They circle the planet and look at the architecture. They are somewhat disappointed.
"Maybe the aliens think they're pretty," someone says dubiously.
"No," someone else says. "Some things are universal."
"Maybe the aliens are all blind."
"That makes more sense."
"Well we have to pick somewhere."
This place has a lovely large statue-garden-monument thing that Elves would not go out of their way to avoid if it were in Tirion, though they'd probably walk through it quickly. They go for that one.
"Trespassing. Do you want to plead guilty or not?"
"Pollution violations."
"It is illegal under Calado law for an unclean person to leave a red district without standard precautions to reduce contact with their environment, to touch things outside a red district or leave unclean things outside a red district without marking them for a cleanup crew, or to arrange for someone else to do the same."
"Do you mean that you want to plead guilty?"
"Not guilty, or do you need more time to think?"
"If there are mitigating circumstances - leaving during an emergency, forgetting to mark something because you were in a hurry to get help, touching a child who ran up to you - that gets considered in sentencing."
"It was - nobody was around except those greys and some purples - they were - they called me over and I wouldn't go and they said they thought they'd seen my baby go under the fence but she didn't -"
"- we don't arrest people under three anyway -"
"Okay. So they asked you to leave your district, and said something that caused you to be afraid they'd harm your daughter, and you left the district?"
"It sounds to me like on all four charges you should have a lawyer to help assemble evidence for your side of the story."
"All right. I'll assign someone. He'll get in touch with you - in - twenty, thirty minutes."
Screen goes blank.
Her hands hurt. She doesn't play piano.
She emails the babysitter to ask if she got Katin and slumps on a cozy couch and waits.
Yellow calls half an hour later.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
