It says that Tish Ahtemik is calling her and has marked this URGENT.

Does this green button work to answer the call?

It does!

"Meelia?"

"Tish!" 

"Are you in a red district? We heard from some people you'd wandered into one before but we were expecting you to come home after you'd gotten clean and now it looks like you're back in it? Did you drop something?"

"I'm exploring. And trying to find out why the person who made me take the Too Long shower was being mean to people here. They also seem scared of me and I don't know how to fix that."

"Oh, honey, this is complicated. We can talk about it when you're home but I'm afraid you're going to have to take another long shower again to get out of there without breaking the law. I can stay up late if you want to talk about it as soon as possible, I can even come get you at the exit when you're done cleaning up, but it's not a good place to go exploring."

"Last time I look a long shower it hurt Cheep a bunch!"

She also is suspicious about the idea that somewhere is not a good place to explore. 'less it's someone's private place but she doesn't think this is.

"Oh no, does soap hurt him? Is he with you again this time?"

"He's here! I didn't use soap on him cause he's a mouse monster and doesn't shower so I just put him with my pocket everything and he got really really hurt."

"- oh no, that must have been terrifying for both of you! Pocket everythings break if they get wet so they have to do other things to make them clean. This time you should keep him with you and just try to wash him, okay? He has to get clean but he's not a pocket everything at all."

"... The shower is really really long. And seems silly! I'm not even dirty."

"The place you are is really dirty! It might be that if you just walked there, and didn't touch anything you found, that only your shoes are dirty, but we can't be sure, and the law is about making it so everyone can be really, really sure. "

"It doesn't look dirty at all. Are you sure it didn't just used to be dirty and then it rained a bunch or something?"

"Even if some things in there aren't dirty, it's a place where we can't be sure, and we have to be able to be sure. This is really important to do the way everyone expects even if you have a really good reason to think your situation is special, I'm sorry the shower's so long but hopefully you won't ever have to do it again after you get out of there. Do you want me to - come in and help you and Cheep with it?"

"No I don't think another person should have to do the long shower...."

"I am still confused about why I have to do the long shower and it's really not fun but I'll do it and talk to you about it afterwards but it's important to me that you 'splain things to me, okay?"

"It's getting late but if you go through and get all cleaned up right now and take the jitney I'll send you straight home I will stay up long enough to talk about it tonight. Okay?"

"Hrm. Okay."

Meelia goes with Cheep to do that.

It takes so so long but at least she has Cheep for company and she is super annoyed cause she isn't even dirty and and it's soooo long. She runs out of gymnastics she can do without hurting herself for a while and considers doing more dangerous ones but decides she might need to be ready to do them soon afterwards.

When she's out there's a jitney waiting for her and the driver to see that she and Cheep board it as expected and drive them through the darkness back to the farm. Haemi's asleep, but Tish is up waiting; she's got the TV on an action movie to keep herself awake, though she's yawning. She gathers Meelia up in a hug when the driver drops her off.

Meelia hugs back a little, but not as much as she wants to cause she's confused and worried about Tish being wrong about important things.

Tish plops the both of them down on the sofa and turns off the TV. "Okay. You have questions?"

"Yes."

She figured out what to ask while she was in the second really long shower. 

"I have a lot of questions, I can ask them one at a time I guess."

"Why were the people with red hair scared of me?"

"They didn't want anyone to think they were breaking the law, or trying to get you to break the law, or letting each other get away with breaking the law."

"Why not? Also why would they be breaking the law?"

She sorta assumed people wouldn't be scared of breaking laws they didn't want to break, cause then why would the things be laws.