - If they live close, it's more likely they share your other… proclivities and values, isn't it? Or is your world that… uniform? And wait, did you - did you - did you just say "the baby costs"? As in, you pay for adoption, not vice versa? Like… what?

"Transportation is cheap enough that people can just go where they're most needed. It's been that way for a couple hundred years, give or take, now. It makes the world more uniform than it was before that, yeah -"

"You get people paying for people to parent their child? Wouldn't that cost strictly more than just paying for ordinary part-time childcare themselves, or am I missing something?"

This seems to be the first time Toy-Mun is genuinely dumbfounded to the point of being unable to speak.

- Er… you… you adopt children of alive, functioning adults? Not orphans? - she breathes out, finally, with tone clearly to the tune of "do you also eat them for breakfast", although she doesn't say that latter part out loud.

Multiple people finally get it through their thick skulls that Toy-Mun is from the Horrible Flaming Past.

"It sucks that you've been mysteriously and in uncertain permanency torn from everything you've ever known, but I think you're going to like at least several things about the way modernity works. Such as that childcare is so cheap that with some frequency someone will have a baby and not hugely want it, and someone else will not have a baby but want one, and the second person will pay the first person to take their baby.

Or is 'childcare is so expensive that everyone has to do their own best to keep their children from dying, - which is a thing that happens - like it or not' not what you were talking about?"

Toy-Mun blinks. Then blinks again.

- What exactly do you mean by "which is a thing that happens - like it or not"? Is there some magical spell that prevents children from dying in your world? No, wait, I distinctly remember you saying you don't have magic. I can't say that what you describe could never happen, but most people would be very suspicious of intentions of the buyer. As in… preparing such bought children for brothels would be among the better plausible outcomes.

After a short pause, Toy-Mun deems it necessary to add:
- And "better" does not mean "good": I've seen the girls - it's mostly females - who work in brothels, it's not a good job.

"Why would training them to - farm, or make shoes, or something - be worse?"

(Scoryu, as unobtrusively as can be managed, offers odds on the hypothesis that it's because babies bought for farming or shoemaking training are bullied into keeping that same job for life. No takers - the Refutation agrees, it seems inevitable that Toy-Mun comes from a culture that's that worst kind of broken.)

Toy-Mun's gaze turns decidedly sad.

- You… have no idea what a brothel is, do you, Asic, - this doesn't even sound like a question. - I guess that's how it is really supposed to feel when you get in heaven…

A pause.

- Apprenticeship for farming or making shoes or other such craft would be a near-ideal result, but this is not what I meant. Remember, we've just discussed rape? What happens in brothels isn't normally considered rape because they are paid for it. Otherwise, it has all the hallmarks of it: you come, you mate in whatever way you want - normally disregarding the worker's desires, if this isn't obvious - and then you pay and leave. And it is more often than not a job chosen out of despair or because one was sent there without much choice. In theory, it is possible to earn enough and leave. In practice, most are stuck. I have had multiple occasions to think whether I would be better off there, at least fed and in warmth, even though my holes would become abused in ways I don't even imagine possible - and I have a good imagination and some pretty diverse mating experience for my age. I chose to remain a vagrant and often sleep near the road, hungry and cold. And I maintain it was a better choice.

Another pause.

- So yeah, now I see why you don't use the nouns. Some of you are female, in the sense of having the parts… some of them anyway, - Toy-Mun caresses the naked picture's breasts again, - but none of you are women. In a sense, even I don't qualify as one, because I managed to avoid all that and live as I please, more or less. But let's just say pretending to be male was beneficial somewhat more often than not. Although, I guess, being one of the few male workers of a brothel is even worse.

It's . . . good that he's not bent on seeing us as women like the meanest least charitable* stereotypes of ancient people would be? We reckon?

*read: factually accurate

The bet about farming/shoemaking defaults, having been premised on an error.