"I'll be back soonish." And she leaves them in the car and heads back to where Whiteout is.

Whiteout is thoughtfully studying her drawing of the two humans.

"Hey. They're either waiting in the car or fucking off into the woods to discover new and exciting problems. They are definitely people who can talk and everything."

"Yes, I saw you talking to them. Though I couldn't understand anything you said."

"I had to reassure them that you were not going to eat them and that if you tried I could stop you. And recommend that they not run off into the woods, I think they'd have a bad time even if before they were classroom pets they were experienced hunter-gatherers."

"What is a hunter-gatherer?"

"A human who finds food where it's growing or living and gets it from there. Most humans on this planet instead plant or raise food where it would be convenient."

"Oh." She considers this. "Do you mean that this place's humans," the loanword comes out a little awkwardly, "moved all the food away from places like this into places where more of them live, so it's easier to reach there but harder to find here?"

"No, but I don't want to bet those people's lives on their ability to identify things here that are safe to eat, not get hit by cars, not freeze if they're still here in winter..."

"Is winter a freezing time here?"

"Yeah."