"Oooooh, can I try?"

"I think she's in the middle of something but we can get you some knitting things to try when we're home!"

"I can ask the staff to pick some up now and they might beat us to the house."

"Oh, good idea, love."

Meelia claps her hands together excitedly. 

"This is gonna be so much fun!"

"Oh good! We're really excited to show you lots of stuff like that!"

Meelia wiggles happily and swings her feet as the train continues zooooooming along.

Eventually they reach a local station where they take a bus the rest of the way because these people really live out in the sticks, but it's a short smooth bus ride and then here they are at their farm! There are purples in the fields, very brown, who wave hello before going back to their work, and a lovely manor in the middle of everything.

She waves hello back!

"Who were those people? Is this where they live?"

"Some of them have houses near here, some of them travel here from houses farther away! They work on the farm."

"Oh, that sounds fun. Do you work on the farm too?"

"Sort of. It's our farm, but we don't do much with the plants most of the time - we do things like talking to people who want to take kids on field trips here, and managing all the people who do stuff with the plants and the fences and the machines and the markets for the crops, and buying more farms or selling bits of ours when we think that's a good idea. We do pick fruit when it's in season, though. Nothing's as delicious as a peach you got off the tree zero seconds ago, mm-mm," says Tish.

"Oh yeah those are really good! I don't usually have peaches another way, how do you do that? Oh also how do you manage all the people and what sort of machines they use and sorry for having so many questions but there are so many new things and it's really good!"

"Oh, we sell some of the peaches, and they get shipped to towns and cities farther away from here so people there can have peaches too! They just get a little less tasty. And some of it is turned into other foods, like jam, which is good for seasons if you don't open it but not the same as a fresh peach."

"It's good to have questions! We wanted to have you come stay with us because we were excited to answer all those questions."

"Do you want to come with me into our office and watch me work? I'm not sure it'll be very interesting but maybe it will be since so much of it will be new to you."

"That sounds fun! I've never seen peach managing before."

"Did you learn to read Tapap or just speak it?" asks Tish, leading her to an office inside their house. The house is very pretty and spacious.

"I can read, though it's sorta hard."

"Let me know if I'm going through emails too fast and you want me to slow down or read them to you, then." And will Meelia sit on Tish's knee while she answers emails signing off on trying a new pesticide in a particular subsection of an orchard, and chooses a name for a new cultivar of grape, and looks over the bank statement for the month, and agrees to let a wedding take place among the plums?

Meelia sounds out some words aloud - enough to get the subjects but not to under-stand much. 

"What's a pest-ic-ide?"

"What name are you gonna choose?"

"Who's having a wedding. Also what's a wedding?"

"Pesticides are things that bugs and other stuff that are bad for plants don't like, so they'll stay away. We have to test new ones to make sure they're not bad for the plants, too, or for anything that's good for them, like pollinators, or for us, like if they made the food taste bad."

"I think I'll go with 'splendiferous'."

"Looks like Shian Safikt and Osas Teft are having this wedding, and a wedding is when people have a party to celebrate that they're getting married, like me and Haemi are."

Meelia cracks up at splen-dif-erous. It's really funny.

"Why'd you celebrate it? Also why'd they need to ask you to have it?"

"Weddings are celebrated because they're happy occasions! They'll invite their family and friends to congratulate them on finding who they want to spend their life with. They're asking because they want to do it on my land, and they can't come on my land without my permission, especially not with a great big party full of people."

"Oh, I don't think most amaliens would have lots of people in their private places that they have to be alone in. I might try it once I guess to see how fun it was."

"We have more and less private places. The farm isn't very private, but it belongs to us so we need to give permission before someone can throw a whole party here - if nothing else they wouldn't want to try to have their party at the same place and same time as other people they didn't know so they want to make sure they've picked a good day for that. The house is more private, we wouldn't let strangers have a party here at all! And our bedroom is more private than that, even if someone is here to visit us at our house they usually won't go into the bedroom, but we share it with each other and the staff do clean it."

"Why are the staff different than people?"

"The staff are people! But we don't want to clean our own rooms and that means we have to let the cleaners in there."

"Oh, why don't you clean your own rooms? I think I'd clean my own private space if I had to to make it so someone else didn't have to go in."