"Yeah, I don't know that the reds would trade you. No internet."

"The internet is great. We have books but not very many and - I'm new at Anitami but I think people here are just better at writing -"

"I think there are inventions in storytelling like in any other field. TV dramas from fifty years ago are awfully badly shot and tedious compared to modern ones. And our best greens are really something, in every field."

"And you have so many people that even if you only look at greens you'd have more people than a few dozen countries in my world to go through!"

"One thing we are not short on is people! You met my cousins, right?"

"I'm not clear on how everyone is related except that Kefin is Afen's son."

"So is Aitim but he doesn't remind people of it because technically that ought to make him green. Aitim is also dating my brother. Separately they are our cousins."

Vocabulary check on 'brother'. "...huh. I don't actually know if humans do that amongst themselves... elementals do in the wild and humans will if they have elementals, sometimes."

"Will they. Charming. If we had slavery I expect gay people might get that on the side and marry for children, plenty of them do anyway."

Maurabel adds 'gay' to her dictionary! "The school elementals talked to me. Penumbra took longer than most of them, she's shy."

"Oh, I'm not surprised at all, just." She makes a face.

Nod.

"Aitim said it's all really really secret - moreso than everything to do with alien stuff, I mean - but there's a tentative plan."

"Penumbra is stolen. I can steal more, if I can be sufficiently surprising."

"Well. We spend a big chunk of our unimaginable wealth on creative ways to do violence, you landed in the right place."

"It would have been nice if you had invented a way to stop that instead but less useful for this."

"Yeah."

"I'd rather not kill anybody over it but the humans will die eventually anyway and if I don't figure something out the elementals will be like this forever."

"Yeah. First thing they taught you in school is that you're not ready to order military operations if you're only okay with them given that no one dies. But also, you can and should work really hard to make sure no one dies."

"My school is not like that. I am not sure there are human schools like that."

"There are a lot of things wrong with the way we raise blues but we sure do teach them young the things we think they need to know to run a country."

"I think kings' children -" Dictionary - "princes and princesses have tutors, not whole schools."

"There are three million Anitami blues. Not all of 'em on a politics track, of course, but - a schoolful."

"So, so many people - and more as soon as you have planets, wow -"

"It must be so overwhelming. You're taking it really well."