"Seeds grow kinds of plants. Anyone can put a seed in the dirt if they have one. And you can’t make a machine to find out if they’re low on a mineral, or make seeds better, because you were born wrong. Do I understand?"

"Yeah."

"And 'wizards' isn’t the word that means everyone that isn’t like you?"

"Oh - no, that's castes. We have castes."

"...Say more about castes?"

"Uh, there's blues, they're in charge, and greens, they invent stuff and write music and books and things, and oranges are doctors and teachers and nurses, and yellows do computer stuff and office work, and greys are cops and soldiers, and purples do most everything else like farming or building houses or whatever. And I'm red."

"Say more about computer stuff? I think we might not have computer stuff."

"Oh, uh." She has her pocket everything and can pull that out. "Like this is a little computer, it can play movies - that you can pause - except I don't have signal here so it'd just be ones I have downloaded - same with music - and it can like do math and stuff - I guess maybe you don't have a way to charge it unless you have electricity wizards."

"Maybe we can. I can’t but maybe another kind. ...It’s not magic at all. Like your hair."

"Why would my hair be magic??"

"You look like a - my kind of person? Sometimes we have pink hair because it’s beautiful but it can’t grow that way."

"...well, I'm glad you like it but it's natural. Amentans don't have black hair like you."

"I'm fascinated by Amenta and I want to know more. I can keep talking to you. I can tell you the rules here. I can give you my food - I don't know if it's your food, I don't really understand your..." Dareni puts a hand to her own stomach. "I can see it but it's really complicated. I can help you sleep in a good place. But, uh - do you want that? I give you those things and you tell me about Amenta?"

"Uh, that... sounds good, if that's what you wanna do... um...

...hey, I need the bathroom."

"Oh. You can use ours. Uh, you didn’t want to touch our things, right? I can’t make you walk on air, I'm a different kind of wizard..."

"At home usually people don't want me to touch their things. But if it's okay with you I can use yours."

"...Why?"

"'Cause I'm red."

"I don’t think I... I understand your words but I think I don’t understand? I guess - not being a wizard could make me feel like you’re saying you make people feel? I think? But if they’re not wizards either then why do they feel like that? I think maybe I need more than one word."

"Reds're, uh, untouchable."

"That is the only part I understand. Why?"

"'cause we do gross jobs."

Dareni contemplates this for a while and then says, "Oh, there are no wizards on Amenta. Wizards just kill the gross here - it's very, very, very small animals. Maybe we can't even - uh - have anything bad happen because of Amentan gross things? We can't even all have the same bad things as each other. And, um - because we can't have all the same bad things - something that isn't bad for Amentans might be worse for us than anything that is bad for Amentans. And anyway the gross small animals also go in the air."

"Oh, we know it's very small creatures - they're not animals, or, uh, most of them aren't, they're a different kind of thing, but we know about those. But yeah it seems like possibly you can't catch our diseases or that you can and they're awful. I'm not sick but if you wanna quarantine me that'd be reasonable."

"If I get sick I'll hire a wizard doctor. If you get sick and you're being entertaining maybe I'll hire a wizard doctor but the doctors here don't understand aliens."