Omega listened, she had a fresh notebook for writing provided from the ‘school supplies’ Elsie had made for them.

She was letting the souls of experts flit and flutter past and through her, holding onto them far less tightly then she was used too. She had her spirit stretched and spread thin to touch clouds of them and let their voices and insights sing briefly and echo in her rather then gripping herself tightly to and of them.

She kept the notebook ready to catch her moments of shared insight with them and review later. To let the knowledge and larger pattern of them ingrain itself in her.

Losing them for so long had hurt and helplessness for those long months gave her an idea.

There was too much to hold in one head all at once. But there also was far too much weakness in her core of self being dependent on them to that degree either.

So she paraphrased her knowledge and insights while with them and then tried to tease them apart afterwards.

It slowed her down but also seemed to be giving her deeper connections to them as well.

And now with this fresh port coming up she had a chance to test her methods, to be better, to not be caught off guard all the time. To be a flexible reed in the wind of a terrible storm and the deep rooted anchoring oak at once.

Elsie was speaking but Pylo watched her carefully.

“They call themselves the people, for they have little to no contact with or context for outsiders. For most of them Ship Mistress Pylo and her arrival are a myth, a distant memory and a great time of gifts. A punctuation of an age that gives meaning to the toil of generations.”

Omega pulled up anthropologists and strung out dozens of ideas, she pulled up ecology, economists, politicians, entertainers, a veritable conference flowed through her in passing.

“They live and die in a wildness, a feral place that is this forest. Here in this place hunters leave in great flights to scavenge and hunt for the means of their people to survive. They roam on steeds they capture as infants or eggs and train and tame and do battle with many more. The difficulty and hazards of this life have made them very hard.”

She took a deep breath and pulled up notes of those surviving hunting tribes, living in the deep clefts of canyon valleys near the world edge.

Where terran civilization had never quite penetrated during the greatest colonial enterprises and after stability and the uneasy peace prior to first contact had drawn away interest in further exploitation.

Quarti was first to speak.

“They hunt the big things we see in the bauble? The things that hang in the trees and flit through the branches?”

Elsie nodded their screen.

“They hunt, herd and scavenge from the corpses of all you have seen and more. But they also have to abide by dangers far greater than the motile forms of the forest. The trees themselves in their place of residence have a very aggressive nature. Armed against the minds that build and harvest and make great economies. Under this duress they have formed very rigid and exacting laws, traditions and taboos.”

Squidgie perks up and chimes in very prim and proper.

“Is there a treatise on these laws available? It would be wise for us to review them before we settle. As soon as possible in fact.”

Pylo made a soft chuffing sound of air being belted through hundreds of whistling passages.

“By the reckoning of the humans it has been approximately eight hundred and sixty seven years locally since last Tunie came this way.”

Omega spun historians and lore keeper souls through her head writing out some ideas and concepts to dig deeper on later.

“Their traditions are solid and most of the elders at the head of the clans should still be alive from my last visit but the operation of the lower classes of each clan will have needed to diverge to deal with whatever has happened. Beyond initial introductions during our arrival none of you should be involved with the elders though so there is very little certainty in specific taboos I can give you. The forest is wild and wildness changes.”

Omega blinked a moment as several social-political and biologists started doing the spiritual equivalent of waving their hands and stamping up and down then tilted her head.

“Wait, so the elders can live for hundreds of years but you just said that it’s been so many generations that your visits have practically drifted into the realm of myth and long passed tradition? That... seems a little weird”

Pylo simply shrugged.

Elsie answered in the silence given.

“Ship Mistress Pylo is by nature of her brief contacts with the port not a dictator of policy, she arrives, performs her trade deals and exchanges with them with whatever goods she has collected in the intervening trips and then leaves with the goods they have produced in the intervening time. She can’t be expected to know all the intricacies of a full polity herself.”

The siren made a face at Elsie’s ‘back’ that Omega knew was intentional, likely received by the assemblage of boxes and also overt enough for all the terrans watching.

Which Elsie was certainly also aware of. Several politicians and village administrative souls tasted scheming and strife and posturing.

She made a few notes and underlined them for something she needed to discuss with Aleph, Quarti and Squidgie she supposed.

Squidgie raised one of her arms? Hair flaps? Ears? Omega made a few notes as a naturalist fluttered through her head.

“Be that as it may might I request what local lore, records and archives you have available Ship Mistress? I can parse and summarize them for Miss Aleph, Miss Omega and Miss Quarti. It will save us a great deal of time and may perhaps avoid some faux pas or misunderstandings regardless of how outdated they are. After all if there are institutions still ruling that persist as long as you said they should be a stabilizing influence on the others.”

Pylo considered before nodding and then Squidgie's screen became a fluttering cascade of random color before settling into a ‘flushed’ cheek abstracted expression. Complete with little beads of ‘sweat’ artistically dappled over the ‘face’.

“Ah... eh.. Yess! Thank you Ship Mistress! I will get on summarizing this with haste, no further questions.”

Aleph raised a brow at Squidgie who waved her off and beamed, then turned to glare at Pylo with something Omega had not quite ever seen on her face before.

A few mothers and grand mothers echoed with her own soul’s memory of playing the distrustful matriarch and could not stop herself from snorting.

Aleph was growing up in the most wonderfully bizarre way on this trip!

That got her a look that only made her laugh and scrunch her own face into a caricature of Aleph’s glower which made her eyes widen and flush in mortification.

Quarti waggled her eyebrows at each of them then turned to grin at the aliens who had been patiently observing the silent exchange for the last half minute.

That got Aleph to stutter her words out.

“Uh... Yeah that’s fine... but um, so that’s a lot of historical and cultural stuff. And I guess ecological things? But what are these people? I mean is it like redweed with a whole bunch of different kinds? Are the elders the same species?”

Elsie’s screen flickered with several patterns Omega was pretty sure amounted to a confused blink as markets rearranged and prediction markets shifted.

It usually happened when the big hunk of machinery found itself somewhere it had not expected.

Pylo’s tone was thick in amusement and lilts of teasing malice.

“Oh, yes they are a monoculture, Elsie seemed to have overlooked that even though she continues to assure me she knows best how to arrange details with you to help ensure your safety.”

Elsie had several stocks and exchanges for commodities Omega could not catch as the screen roiled. It was amusing the way you could kind of read that screen like a face as you got used to it.

Several economists gave hints of bubbles and crashes happening up there.

“Yes, it is a single dominant species, with client species inducted from the wildlife of the surrounding forests. The majority of which are significantly lower fractions of standard perso-”

Pylo’s whip like arm cracked through the air sent the assemblage of boxes tumbling into the soft cushioning of the walls.

“Ah... The client species are of a significantly lower degree of cognitive processing capacity or generalized optimization ability as yourselves”

Pylo nodded, Omega checked her notes that her hand had been filling out in a page while she watched Elsie’s screen. Huh that whole exchange had been pre-arranged? At least by several seconds.

She eyed the Siren and got a smirk in response.

Okay so the Aliens were using slapstick comedy in their presentations now.

“If they are the same species why is there such a discrepancy in the life spans?”

Elsie turned their screen to Pylo who made a gesture of ceding the floor.

The politicians in Omega’s heads were proverbially leaning forward in interest.

“The Elders are sustained by expertise and methods that require great dedication and skill. They are individually treated as much as archives of expertise as leaders. Protected by the more disposable population of the polity from high risk activity so they can be deployed to either train or even engage rarely occurring threats to the polity from within or without. They have maintained this way of life for-”

Pylo bared her teeth at Elsie in a bright toothy grin.

“Many dozens of millennia. Honing and cultivating their experts into paragons of ability so that the people may survive the dangers of the wild.”

Omega caught on that with a few historians and a bit of her own actual working memory.

“Wait... how long have you been coming to this port Pylo?”

Aleph and Quarti turned with interest as the Siren did that finger twiddling thing she did when she wanted to look kind of embarrassed.

Which Omega was not entirely sure the siren actually felt or not. Over the last year or so she was starting to side with Aleph that the emoting was semi-involuntary.

“Oh! Well I’ve been coming here ever since my Mother made it for me. But it’s nothing really, don’t be concerned about it!”

Yeah that was probably involuntary and-

“Wait... what?!”