Ramona needs a second to retrace the entire stack of what they were doing before they got tangled up, and the clients might have lost track too, so she reviews her notes and organizes her thoughts.

Goals:
- Meelia: mutual understanding, share POV about Reds
- Haemi: mutual understanding, wants Meelia not to think they were wrong to be hurt
- Tish: mutual understanding, grief processing

Goal 1: Mutual understanding
- chronological storytelling plan: before Meelia arrives, while things are still good, when things go wrong
- so far: exchanged stories of the time before Meelia arrived, learned that the Amentans had a strong amaliens-as-children frame, while Meelia had a strong go-fix-stuff frame. Tish hoped for a 1-2 year stay.
- was in the middle of assessing the Amentans' take on Meelia's go-fix-stuff frame when a bunch of hostility spilled over and had to be contained, probably not worth going back for that sub-goal right now

There are various loose ends, like learning more about pollution and how Reds are treated, but Ramona mostly expects those things to come up in the course of the story.

"So far, we've talked about what happened before Meelia arrived, and we learned that you had pretty different frames for the purpose of the visit. Next, I'd like to talk about the period of time after Meelia arrived but before anything really serious went wrong. How long was that?"

Ramona is looking around to see who has an opinion about that.

"Very short. She spent the night in our house twice and the third night -" hand gesture.

"All right. Let's just talk about those first couple of days, then. Tish, would you like to go first this time? I'm interested in hearing your personal experience of those few days before anything went seriously wrong. Anything that you observed, thought, or felt is fair game. What happened? What were those days like for you?"

"We picked her up at the shuttleport. She did some cartwheels on the moving walkway... we asked if she wanted to see the city first or go home and she wanted - she said to go to home. She was cur- she expressed curiosity about somebody knitting on the train... we said we'd get her some knitting things, I don't think she ever wound up using them... she asked questions about our farm and we answered those. She watched me answer some emails. We showed her her room. She was pretty bouncy, I mentioned trampolines and she looked very keen so I ordered one. We'd already gotten her a pocket everything and I showed her that. Got her a bath, she said she preferred them to showers. She fell asleep afterward with a great big smile, I have pictures... in the morning by the time I got up she was on the new trampoline, she's very acrobatic. Then she wanted to explore the farm, I went with her, I remember I told her about what pollinates our peaches... her mouse ran off and she told me I didn't have to worry he'd get run over or anything. He found an earring for her and she wanted to get - she sounded interested in getting her ear pierced to wear it, so we went into town and did that... I had to explain about crossing the street, since she could sleep off any injuries she got but she'd have really scared someone if she ran into traffic... we talked about doing paintball since she likes running and dodging - since she presented herself as liking that. We wandered around the city for a while doing everything that caught her eye. As far as I know. There was a fountain she played in for a while, that was when Haemi met up with us. When we got home we tempted her into the bath with a bath bomb. And the next day she - started going into the red district."

"Wow, it sounds to me like you did everything you could to please and delight her. You paid attention to all of her cues and tried to set up a lot of lovely experiences for her. How did you feel about it?"

"It was idyllic," Tish sighs. "It was just what I'd wanted out of the whole thing, those first couple of days... showing her new things, and playing with her - she invited us to do gymnastics with her and came up with some introductory exercises that wouldn't hurt Haemi's ankles, and I love the - feeling of being pulled out of my routine to go play -"

"How about you, Haemi? Anything you want to add? Did you have a different experience or does Tish's description sum it up for you also?"

"I wasn't up for tromping around the city so I wasn't there for that part but yes, that's what happened, that's - what we'd wanted."

Ramona has mostly been asking Meelia first, whenever there's a question for everyone. The general heuristic in relational therapy is to go first to the weakest, quietest, most withdrawn, least bought in, most vulnerable, whoever it seems like might benefit most from first-mover advantage. Based on first impressions, Ramona thought that was Meelia.

But as they've gotten deeper into the session, she changed her mind, and asked the Amentans first. She correctly guessed that this part of the story would be pretty straightforward for them, but she kind of expects that Meelia's answer will be more complicated.

"Meelia, before I ask you about your first few days in Amenta, do you have any questions for Tish and Haemi about what that part was like for them? If it's all making sense you don't have to, but this is a good spot for it if you're curious about anything."

"I don't think I have any questions about it right now?"

"Fair enough! In that case, let's switch. Meelia, what would you like to tell us about your experience of those first few days? You don't need to do a play by play of the events, necessarily, unless you remember them quite differently from what Haemi and Tish described, but I would like to know how you thought and felt about it -- how did you experience your first few days on Amenta?"

 "I think I liked those first few days and they were fun though I wouldn't have wanted them to go on like that for a long time since they weren't... important?"

"Not important because... you hadn't found your adventure yet? Your problem that you wanted to solve?"

"Bas-ically? It wouldn't have to be one big adventure, just um, as it was I was just sorta doing every-day fun things that I liked and might do during periods in-between doing more mean-ingful things. Not to say that that stuff isn't meaningful too, just in a different way."

"What did you do to start to move in a direction that felt more important or meaningful? I'm guessing that whatever it was, that might also be the first thing that Haemi and Tish noticed as being 'off.'"

"When Cheep found a place he wanted to show me and it turned out to be a place with reds and someone was being hurt and I tried to help them."

"Oh Cheep is my pet mouse monster."

"Oh, interesting, I had guessed that it would be your idea, I didn't predict that you got the idea from someone else." Something else? Ramona's not sure of Cheep's sentience status so she'll round up, just in case.

"When that happened, did you have an opportunity to consult with your hosts about it?"

"They called me on the pocked everything* they gave me."

*roughly translates as "smart phone"

"I guess what I'm getting at here is that... at some point, you started to do things that surprised or maybe alarmed Tish and Haemi, and I'm interested to learn more about that decision point. I'm interested to know if you noticed it was a turning point, and how you reasoned about that?"

"I wasn't really thinking about them at the time? I was focused on figuring out what was going on with the reds and helping people."

"Got it, thank you. Okay, let's pause there to turn back to the Amentans and see if they have any questions about Meelia's experience of those first few days?"

"I would have been supportive of - most kinds of possible - charitable projects, or..." She trails off. "No questions."

Ramona smiles a little bit at that, internally, but externally keeps her composure. Tish is learning! This is great!

Now she has a choice to make. Someone is going to have to tell the story of the Terrible Events. If the Amentans go first, they're going to have an incredibly hard time separating facts from meaning-making about those facts. But if Meelia goes first, the Amentans might struggle to listen, stay open, be curious about what they're hearing.

Meelia going first is the better option, on balance, but Ramona will have to make sure the story comes out in digestible chunks, so they can stay regulated and interested while they hear it.

Ramona has another tactic that she uses when she's working with, say, couples who are trying to improve their relationship. She teaches them a lot more skills, so they can have successful conversations on their own without Ramona's support. Ramona is skipping all that with these clients, because they aren't trying to rebuild a functional family. It would be overkill for them. Ramona can just do the heavy lifting of regulating the pace and tone of the conversation -- if everyone comes out with a better understanding, it doesn't matter that they relied on Ramona to get there.

"All right, we're there. We're at the point of discussing the main events. I want to check in with you -- we've been meeting for over an hour, and you might be getting tired or want to take a break. This would be a pretty reasonable place to stop if you want to go back to your beds and your regular lives and regroup a bit and come back to discuss the rest in a subsequent session. Or, if you'd like to keep going, I do have room in my schedule for that. What do you think?"

She addresses the whole group.