On a beach near the village of Otara, a portal shimmers into existence. When fully formed, it is a round opening, just over three feet high, through which the view is very slightly different if looked at from the right angles. Someone looking closer might be able to make out the edges, wavering like heat haze.
A few motu fishermen are nearby, hauling in their day's catch. They do not notice the portal immediately, but the sound of their singing carries through it on the breeze.
"Maybe countries with rainforest territory will revisit the question later."
"Sure! Gods are immortal, he'll wait."
Puna, Elpida, Shakhter and Ashkharh divide up the first wave of planets between the four of them. They're ready to get to work whenever the Amentans want! Kotinga can take over negotiations while Puna is busy bouncing around the galaxy, in between blessing farmland.
Works for them!
Three gods separately come through the portal and immediately teleport away. Two of them pick times when it is night. Puna gratefully hands over the politics side of things to her mother and hops off into space herself.
Terraforming commences!
It'll take about three Amentan years for the first wave to be done, so they've got plenty of time to put together space programs and pick colonists and sort out planet-sharing agreements.
Which they get on very energetically.
Meanwhile, Amenta starts attracting non-divine visitors; Amentans are invited to visit Corth also. It's been long enough without incident that the gods decided they didn't need to keep quite such a tight control on the portal, but they'll come down hard on anyone attempting to immigrate to Amenta permanently unless they can find someone to swap with.
There are scholars of various Corth races eager to learn about Amentans and their technology! There are merchants hoping to get in on the ground floor of inter-dimensional trade! And both of these groups are hiring mercenaries as guards, because you can believe what you like about the gods but it's not them who'll have to pay the insurance if something goes wrong.
Darya is bored and between jobs and feeling the wanderlust down to eir bones. Ey signs on as a guard to a merchant company - humans, not dwarves, no dwarven merchants outside the Goldcrest clan will hire a Goldcrest mercenary. They're going to a country called Tapa, which is big and rich and will apparently buy food that no-one who works with sewage or corpses has touched?
They will, yes!
That's great for the merchants.
Darya has night shift, because the other guards are all surface-dwellers with terrible night vision. During the day, ey is free to wander around being 4'3" of Very Obvious Alien in a strange place where ey doesn't speak the language if eir enchanted ring stops working. Joy and rapture.
People take pictures of em!
...those sure are some bright flashes being pointed in eir direction.
One downside of dwarves having good night vision: they don't cope brilliantly with extra bright light. At least Darya's a dwarf and not a mard, they don't cope well at all.
Ey endures it for a while, then starts seeking out quieter streets to walk down.
There's not a whole lot of quieter. Amentans live crowded.
The worse neighborhoods a little less so, though.
Darya is used to bad neighbourhoods.
Once ey finds somewhere quiet enough that there aren't people shoving pocket everythings in eir face at every step, ey starts whistling quietly as ey walks.
There is a clearly-marked-as-something intersection over there, where you could cross a wide red line into... an even worse neighborhood.
Slightly beyond the red line is a sobbing pink-haired woman.
Huh. Didn't think aliens' hair came in pink. It's a pretty shade; maybe ey should go with something like that next time ey bother dyeing. (Darya's hair is currently undyed black.)
...oh gods this is not eir strong suit but she's crying and eir mother had pink hair sometimes -
" - hey."
Darya is probably going to fuck this up but whatever.
"Hi. Uh. If you need someone to rant to or something, I'm an alien who's not gonna be on this planet next month."
"...they what."
Maybe it's a problem with the translation ring? Ey really hopes it's a problem with the translation ring.
Nope, sounded exactly the same the second time. What is wrong with tall folk -
"Is this a problem that goes away if I hit people?" Darya growls. "I'm good at hitting people."
Ey shrugs in self-deprecation. "Not so great at talking to them."
Yup, that's a lot more than Darya's getting paid for this job. "Sorry. Not that rich."
Ey thinks for a moment.
"...they can't kill your baby if they can't find you, right?"
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