Awww. Ispalt has always been able to hear so it's not quite as exciting as being able to see but it's certainly a rich and interesting medium.

< - We probably shouldn't get swept into this for another ten hours; what would you like to do today?>

<Have to be ready for maybe being called in for a meeting to discuss my career. We could try writing English lyrics, have something to show off.>

<Ooh, okay - maybe we should just start by making a list of rhymes, first; that's what I did for this - well, you already know, don't you.>  This one competition where everyone got access to a brand-new conlang and then had four hours to write a song in it.  She didn't place but she rewrote the lyrics in Cretari with help from a few friends and that version's a few people's favorite song, or at least was a decade ago.

<Sure, though there might already be something like that since English isn't a conlang.> She googles "list of rhymes".

rhymezone.com: further proof that local humans are pretty amazing!

<What should it be about?>

<I'm imagining that we may wind up as the public face of our community organization thing The Sharing. They do stuff like pick up litter and supervise kids and have cookouts and stuff. So something in that general vein would be most on the nose.>

<Aww!>  - Actually she knows like a dozen songs about Creta that are kinda the vibe which they could probably plagiarize / translate / draw inspiration from.

<Ooh, yeah, that one.>

Colley types up a rough translation and then starts looking for words to replace with rhymes.  Scansion can come later unless anything good strikes either of them - oh, if she flips the structure around here that lends itself to a really nice parallel that wasn't there before; possibly she should tweak the original to match, not that anyone's going to - nope!  No worrying about that right now, she's busy.

And after a few hours of such busyness they have a basically workable song.

In the meantime an email has arrived telling Ispalt to get a cab to such and such a location for a meeting.

Ispalt is nervous about this and tries turning over the autonomics to Colley about it.

It helps; Colley's not very nervous about the meeting.  She's a little worried about Ispalt now though!  <What's the matter?>

<It'll probably be fine but my boss is kind of a hardass! So I'm scared he'll be like 'no do something that sucks instead' and then you'll be sad and bored all the time.>

<Aw, well if it's too bad there's always Plan B: vivisection, right?>

- What a stupid joke to have made on so many levels.  She'd been so successfully not thinking about that, and not thinking about thinking about that, and ( - can she keep just running the 'concerned friend' version of herself or is it time to go off the deep end of obvious implications - no, she's a friend and she's concerned; that's her) that was probably an insensitive joke to make because - because nothing, it just probably was.

<For you. I doubt I'd be extended the privilege.> Cab.

Okay yes because that.

<Are we really allies or just friends,> is the first thing she asks, the first thing she wonders.

<Man, I don't know, it kind of depends? My boss is one thing but my boss's boss is fucking terrifying.>

< - Is there a way to not go straight to this meeting without raising suspicion?>  There are the obvious implications but she knows very few actual details.

<Ways and ways but none of them are literally zero risk. I'm not, like, important. Yeerks are cheap. Hundreds to a litter. Grow up in a few months. Hosts can be hot-swapped. It's not a big deal if they execute somebody for transposing a couple digits in the address they gave the cabbie.>

<. . . How old are you?>

<Four.>

Nooooo babyyy - there's no time for that.  Also the years are longer here but fuck, most humans still aren't even people at that age - there's still no time for that.

She stops bothering to direct anything at Ispalt in favor of flicking through ideas as fast as she can - what if they just dont go back there at all; she can change her face; they havent even heard her singing voice so no worries there, right - what was that thing Ispalt said before about needing to do something every three days?

<I have to go in a pool which is getting a specific kind of radiation. On our planet the sun does it. This sun doesn't so we have artificial mini ones and that means the Empire's controlling all of them individually. Else I starve.>

Oh, fabulous - Colley doesn't have to eat they're just doing that for fun, surely Ispalt also - can she get it off Colley or does it have to be other Yeerks -

<I don't actually have that power. I'm just using yours and then knowing what you know that way out of your brain Yeerk-style. I can feed you that way, but not me.>