"Yes. I think I will have to. Electric guitars are extremely important. I'm surprised your species got this far without making any. Maybe someone did and they never took off for some reason. Please tell me that Kitsune at least make music with synthesizers?"

"Well, not so much for live music, but for games and movies definitely."

"Oh, good."

Sid looks for a comfy place to sit down with Fei.

"So, I'm curious about, like, what your guys' life is like and what you do from day-to-day. I know you're onetails, and that means you're young, but I'm not sure how young, or what that means for your life. Are you guys expected to participate in the economy yet? Have children? That kinda stuff."

There's lots of couch-like objects in the lounges. She rests her tail in his lap.

"One-tails are the strongest and most physically able. It's... We do all the physically difficult work, while we still can. And we're all mostly idiots with youth and enthusiasm more than wisdom, right? So it's a one's job to listen to her elders. When I was near full size I stopped going to school full time and learned trades work. I started doing electricals, then started doing construction wiring full time, aside from vacations. And that's what I do most of the time these days. When my second tail grows in, I'll go back to school for a year or two and learn something else- Probably related to my one-tail career. Whatever I seem to have an aptitude for or there's a need for. Some people really desperately want to be a musician or an astronaut or something, but me... Meh. As far as children go, well obviously we're all on birth control pills, but those aren't perfect. If kits happen anyway, the people in our clan who like kits mostly end up taking care of them. I haven't had any, but Mika has. Statistically, most people have two and a bit eventually." She shrugs.

Sid pets her tail, of course.

"None of you seem like idiots to me."

The way these people talk about themselves is ringing his 'these people have been psyopped into thinking less of their capabilities than they should' alarm bells. But with an entirely different species, it's too early to tell.

"No, no- I'm being sarcastic. It's a whole thing. Just like none of your jokes make sense. Less 'idiot' and more 'unwizened'. The idea is that youth is when you know the least, so you have a duty to listen to those who ought to know. And those who ought to know have a duty to teach- Not just berate or command, but really teach. It's why Mika and Tak are a bit of an odd tail out. Tak's like... I want to say twenty four and a half I think? So he'll be getting his second tail any month now, too. It's pretty consistent."

"I see. That makes more sense, thank you."

Can they work out roughly how long Earth units of time are compared to Iwami units of time?

Iwami's day is about 23 1/2 earth hours. They divide it up into 16 hours with 100 minutes each and 50 seconds in a minute. Their second is pretty close to that of earth's. It's currently 11:80, or early evening. Fei thinks the topic is kind of boring but gamely goes along trying to compare the units and get a conversion.

Mika shows up and tells Sid that the Doctors Without Borders seems to think they're pulling an elaborate prank, they're being kind of short with her. Can she take a photo of Sid for them?

"Sure thing!"

He smiles for the photo.

"Actually, if baring my teeth is hostile in Kitsune body language or something, you should take a picture of me not smiling. Do they want a picture of my tailbone too?"

"Bared teeth can mean lots of things. It more depends on the tail and ears. Let's get a bunch of pictures."

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Mika shows him the photo roll. The camera quality is clearly inferior to 2019 Earth phones.

"Sending. It'll be a couple minutes, the wifi's slow out here. Fuckin'... I mean, 'actual alien' is a pretty outlandish claim but you'd think they'd at least send someone to check, Rain's sake..."

(We have just decided that Sid comes from Earth in the year 2019. You are now aware of this Sid Fact.)

"Anyways, Fei, sorry about the timekeeping rigamarole, I was hoping to figure out how old people are in units that mean something to me. How many days are in a year? How old are you guys? How old are people of different tail-quantities, in general, if that's roughly consistent?"

"I don't really mind. It's so interesting to watch your face, I feel like I'm starting to understand what your expressions mean. Um... A year is two hundred ninety seven days. 298 on leap years, which are every five years usually. You're usually fully grown and working at around... Fourteen, fifteen? Second tail comes in at around 25-26. I'm twenty, Mika's twenty six..." She gives more ages: Fifteen, nineteen, twenty, sixteen, twenty-two...

Mika gives Fei a Meaningful Look of some kind. Fei makes a shooing sort of hand gesture. Mika snorts and walks off again, doing a distinctively annoyed tail-flick as she does.

Wonder what that means. Anyways.

"Wow, that's pretty fast. I'm eighteen Earth years old, which is... about twenty three Iwami years, and that's considered barely an adult. I was still in school, actually. How long does it take for the other tails to come in, past the second?"

"Ah, so you're kind of a onetail too!" Fei's tail wags. "It's once every fifteen years after the second. Used to be you were lucky to survive 'till your fourth, now people can live through most of their fifth pretty okay! They invented these devices that they implant in you, right next to your heart, to dispense drugs automatically during medical emergencies. Hurray for medical science!"

"So it sounds like Kitsune live for a decade or so less than humans. The life expectancy in my country is I think eighty, which is about a hundred Iwami years. Although frequently people get cognitive decline a while before they die."

"...That would really suck*. The most tailed are the smartest, for us... You mentioned that people thought up aliens that looked like us earlier. What was that like, what kind of stories were they in?"

*The cultural translation of 'suck' as a mild negative swear is about accurate, but the actual word is a reference to getting covered in mud.

"The trope I was talking about... they weren't really thought of as aliens. It was more like, 'foxes are cool, wouldn't it be cool and/or sexy if there were people that looked kinda like foxes?' They featured sometimes in fantasy stories and art. Plenty of porn too. And it wasn't just fox-people, people came up with all kinds of human-animal hybrids."

Fei giggles. "Wow, that's kind of a stuffy word for it? Why 'porn' and not 'erotic-art'? Also, I bet all the hybrids are very sexy and cute. We kitsune certainly are, right~? And we have that too. Vork-people and fish-people and bird-people and snake and lizard people and lots more kinds. Very popular among certain crowds." Wink.

"Yes, you are." He gives her a gentle scratch behind the ears.

"I don't know how to begin to describe American cultural attitudes towards porn, nor do I know how they differ from your expectations... but I guess I'd say a lot of it isn't considered particularly artistically meritorious. Lowbrow stuff that appeals basically exclusively to the audience's lust and not their aesthetic sensibilities. It's an unfortunate state of affairs, I know."

She leans against him. Apparently, Kitsunes purr.

"Tragic, really. So much art gets tarred with the brush of 'lowbrow' and ignored. Sometimes you just want to watch explosions and punching and guns!"

Oh wow, she's purring. He'll keep petting her, then.

"So, do Kitsune kiss?"

"Oh, sometimes. Maybe humans would do it a lot more. Your noses might get in the way less. Switch ears once in a while so you get both, please~?"

"Well, the human style is to kiss each other's lips."

He gives that a try. And he'll give her ears some kisses as well.

"How is that?"