"We have people who talk to people who want help getting 'long or have problems or things. Not sure if what we have is the same as fam-ily therapy?"

"That sounds pretty close! And yeah, generally, we talk. We try to understand what each person wants. We try to come up with new ways of doing things differently and better. We find ways to soothe old emotional hurts and make them heal up better."

"Meelia, can you say anything about how old you are? It won't make any sense to me to tell me in years, because we're from different places. But maybe you can say how much being-a-kid you've already done, and how much being-a-kid there still is before you're all grown up."

Ramona is interested in whatever Meelia will say next, but she also just wants to get her to talk a little bit more about general, hopefully neutral topics before they start anything serious, to get a bead on how much abstract thought she's capable of, how oriented she is to her world, and so on.

"Dunno - at least a bunch of thousands of years I think."

"Amentan scientists think amaliens have probably been around for at least forty thousand years and probably more like three hundred thousand if not longer. They don't have particularly enhanced memories so they have no idea where they came from. They're immortal and don't age."

Oh! Well, that's a new one... but only sort of. Ramona can draw on her experience with families with various genetic conditions that prevent kids from fully maturing, though it probably won't apply wholesale. These parents probably didn't expect Meelia to mature, and aren't sad that she won't? Something to check on.

"All right, let's get started, then. Can someone tell me why you've come to therapy?"

"I think I hurt Tish and Haemi a bunch and I'm sad about that and I want to still be friends with them even if that's harder now? And also I think I want to better understand some things about them and also other Amentans."

Meelia takes a breath.

"And also I want to see them again, but I don't think I'm allowed to even ask to go back for a hundred and twenty years and I don't know if they'll still be 'round then."

"...we were assumed into a special-purpose dreamscape and invited to without much affordance to use the opportunity for anything else. But, yes, the terms on which Meelia left were very awkward, and visiting her home planet would be very fraught."

"Can you say more about how Meelia came to join your family in the first place, and why she was deported?"

"Our country discovered the amalien planet not too long ago. Meelia was interested in coming to Amenta and we applied to foster her - we live on a farm and our children and grandchildren are grown up, we have lots of spare time - and the government agreed we'd be a reasonable pick. We collected her from the shuttleport and brought her home and we were showing her things like, like - trampolines, and bath bombs and -

- and then she was arrested and deported for incitement to pollution hysteria and battery. The battery was against our night watchman Seso Poante, she knocked him unconscious and dislocated most of his joints."

"I didn't think it'd hurt him and I was trying to do something important," says Meelia very quietly, "Though I know that doesn't make hurting him okay."

"People usually have reasons for the things they do and I believe you had your reasons, Meelia. It can be especially hard to figure out the best way to get important things done when you're in a strange place with different rules and systems."

"What is incitement to pollution hysteria?"

"And what was the important thing you were trying to do?"

"Incitement to pollution hysteria is - a failure to verifiably follow procedures intended to keep pollution contained and tracked appropriately. Amaliens don't have the concept of pollution hardly at all but they also can't get sick, I don't know what your planet is like..."

"We definitely have pollution, and laws to try to keep it under control, but that's mostly not something regular people worry about, it's generally big corporations doing the polluting. And we can absolutely get sick, but it's more common to get sick from pathogens than from pollution."

She looks at Meelia to see if she should repeat the question.

(Something about that reply is really confusing to the Amentans but they wait patiently for the conversation to come back around to them.)

"Um."

She's not sure at all if Ramona is going to understand cause she looks sorta like an Amentan but maybe she'll be different and even if she doesn't understand at least Meelia can try to talk about it?

"I found some Amentans who had red hair and the other Amentans were being really mean to and I wanted to help them and Haemi and Tish and the other Amentans didn't seem to understand what was wrong and so I tried to go on an adventure to figure out what was happening and I think I mostly did and I think it was important but I also hurt people when I did that."

"Okay, so you were trying to protect some people who needed protecting, but it sounds like things got all mixed up, and then it got bad enough that you got kicked out. I'm sorry, that must have been hard for all of you."

"I am very sure I don't understand a lot of the details, we'll have to talk much more about it before I do, but there's something else we need to do first."

"Haemi asked before what kind of goals are even possible given that you don't live together anymore and we're just meeting in a dream. Let's try to figure that out."

"I'll start with Meelia. Meelia, I want you to play pretend with me for a second. Let's pretend that we've known each other for a long time already, because the four of us have been meeting for a while. And let's pretend that it worked out really well - that you're really glad you came to therapy, because something important got a lot better."

"Now you can tell me the rest of the story. What happened in that story that made you glad you came to therapy?"

This question is a total gamble. Can Meelia do hypotheticals? Can she identify outcomes that are realistic given the group's resources? Most human twelve-year-olds can answer a question like this with no problem, most human four-year-olds definitely cannot, and it varies a lot for the ones in between. If it's a flop, that's okay, Ramona will learn something different instead.

"Hm. I think I understand Haemi and Tish and think they understand me better and I think right now they sorta think I'm wrong about lots of things and I think they're wrong about lots of things and probably the truth is somewhere sorta in the middle? And I think if therapy went well than we'd prolly better understand each other and I would understand how to talk to them more."

"And also um. I think I'd like it if they also changed their mind about reds but that feels like the sorta thing that's too big and cul-tur-al to be changed in therapy unless it goes on for a really long time. And even then I don't want them to change their minds just cause it'd make me feel better. I guess if it turns out I'm wrong about reds I'd like to know that too but I really don't think I am and I've had a lot of experience being different amounts of sure and... I can 'member a couple of times I've been this sure and been wrong but way way more times I've been this sure and was right. But also I don't want to make them agree with me."

"I think I got part of that and missed part of that, which is normal in therapy! And in communication in general."

"The part I think I got is that you would like Haemi and Tish to understand you better. Right now, you think they think you're kind of mysterious, like why did you do the things you did, and really, everything made sense from your perspective. So you want them to get your perspective better so you'll make sense to them. Is that right? And you also suspect maybe you don't totally understand them."

"The part I didn't understand is when you said you want them to change their mind about reds. What are reds? Are those people with red hair, the ones that other Amentans were being mean to?"

Ramona's still looking at Meelia, but she wonders if the Amentans will jump in.

Tish is rubbing a tear away from one eye.

"Reds are the Amentans with red hair. Tish told me they're poll-uted and I'm still not really sure what that means. But um. The first time I met an Amentan with red hair another Amentan broke one of their feet and then wouldn't let me help them and all the reds seemed scared of the other Amentan. And then later a bunch of bad things happened to the reds and um. The other Amentans didn't seem to care or try to make things better. Um."

Meelia glances awk-wardly at Tish.

"I tried to talk with Tish 'bout it but it was like she didn't think of bad things happening to reds as sad and important? Other Amentans seemed like that too - like they were afraid of how the reds were poll-uted and trying to avoid the pollution and then also didn't think it was bad when bad things happened to reds cause of this?"

For some reason she wants to apologize to Tish right now but she doesn't think she actually should.

"Thank you, Meelia! That helps quite a bit but I notice I am still very confused!"

"I should explain that one of the hazards of going to an interdimensional therapist is that often we don't know anything about your native culture and biology and so on and we have to ask you a lot of questions before we understand. If you have only been to therapists from your native culture before, this may seem like an annoying waste of time! On my own planet, it is considered very rude for a therapist to ask a client to educate them about background cultural matters - the standard is for the therapist to do that research on their own time, or only to work with people whose cultures are already very familiar."

"In interdimensional therapy, it's impossible for the therapist to 'do their homework' because there are too many dimensions, too many worlds, and no reference materials at all. We have no choice but to ask our clients to explain and to spend a bunch of time on that."

"In this case, I think it will be especially helpful because you're from different cultures yourselves! Meelia is ahead of me in understanding Amenta, and Tish and Haemi are ahead of me in understanding amaliens, but I bet there are still some important aspects you're each missing about the other culture. So having to patiently explain to me is actually part of the therapy. If you think I'm obsessing about some part of your culture that's not relevant, feel free to say so!"

I won't necessarily agree, Ramona doesn't say.

"Anyway, with all that in mind - Tish, Haemi, could you please help me understand your culture's attitude towards people with red hair?"

Ramona knows a ginger on Earth who would be utterly unsurprised by anti-red-hair-discrimination; he says that most women on dating sites filter out red-headed men. Ramona has no idea if that's true.

"It's not about them having red hair, specifically. Occasionally there's a throwback with another color and they have to dye it, or at least so I've heard. It's a caste marker. Reds are the caste devoted to handling polluted material - not fumes and things like it sounded you meant, but, uh." She closes her eyes and sighs. "I suppose it's inextricably relevant. Corpses, biological wastes. They also collect garbage though by default nothing technically polluted accumulates there. I tried - very hard - to explain to Meelia - but by the time she got home I was already up waiting for her hours past my bedtime. I thought - that after a brief summary we'd go to bed, and - talk more in the morning -"

Haemi pats her arm.