“I promise you it was,” Sorvalh said. “Hello, children. I am Hafte Sorvalh. Have any of you ever spoken to an alien before?” There were head shakes all around, signifying “no.” “Well, then, here’s your chance,” Sorvalh said. “Ask me anything you want to know.”

“What are you?” asked one of the children, a boy.

“I am a Lalan,” Sorvalh said. “From a planet called Lalah.”

“No, I mean are you like a lizard or an amphibian?” the boy asked.

“I suppose that to you I might look a little like a reptile,” Sorvalh said. “But I’m not really like one at all. I am more like you than I am like a lizard, but I admit I’m mostly not like either. It’s better to think of me as my own thing: a Lalan.”

“Do you eat people?” asked another boy.

“I eat churros,” Sorvalh said, holding up her now-neglected treat. “So unless churros are made of people, no.”

“You can’t eat churros all the time,” this new boy pointed out.

“Actually, if I wanted to I could,” Sorvalh said, taking the opposite position of her earlier comment to Tony. “It’s one of the perks of being a grown-up.”

The children seemed to pause to consider this.

“However, I don’t,” Sorvalh said. “When I am on Earth, I usually eat your fruits and vegetables. I particularly like sweet potatoes and tangerines. I only rarely eat your meats. They disagree with me. And I don’t eat people, because I wouldn’t want people to eat me.”

“Are you married?” asked another child.

“My people don’t get married,” Sorvalh said.

“Are you living in sin?” asked the same child. “Like the way my mother says my Aunt Linda is?”

“I don’t know about your mother or your Aunt Linda,” Sorvalh said. “And I’m not sure what ‘living in sin’ means here. My people don’t marry because that’s just not how we do things. The best way to describe it is that we have lots of friends and sometimes as friends we have children together.”

“Like my Aunt Linda,” the child said.

“Perhaps,” Sorvalh said, diplomatically as possible.

“Are you pregnant now?” asked another child.

“I’m too old for that now,” Sorvalh said. “And we don’t get pregnant anyway. We lay eggs.”

“You’re a chicken!” said the first boy, and there was laughter to this.

“Probably not a chicken,” Sorvalh said. “But yes, like your birds we lay eggs. We tend to do this all at the same time, and then the community cares for them all at once.”

“How many eggs have you laid?” asked the latest child.