"- well, we take care of children; they don't know how to look after their own needs, especially indirect ones like money and a good reputation, so adults taking care of them provide for what they need and impose limits to make sure they aren't too destructive to themselves or others while they're learning. And we teach them, by example and explicitly and by sending them to school when they're ready for a classroom environment. Part of how evolution makes this an appealing job is by making children look really cute to adults, especially in their most needy stages of life, but also anyone who manages to get a child credit in the first place is going to understand that this is a major privilege and undertaking and would take it pretty seriously even if they were, say, blind, and couldn't see how cute their baby was."

"Was amaliens being cute in the same way a fac-tor in why you wanted to foster me?"

"Yes - it wasn't decisive but it made it more appealing."

"Would things've been different if I looked like an Amentan grown-up instead?"

"It might depend if you also acted more like one."

Ramona's been sitting back, watching this exchange. When clients really start to talk to each other, it's best to melt into the furniture so they can just get on with it.

But the last thing Tish said -- well, it didn't break any rules, but it's ambiguous. It could be a really neutral, even-handed thing to say -- or it could be a dig.

Ramona's not going to confront Tish head-on about it, in case she's wrong that it was a dig, but she is going to redirect.

"Can you do the thought experiment, Tish? Not about Meelia specifically, go back in time to before Meelia arrived and you were thinking about hosting." Ramona swaps out the verb on purpose. "Would you still want to host if the amaliens looked like Amentan adults? Would you have provided different things? Expected different things? It can't really hinge on your guest's behavior at that point, because it's before she arrives."

"We were operating based on reports and recordings of amaliens as a class, if not Meelia in specific."

Ramona's not sure if Tish didn't get the question, or if she just doesn't want to answer it, but she mostly suspects Tish of not liking where Ramona's going with this line of questioning. Tish is presumably smart and has figured out some of what Ramona is up to.

Ramona doesn't have a strong opinion yet of what led to Meelia's assault on the guard. It could have been any combination of ignorance of Amentan frailty, different value systems, urgency either real or imagined, actual recklessness and impulsivity, or even actual malice. Ramona hasn't even heard a clear story, start to finish, yet, so it's far too soon for her to have a solid theory.

But she thinks it is also too soon for the Amentans to have a solid theory, given how little of Meelia they actually know!

They would probably not put it in such stark terms, at least not out loud, but a bunch of the Amentan narrative seems to be roughly, 'Meelia was a little girl who did a stupid thing out of childishness and impulsivity.'

And that might even be true, or at least partly true. But it's going to be hard for the Amentans to listen with open minds and hear what Meelia is telling them, if they've already got that story lodged firmly in place. So Ramona's trying to jar it loose a bit.

The thing is, she can't confront the story head on, not twenty minutes into a first session. She has very little rapport with these clients yet. If she just tells them directly to let go of their judgment and listen, it will probably backfire. She'll have to come at it from a different angle.

"I see, so there wasn't really a time when you were thinking about the amaliens separate from their appearance, you formed the whole package opinion from the start. So it's kind of hard now to do the hypothetical and imagine hosting someone who looked like an adult. That makes sense."

She gives Tish a little opening in case there's something she wants to interject in response to that --

"Right. I think possibly the government would have been looking for different things for a different sort of alien. It mattered that we live on a farm, for instance; it'd be harder to keep prying eyes eager to get up close to a real alien away from a townhouse. If they'd expected Meelia to have the context to make media relations decisions for herself or to have so much as been in a city with more than a few thousand people in it, they might have left that criterion open, as an example. I think an adult-presenting alien might have had more of an itinerary than a host family; they'd maybe be staying in hotels, taking meetings, attending specific events, presumed to be able to manage their own hygeine. Not going to someone's home and being introduced to the concept of trampolines."

Ramona stops and thinks a moment. This is a very helpful, cooperative answer, actually! She needs to send some reward signal to Tish, and then get back out of the way so Tish and Meelia can go back to their exchange.

"Oh wow, that's fascinating, thank you! That is a really different setup. I can't help thinking that Meelia got a good deal there, regardless -- I know that when I visit a new world, I prefer to be out of the limelight and free to explore!"

"I am curious about your reaction to this information, Meelia! Were you or any other amaliens involved in the decision about what kind of visit you would have to Amenta?"

"Not really? Um, some of the assum-ptions feel weird and like... I could have been asked? Like I don't think I really want to do meetings, though some amaliens definitely would, and I don't under-stand the media re-lations bit but I think that's cause we don't have the same sorts of media - thoughts lots of amaliens still hear about me 'cause of stories and things. I dunno - I guess I could have asked more about what op-tions there were but I amn't the sort of amalien who does that."

"I do think that staying in a house and trying a trampoline was a better fit for me than having lots of schedules and meetings would have been."

"Sounds like the placement mostly worked out for you, though it would have been nice to be involved in the decision. That's fair!"

"Do you have more questions for Tish and Haemi right now, about how they were approaching the whole thing, before you even got there?"

"I can't think of any right now?"

"How about you, Haemi and Tish? Especially Haemi, as I was talking mostly to Tish for this last bit. Is there anything about the time before Meelia arrived that you want to explain better, or ask Meelia about if you don't understand her perspective?"

"I find myself wondering about what Meelia means when she says 'adventure'. It looks from here like this is very important to her and may have been - motivating."

"I think an adventure is when you seek out hard important things that are new? Like um, things that aren't getting paid enough attention already."

"Why did you think coming to Amenta would be an adventure, then, before you'd done it?"

"A bit because being an amalien who could tell other amaliens about it was an important new thing, and a bit cause I didn't know whether their were hard things there that needed doing that weren't getting done."

"There are billions of people there. I know you found something you thought of as very important but I don't understand why you expected it."

"Hm, I think sometimes a new person can see things that other people who have been around a thing might have trouble seeing. Like you said about expecting me to be someone staying with you to get out of my bubble - just the other way around."

Tish sighs and looks away, falling silent.

"Tish, would you be able to summarize Meelia's point? It's okay if you don't agree with it, I just want to see if you can say it back in your own words. Or if you don't understand it yet, then you can ask a question that will help you understand."

"She thought an outsider's perspective on Amenta might reveal problems of the sort she enjoys tackling."