...the aliens look at themselves as if this is a question that could be answered by looking.

That is to say have they been, since any contact they may being casteless have had with dead bodies or waste, very thoroughly washed, and also have any of them had a family history of That Sort Of Thing.

...contact with dead bodies or waste? No one has a family history of that, what a terribly unlucky family you would have to be. They do wash after they use the restroom, yes.

Okay they're probably fine. Space! They would like to go to space and live on more planets!!!

Aliens will delightedly keep learning the language! They ask who is in charge here.

They get seven different answers. Three of them change after the locals have noticed the conflict. One of them changes again after that. Now they have five different answers. Six, when someone has an afterthought.

...okay. Uh. If there is a debate about what the law should be, who settles that debate?

More debate. Among the senators, of whom there are three hundred.

...ooooh, aliens have speculated about the benefits of distributing power like that. And then the senators ...vote?

In a manner of speaking. Yes. Technically.

...huh?

Yes, they vote, there's just a lot of other stuff going on.

Interesting! These Elves have a monarchy but some Elves have democracies. With one elected leader, usually. Also they tend to reelect him repeatedly, there are not many differences between those states and the monarchies.

Monarchies used to be more popular on this planet. They used to be ruled by an empire. That was like thirty years ago though.

Well as long as the senator arrangement works for them. Did the senators send them here?

Some of them! Different senators. Others are on their own recognizance. One of the sneaking-aboard greens is here on behalf of a university.

Elves find the vague disorganization endearing. Would their guests like a tour of the ship.

Yes!

Ship!!!! They don't have artificial gravity but lightleapers are accelerating all of the time and if you balance it right it's good as the same. The part of making lightleapers where you have to get them nearly to lightspeed actually took more technological breakthroughs than the part where they subsequently leap, which works by folding space. (Yes you can use this to break relativity which has this set of thrilling implications but not this other set including time travel). They repeatedly lament the smallness of their ship.

The greens are fascinated. And want to confirm that they have "small" defined right?

Yes they got it. Greens should have seen the ships they had to use to get to Endorë back before they had lightleapers; those were big ships.

This one actually seems very roomy, especially for so few Elves.

Maybe in addition to needing less pretty spaces Amentans need less space.

Seems likely. This one room is the size of that guy's entire apartment where he lives with his wife and her sister and sister-in-law.

Elves could live in a small apartment if they had a whole city to walk around in whenever they had the impulse. Also they think they missed something about gender words.