"...Uh, shapeshifting? What are you talking about?"

"I am not a fool, youngling. Your body is obviously superhuman, with the strength of those leaps and the damage to the foliage... You do not bear the telltale signs of being a biological experiment. Tragic, ugly things. Thus, you are Lilithian."

His enthusiasm and wonder has well taken over his fear by now.

"Um, yeah, okay, you got me." He twirls a bit. "Come on guys, he's friendly!"

Far too suddenly to be anything other than unsettling, Janet is there, her hand resting heavily on the biologist's shoulder. He jumps, but tries to pretend nothing is wrong. "Sir. You understand that privacy is of significant importance to people like us." Her grip tightens marginally. "I know that you meant no harm, so all will be well after you leave now and return home and speak to nobody of what you found here. Yes?"

"I, er- Yes. Yes, of course, sorry to be a bother."

"It's quite alright. I'll be happy to escort you back to the trailhead." Her tone says 'this is not optional'. "Zeke, have the others dress and wait for me where we had breakfast two days ago." This is also not optional.

"I'll do that," he looks at the biologist. "It was nice meeting you."

He runs back to the others. "Janet says we need to put pants on and meet her at the breakfast spot."

"She's kind of scary, isn't she?" Asks Sam on the way.

"Yeah. She was real not-mean to that guy."  He sighs, "It was nice being properly us for a bit."

"And we can look forward to moooore..."

"I wonder what kangaroos taste like."

"Is that a critter from Australia?"

Conversation continues as they head to the designated spot.

"Why'd you have to be so hard on that guy, Janet? He just wanted to bask in the awesome."

"I'm sorry, but it's really better safe than sorry. I've talked to naturalists before - it always backfires sooner or later. And we don't want it to backfire sooner. This is just the world we live in, sadly."

"Why do the humans get to be in charge? They're so...not."

"There are rather a lot of them, mostly."

"That's always confused me."

"Our kinds did not care to upset the status quo, and suddenly, there are so very many, and they are all intelligent and working together. But the real culprit is the specialization that having so many allows. There is a human for everything."

"I will learn to do everything!"

"That will take a while, dear Tabitha. I gave up on it two centuries ago. Because there is always more to learn."

"Then Zeke will handle the other half of everything! Sam can help!"

"We are stronger when there are many people who all know different things. But we can certainly try it. Which of you will learn calculus? Zeke, you, or Sam?"

"Maths is easy!"

This amuses her enough to give an impromptu calculus lesson in the dirt.

Calculus is harder than your average maths.

Tabby's game.

Zeke calls maths "human magic."

"...So based on that, what is the limit as X approaches infinity for this one?"