"The way you are describing your understanding of the consensus of Amentans is fine, thank you for distinguishing between your understanding and the facts! I appreciate that!"

Most people are not nearly so good at this to start with!

"I remember that when you introduced yourselves, you talked about having 'fostered' Meelia, which I took to mean that you saw yourselves as parents and her as your foster child. Did I understand that correctly? Was that the framing the Amentan government was using for it as well? I wonder why it was 'fostering' and not, say, 'hosting.'"

"We were aware from the - I was aware from the beginning and have been under the impression that Haemi was also aware, that they're not really children. But there's still the element of showing them new things, guiding them around, and it feels different with a little person of childlike demeanor than if we were just having over a more centrally adult houseguest. We bought her things and played with her and answered her questions and made sure that there food on the table for her and arranged that she wasn't alone in the house in a way we likely wouldn't have with an adult houseguest. The government did say 'fostering'."

"How many amaliens came to Amenta? If there were a lot, did they all come at the same time? Did you have the opportunity to compare notes with others who were fostering?"

"It was just the one. We did exchange some notes with some people who were working with amaliens in various capacities on their home planet. There was a marine biologist particularly enamored with a science-inclined amalien who she'd been introduced to... or so she represented herself to me."

"What were your personal hopes for Meelia's stay, Tish? How long did you hope she would stay, what did you hope would come of it, what did it mean to you?"

"I hoped... that she'd be with us for a season or two or even a couple years if she wanted, long enough to get a good look at an insider's perspective on Amenta or at least a reasonable slice of it. I hoped that when she decided she was done she'd be ready to tell the other amaliens what they needed to know about us from a position of fond remembrance. I wanted to - take lots of pictures of us together doing silly gymnastics poses together in the park and -" She dabs her eye on her sleeve. "Not like a daughter, but like - a niece of indeterminate age staying with us for a while to get out of her bubble?"

Meelia tears up a bit - even if she's confused by what Tish is saying it's still sad. She doesn't need to understand it to know that.

"That is a very big difference, Tish, between what you hoped for and what ended up happening. It makes sense that you're grieving the loss of your hopes."

Ramona lets the moment hang there for a few beats, not enough that everyone gets uncomfortable, just enough to give the sadness a little space.

And then she turns to Haemi.

"What about you, Haemi? Can you tell us about your impressions of the amaliens when you first heard about them?"

"Not very different from Tish's. I guess I was wondering what the catch would be. They're all so cute, though..."

"Yeah, you both keep emphasizing that. Can you say more about what makes them 'cute' to you?"

It's not like Ramona hasn't noticed that Meelia is cute - she looks a lot like an adorable human child - but how will Haemi put that in context?

"- you look a lot like an Amentan, but I guess maybe your children look different? Amaliens look like Amentan children except with different teeth and hair colors."

"So they just kind of pull out -- maternal, or parental feelings in you, because of how they look?"

"I wonder, as you've gained in direct experience, do you still think of amaliens as child-like? What still seems that way to you, and what seems different, based on your observations?"

"They are not children. There are some things they have in common with children that they don't have with adults, and those things are very - emotionally salient. But I always knew they weren't children. They're all thousands of times older than we are. There's - disfluencies in how they speak, a range of short attention spans, a certain - emotional rawness in the enthusiasm and upset they display... I would expect an amalien to have more fun in a toy store than in a bookstore."

"On my world and, it sounds like, on Amenta, we have babies who grow into children and then adults. Babies and children must be looked after by adults because they lack certain qualities they would need to take good care of themselves in the wider world -- so adults 'raise' children, until the children are themselves adults."

"Is it the same on Amenta? And what are the qualities that adults have that children lack, on Amenta?"

"That's right. I guess 'maturity' is not going to be specific enough? Impulse control. General knowledge and experience to evaluate plans and possible risks. Resilience, or maybe what I mean is more like responsibility - continuing to do what you have to do after a shock. Patience and diligence, which are related to earning power."

This is a fascinating answer! Ramona wonders if it's a particularly Blue answer, or if other Amentans would answer exactly the same way.

She also wants to check in with Meelia pretty soon, because she suspects a lot of this information may be new to Meelia? Or even if Meelia knew it, it might have been academic, and she might not have realized how these ideas would come into play in their little nascent family unit.

But she can't leave Haemi hanging there, she needs to tie that up before she turns back to Meelia.

"Thank you, that's really helpful, I'm starting to form a better picture of Amenta. One more thing before I turn back to Meelia," she says, to give everyone a heads up about how the conversation is going to flow.

"Thinking back to what you said about amaliens before, how they can get excited and playful, how they go from one thing to the next more quickly than you might -- that doesn't sound like it maps exactly to your notion of Amentan childhood, but there are some overlaps. Certainly Meelia would lack knowledge and experience about Amenta. So did that kind of cement the idea that you two were in loco parentis?"

How does this translation magic work anyway and will it handle Latin phrases? Only one way to find out.

"Yes, we were construing ourselves as responsible for her and making sure she knew what she needed to know to navigate Amenta."

"That makes perfect sense! Thank you."

And Ramona turns to Meelia, as promised.

"Meelia, was anything about what Tish and Haemi said new to you, or surprising, or confusing? Maybe you're starting to get a picture of how families work on Amenta, and how Haemi and Tish were thinking about you when you arrived?"

"A lot of it was new and sur-prising."

Meelia tries to put her thoughts in order.

"Amaliens don't have a con-cept of people being younger, only of animals being younger. I knew that Amentans grew like animals do but I didn't really think about how their minds might grow and also didn't think about how the ones who look like amaliens might act diff-erently from amaliens cause they're young."

"I think I'm much more confused about how Haemi and Tish were thinking of me when I arrived on Amenta than I was earlier? But this is cause I realized there are things I don't under-stand, like how Amentans treat children - since it sounds like it might be different from how they treat adults - and also whether Haemi and Tish were treating me that way."

"That makes a perfect segue! All of you want to understand each other better, that was the goal you all had in common. We can get a lot of that just from me asking questions while the others listen. But we can get even more if you ask each other questions directly."

"I have rules for this part too!"

"You can ask open-ended, curious questions, designed to help you understand someone else better. You may not ask questions that are arguments disguised as questions."

"So, for example, you can ask, 'what were you feeling when I stayed out late?' but you can't ask 'why did you have such a stupid rule about getting home by a certain time?'"

"Before we keep going, does anyone have any questions for me about how this part works?"

"Is the word 'stupid' the only problem in that example or is it invalid to be curious about why rules exist?"

"Good question! 'Stupid' is the main problem! The person asking that question probably doesn't actually want to know the answer, they are probably mostly trying to make a point!"

"So asking, 'I don't understand about curfews, could you help me understand the reasoning behind them?' would be a perfectly fine question."

Ramona waits to see if there are further questions.

Everyone's just looking at Ramona, waiting for her to go on, so she does. She looks back at Meelia.

"Okay, so, Meelia, you were just wondering a bunch of things about Tish and Haemi and Amentans in general, about how they were thinking of you, how they treat children, and so on. Is there anything you want to ask them directly, so that you can understand them better?"

Ramona is not actually worried that Meelia will ask the wrong shape of question, she's been great about that so far, but she reinforces the format anyway.

"Um, could you say things about how Amentans treat children as opposed to not-children and why?"