The day had gone quite well for Ktak. Rumor of their situation had obviously gone ahead. The usually nearly empty Tamare brood registry office was full of Tamare trying to catch a glimpse of now infamous Commander and the human she was coming to register. They expected the pair to stand out, violating Tamare custom of uniformity, but found themselves stumped. Even the official accepting brood-registry applications did not realize their business untill she stated it. Only then did he note that one of the Tamare in front of him was a bit too pink and hornless to be a Tamare at all. He accepted the application, filed in perfectly correct form as on file from three millenia ago.

Ames also felt it had gone well. He liked the invisibility. As long as you moved correctly and stood correctly, Tamare would not see you as anything unusual. Their shapes varied so much that their species recognition had almost entirerly shifted to recogition of the movement patterns they executed.

They retired to their room at the hotel, and relaxed, because tomorrow was going to be more complicated and what worried Ames and Ktak were very different things. They were going to meet Ktak's brood-mother in their brood-home. Ames was worried about messing up. Ktak was bothered by Ames meeting her brood-sister.

Stella had tried to explain to Ames the Tamare brood structure, but he was not sure he had understood correctly. So to distract them, he told Ktak what he had understood and asked Ktak to correct any mistakes.

The brood-mother was, for lack of a better analogy something akin to a tree. This was what a true, pure blood Tamare was. A sentient tree. Her roots were in the ground and she reached twoards the sky. She could speak but not move. She would grow flowers to lure mobile species to her and grow hybrid offspring from each flower to roam the world and care for mother. Over time as society evolved, this randomness in the hybridisation was removed and replaced with genetic engenering to produce exactily the offspring needed.

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Brood-mothers lived for up to three millenia, blooming occasionally and thus producing offspring, exactly selecting the traits needed and the species hybrid would be created with. Eventually they would stop blooming and wither and after a while, from the root a new brood-mother would sprout. Ktak and her brood-sister were born from a single flowering - her mother's very last one. She was now withering - gradually falling dormant and decaying. She was still occationally consious but Ktak new that this would probably be the last visit where she could still talk to her.

So far Ktak had not felt the need to correct him, so he he must have gotten it right.

He wondered what made a brood wealthy.

Ktak tried to explain, that young brood-mothers bloom more and therefore have more Tamare to send out to the world to work and bring home wealth. When they get older they bloom less, but if they have been smart, they have invested the income to be able to buy better donors and have more high ranking children. Wealthyest broods tend to be the ones that have made the most out of both stages of the brood-mother's life. Hers... was well off, but not rich. She and her brood-sister were quite unusual even by tamare standards. Their mother had kept a gift from a human for her last blooming for nearly a millenia. More powerful broods had tried to cheat, force and abuse her to sell the gift but she had held on to it and used it eventually to create her and her sister. Quite a few broods were offended when she qualified for growing a First Generation Commander along with her brood-seedling tender in her last blooming.

Ames was listening carefully less to the words and more to the tone of it. Her high rank in Tamare society was not something she took as naturally hers. This was probably why most humans found her much more tolerable than the general Tamare. She knew that her destiny was written by tough choises of her now fading brood-mother.

Ames hugged her gently.

"Do you miss your brood-mother" he asked.

"Yes," she responded. "And soon she will be entierly gone."

Ames wiped away the single tear running down her face. Suddenly, Tamare did not seem this different at all any more.