Aleph shook her head.

“I don’t get it Squidgie. They are pulling this stuff together with their muscles. I’ve seen more advanced technology back at home in Aoria!”

The Clerk made a puzzled face, supremely puzzled, it was like every possible nuance of confusion and puzzlement and good nature was distilled down into the glyphs of the expression.

If you could make letters out of faces this is what it would look like.

“That cannot be right ma’am. Granted I’ve not seen your own home but I did extensive reading and I’ve looked over the materials that you admit were far in advance of your own country in the Terran Polity. The People have shown nothing but superb skill and mastery in everything they have brought anywhere near us.”

Aleph gestured at one of the wobbly limbed frogs outside the bubble who met her gaze flatly and parted its lips to reveal the feint shine of minute teeth and steam hissing from their throat.

Averting her gaze with a flushed expression she turned back to Squidgie.

“But... that one is wearing animal skins! I can see the fur!”

Squidgie leaned openly to stare at the figure then did something complicated and odd with their screen. Aleph glanced back to the alien in the ‘primitive’ getup to see what came of it and saw them tilting their head at her before closing all four of their eyes slowly and sticking out their tongue a bit.

She had no idea what that meant.

Which felt a little odd in her head because she vaguely remembered understanding it perfectly during the performances.

Huh.

Pylo must have not been translating right then.

Her ward finally spoke after the silence had drifted well into awkwardness.

“Ah I thought not... No, that is not the same thing as your ‘fur’ at alll. Honestly that is an expectation you really should avoid having if you can Ma’am. Mammals are more commonly seen as-”

Aleph huffed and nodded.

“Parasites, Infectious diseases, blights and plagues outside of what apparently is the super rare ecology of Terra. Yes I remember, but then what are all of these... people? They look plenty furry to me”

Squidgie took on that tone which generally meant that they were quoting Elsie on something. It was quite distinctive.

“That is ALSO an unfortunate but equally inaccurate stereotype. But most of the organisms that are horriblomorbus but don’t exhibit obvious sporing fronds are not commonly grouped as being mammalia around the reef. The distinction is very inaccurate honestly. Poor Taxonomy.”

Aleph gave Squidgie a raised brow. Which prompted a bit of that iconic blush before there was a quick head bob. But before they could continue Plyo’s voice murmured over them in an absent minded tone that she had taken on for these little interruptions.

"Actually, Aleph is right, the Aorian word Fur fits properly to the convergently evolved surface extrusions of many different clades rather than the Horriblomorbus sporing threads specifically. Classic case of prioritizing homologous or analogous structures in different dialects. You could even argue that in many many common cases the sporing threads DON'T count as fur, due to being too sparse, stiff, and or thick."

Squidgie made a face scrunching emote of frustration.

“That... definitional distinction was not present on Redweed, especially not in Tincture Hegalexic. I apologize Ma’am did not realize I’d let the bias slip through in my use of Aorian from my mother tongue.”

Aleph huffed and rolled her eyes.

“Honestly was not trying to win that argument either way. But okay that’s not mammal-skin and it's not mammal-fur. And they out there are not mammals. But they still skinned something and are wearing it like a cave-woman!”

Which brought a long stare of deeper befuddlement then before.

“What? ... But what does that have to do with the technological skill or masteries of society? I’m sorry Ma’am I don’t quite understand.”

She stared at the augmented clerk, then out at the massive tent, and the use of ropes, and skins, and kites and animals and all the tools and things that honestly would barely be out of place in some kind of pastiche of ancient aorian culture.

A really bad and racist one at that.

“It’s primitive?”

Squidgie blinked the representation of their eye a few times then turned over to the skin wearing frog person and waved for them to come closer.

Which somewhat terrified Alephs sense of propriety but she tried to wrestle that down.

The figure peered at the bubble. Then gently poked it with a stick, what honestly looked like a wooden stick.

Slightly crooked and twisted wood. But recognizably wood if a little bit darker and grayer then any tree on Terra she had seen.

After it pushed through with no resistance the frog popped the end into their mouth and puffed out their cheeks a few times before smacking their lips and then looking at her and slowly closing all four eyes and parting their mouth in a-

For some reason Aleph got the dizzying sense that they were nodding at her.

Even though her eyes clearly showed they were not in fact doing anything of the sort.

Oh.

Thanks Pylo.

"You're welcome."

She glanced at Squidgie who actually nodded and smiled brightly.

And then the frog person was pushing their face through the wall of the bubble. She glanced around for backup but Quarti was meditating or napping, Omega was definitely asleep because she was snoring, Elsie was outside the bubble discussing something with part of their entourage and Squidgie had invited the bulky thing with a mouth wide enough to make a good effort of swallowing Aleph whole into the bubble.

Or at least biting her in half at the waist.

She was surprised that the smell was dusty. Slowly prickling towards slightly smokey.

Possibly because something in the figure’s furry face was faintly smoking.

There were even hints of sparse embers now amongst the dense little bushy clumps.

“Hello! Sorry to request your presence but Miss Aleph here is a bit confused and I was wondering if you could help clarify some things for her?”

Each of the four eyes closed in turn and opened in a circle around it’s face. Which Aleph was reading thanks to pylo as something like an amused smile.

Then the lips parted slightly before the throat (Or was it the back of the neck?) pulsed and rippled.

Making for a surprisingly soft throaty rumble that was by the miracle of Siren magic perfectly legible and somehow seemed like a deep and very old kind of voice, bizarrely bass in timbre.

“I would be honored to aid the guests of the Daughter of Courtesan the eternal bride mother.”

Aleph honestly could not keep track of all the titles that had passed her by assigned to Pylo’s mom. But she thought that might be a new one? Either that or she slept through the part where someone used it.

“Uh... okay. I don’t actually know why Squidgie called you over here.”

To which her ward bobbed her head to the alien and spoke cheerily.

“To be precise Miss Aleph is perplexed by the material of your garb, could you tell us some of how it is made and what its properties are? I feel I could only do a great disservice to the craft and wonder of it trying to paraphrase.”

The creature with its head jammed into a bubble looked down and out to the wrap of fur leather that Aleph was trying to not think of as a loincloth. But honestly looked like a fancy loin cloth.

Fingers brushed over the texture of it with a fondness and care that was totally not obvious to her actual eyes but seemed to be something Pylo though she should understand.

“This is the skin of my great, great grandsire. He had reached the end of his time and rose only to the rank of a minor Apprentice. But he had the... gift that no longer lives in his line with me and guardian blessings besides in the skin.”

Aleph would have pulled a face but she was a bit too surprised.

“So he ate the fruits of the Vergul and ran the blood and oils of the Far-toothed dragons who we do not tame into his own skin. He did this until the fire and hate of the far-toothed fought and wrestled with the blessing of his guardians and was then gentled and frozen in the poison of the Vergul.”

The voice was a lot like quarti, but so deep, so rich and soft and reverent. It was also trill and simultaneously rattling her bones and spine a little as it echoed through the bubble.

“He did this until his hearts gave out and the healers had to spear him with the pain of Oki thorn tinctures to stave off death seven and ten times. And then he went and starved himself of water in the sun above the canopy and returned to do it all again thrice more.”

There was another one of those not-nods that were nods. A motion with the mouth opening and then eyes closing.

“He suffered greatly for his last rites, he died three times so that the shaping of his blessing could take root and flourish. And when it was done he perished a final and fourth and his hide was treated and kneaded. The songs were sung until his skin and fur would turn the sharpest of needles from the least drake in the boughs of -”

A rising crescendo of sound going from deep to sharp piercing filled the bubble and jolted Omega momentarily before the shaman snorted and fell back asleep.

“And hold safe my great, great grandsire’s most experienced and masterful children among the Order of Holy Tanners and Fat Renderers no matter the heat of the forges or the burn of the acids. It was by the blessings of his last gift that my great grandmother rose above the station that he had attained and mastered the sacred oils of the tree scourer flesh. And from her to my Grandsire who rose even further. And at last to me as I attained mastery of the Order of Holy Tanners and Fat Renderers to be here before you in the great arrival.”

Squidgie nodded and turned to Aleph expectantly.

She looked down at the loincloth that was apparently an ancient artifact made out of an ancestor, treated by a harrowing, torturous multiple near death experiences.

“And... That means?”

Squidgie winced and looked back to the apparent Master of the Order of Holy Tanners and Fat Renderers.

“It means that this cloth would turn metal tines as long as my finger traveled hard enough to liquefy you from head to toe in their passing little ape-ling. And if my taste of you is correct, protect from heat directly against which would crisp you black and boiled. That would be unspoiled by acid that would first sear and smoke your flesh and then more than likely leave your bones festering and jelly.”

There was no translated tone of admonishment, just a calm almost gentle patience. It was the voice that Aleph recognized Omega had often taken with her when she was young and more stupid.

“I have seen it protect from all of these things. And seen the same injure or kill apprentices who lacked its protection.”

The sombre note to that declaration dried up Aleph’s rebuttal about it being superstitious nonsense.

“It is a vital and important tool which I honor with every work I distil for my order and the students I raise in my profession. Which I earned by rising as one much like those self same students from a life of service.”

Then there was a slow near closing of all four eyes. That pylo apparently thought would be best known as a smile.

“And my wife thinks it is very fetching.”

Squidgie bobbed her head and thanked the big frog who ‘nodded’ with that parting of lips and revealing of tiny little needle teeth.

Thinner then Aleph’s fingers and yet shining so brightly.

And then they had thrown themselves back and then arrested their momentum with that strange metal staff that nearly all of the ones that followed in their entourage held.

Like absurd fantasy steeds from legends. Like the magical bowls and spoons from fairy tales of Aoria that the star witches supposedly rode.

Squidgie had a hopeful look in her emote of an eye.

“So Ma’am does that clarify the confusion on them being primitive?”

Aleph huffed and looked out over the teeming crowds and honestly could not say.

It all unnerved her somehow. It was all backwards in a way she had never expected things to be.

Redweed had not been like this, It had seemed very much like a city.

Elsie was not really like this either.

Or Squidgie.

Or Tunie.

Or even Pylo.

All of them were somehow familiar or alien enough to not feel like this.

But here it was all stomach churning and head achingly wrong.

They looked like the kind of backwards awfulness everyone though that Aoria was full of.

The thing that she had worked very hard to distance herself from entirely.

The things that if she was being honest had soured her impressions of Quarti on their first meeting a lot more than they probably should have.

But no terran could have made anything that did half of what that loincloth skin could do.

But even the way that it was constructed felt so backwards and wrong.

Her ward chirped up with a worried tone.

“Ma’am?”

But Aleph could only say.

“I honestly don’t know Squidgie.”