"They're aliens, they've got the element categories, they're not a caste - this is why we should have a single oversight board with laws consistent everywhere -"

"I suppose it'd be simplifying -"

"But agreed on how -"

"That I wholeheartedly agree should be started on now, long before it becomes a problem."

They get to work on that.

Shadows who are interested get a long list of candidate planets they can see through a sufficiently sophisticated telescope. Hopefully some won't require tons of terraforming.

The interested Shadows find it easiest to be looking straight at the thing they are looking at, with no reflection or any other intervening complications, which limits telescopic sophistication, but they can still check out most of the planets and take pictures and samples.

And are any of them interested in dropping off the supplies to set up an arcology, and a few dozen people who can set it up and start a colony project?

Sure.

"If there's ever a Shadow/Glass hybrid they wouldn't have that problem with the weird telescopes," one remarks.

"At the rate we're getting them I bet we'll have every kind of hybrid soon enough."

"Well, one who wanted to help."

"Might take a little longer, but - at this rate within ten years there'll be millions of them."

There are in fact all kinds of interesting hybrids popping up at a rate of about 5% of elementals. The wild elementals are mostly just staying wild, especially the ones who can hang out in the ocean or the sky.

One day a Wood/Earth wanders into a garden on somebody's estate to look at flowers.

The gardener is not sure if it is allowed to be there. "There are public gardens in the city, sir. Or ma'am."

"I'm a girl," says the Wood/Earth. She keeps looking at flowers. She has purple hair and a twiggy halo growing out all over her.

"There are public gardens. These are not public gardens."

"Okay."

"So you need to leave."

"...why?"

"Because this garden belongs to somebody and they don't allow trespassing."

"Why?"

"Because then everybody would come and some of them would trample the flowers or walk off the paths or just crowd the place and then she couldn't enjoy it. There are flowers that are for everyone to enjoy, in the botanical garden in the city, you can go there and look at all the flowers you want."

"Do they not have trampled flowers? I like not-trampled flowers."

"They set it up so it can handle higher traffic."

"I don't know if I like high traffic."

"Look, you just got to leave, I don't care if you check out the public gardens or not."