The female walked Dylan and Morgane for a few miles behind where the homes were and waves broadly to the woods in front of her. Morgane looks about trying to see what the female was showing her, she thought she spied some plants that looked similar in shape to potato plants here and there in the underbrush of the forest. They did look like they were carefully places where the sun peeked through the canopy of the trees, Morgane did notice that most of the trees in this segment of the forest appeared to either be more oaks, but also fruit bearing as well.

Morgane tilts her head and asks while Dylan wanders about examining the plants, “so; your 'crops' are interspersed with the forest itself?” The female nodded her head and waves Morgane over toward one of the potato resembling plants. “We have always done our best to grow our food in accordance with nature's plans, a forest has it's own ecosystem and if done correctly you can make use of it to grow foods in a better fashion than human standard farming practices. Sometimes our people might have a favorite plant that we keep near our homes in a container so we can harvest it more simply, but again that is merely for favorites. I do believe from what we have seen of your world humans do have something similar, it is called; 'hugelkultur' where the humans pile wood and other decay able materials and cover it with soil then plant into it in a manner similar to a forest. Though from what we saw a lot of humans also cut down live wood to do this,” the idea of cutting a living tree obviously upset her. Morgane made a mental note to not bring up anything about tree cutting to their people, it seemed to disturb them.

The female continued, “while the 'farming practice' is an interesting attempt. It is simply much easier to work with the forest you already have and work with it. Especially once you start planting these potato like plants, they provide double the harvest the earth potato does and you can use the leaves as a fiber for cloth. The cloth has the strength of what you call steel, even if it does not appear to; it cannot be sliced by anything but one of your diamond edged blades.” The female pulled out what appeared to be a crystal knife to demonstrate on a piece of her half skirt, cutting through a piece on the edge of it. Then handing Morgane the knife to examine, it was indeed a diamond blade; Dylan walked over to examine it as well. Morgane turned it over in her hands a few times, surprised that it looked forged and not cut out of the crystal.

The female saw the question in Morgane's face before she even thought to ask it, “yes that is a forged knife not chiseled out of gemstone. Our people have the knowledge of how to forge with gemstones, we cannot share this with you at this time; your people just are not ready for that. Morgane nodded and handed the knife back handle first.

The females waves them farther into the forest to a grove of very odd looking trees with very large leaves that almost remind Morgane of blankets. The trees like the other's in the forest were very tall, however it looked like segments of the tree's trunks were thinner in some sections that made no sense for stability. The female waves her hand towards the trees and Dylan excitedly walks over to examine them closer, when he reaches out to touch one of the thicker segments near the bottom a thick piece of bark fell off the trunk. It resembled the houses that were in the village, the female speaks; “these trees are sort of like the cork trees of your world. Their bark peels off if it is touched, it was a defense mechanism against wood boring insects so they could not burrow into them. As you have already guessed Morgane we use this to construct our homes with, this 'wood' is also fire proof; stands of these trees on some islands have been the only survivors the few times there have been forest fires. It was one of the first discoveries our people made while still being in the hunter gatherer stage, our people started off with homes like you see us using now. Our smaller villages used them as well during the height of our civilization, the tree for a period of our history was considered to be sacred as it could survive fire and survive losing a good portion of it's mass and keep living and growing strong. People on long trips always look for groves of this tree when looking for a place to camp as you have probably guessed the leaves can be used for warmth they are very thick. The female waits a bit while Dylan examines the piece that came off checking it's depth and the consistency of the bark on the outer side verses the inner one.

The female once Dylan appeared to be done examining the bark waved the two of them to follow again and she walked down a path in the woods she could see but the children could not. They come out of the woods to another segment of beach where a group of males were in the ocean water with some animals that to Morgane resembled manatees. They seem to have a strange construction of what appeared to be bamboo that could be raised and lowered in the water, they watched at the 'manatee' would swim into the contraption and they would lift it into the air. Though on closer inspection Morgane guessed they were female as they seemed to have teats like a cow would have that tucked into a pouch when they were in the water. The males then would milk the manatee like a farmer would milk a cow, then they would lower the animal who would then swim away and join the herd that was milling a distance away from the 'milking stand'.

The males see them approach and wave to the female who waves in return and one of the males speaks, “would you like to pet one of these? They are harmless, even their male is more gentle than the cattle of your world; these are our version of your cattle. However only in the 'dairy' sense, we do not eat their flesh as we only eat fish meats and these are one of the few other mammals on our world.” The female waves us toward the 'manatee' that was coming closer to the 'milking stand' and spoke. “As he says they will not harm you and will probably like it if you scratched the top of her head, for many generations we have worked with this species. The females produce more milk than their young can use and before we had started milking them the females would get ill quite often from an illness they acquire when they have to much milk in their systems. We all do hope that they found a way to survive when we died off, as they never had really large numbers; and sometimes the 'milk illness' would kill a portion of the females.”

Dylan looked thoughtful as Morgane waded into the water that she realized only came up to her mid chest, which means due to the proximity of a neighboring island that is must be a shallower segment on a sand bar. Which again made Morgane think of manatee's which tended to live in shallow water lazily eating greens that grew in the brightly lit waters. She approaches the 'manatee' that is in the 'milking stand' calmly waiting to be lifted and milked, the males waiting to work on her after Morgane could touch her. Looking closer the animal did very much look like a manatee as well, with the walrus like mouth and gentle eyes that looked at Morgane with curiosity as she reached out to scratch her head. She could hear a low tone come from the animal as she scratched, then saw as more of the 'manatee's' approach in curiosity. The males were watching them approach amused, which let Morgane know they were probably curious about what Morgane was doing to their friend. They came all around her and started sniffing her and mouthing her legs trying to figure out what she was, Morgane could feel they had teeth, but they didn't use them as if they were just curious at what she was.

Morgane switched to trying to scratch everyone's head as the males went back to milking, once the animals realized what she was doing they all tried to get in at once amusing Morgane greatly. Dylan slowly approached then, Morgane remembering that he had a hard time with the cows when they were on the farming rotation, however he managed to scratch a few of their heads and he looked like he was enjoying himself as well. Dylan comments, “Did you notice the water is warm? It's not cold at all, or is that because of the garments we are wearing?”

The female that was showing them around came over to help scratch the 'manatees' responds, “the waters are truly warm. The only time you will find cold waters on our world are at great depths or in high mountains, all surface water that the sun touches to a certain depth is always warm. Though I am surprised you two did not notice that the portions of your body that are covered are dry, the fabric is also waterproof; which is why we use it. Young children are often given garments that cover ninety percent of their bodies to ensure that if they go swimming they can keep their body at a constant temperature. Even though we do have fur covering our bodies our children do have problems retaining a constant body temperature for the first ten years of life.”

Morgane nods her head surprised that she hadn't noticed, but the female was right, while her arms and legs were feeling wet her torso did not, however with paying attention to her garment she did notice one thing the female garment did. In water the half skirt wrapped around her legs streamlining them so that if she were swimming it would be much easier. She certainly liked the garment much more now and could see it's potential as defensive as well, if it took a diamond edge to cut it; covering your whole body in it would stop most bladed weapons from earth.

One of the males brings over a container with what Morgane estimated was the milk they were gathering for them to taste, while it seemed at least at first an odd concept; if they said the animal was akin to their cattle it probably had a similar flavor. Her and Dylan each tasted the milk, while it did taste like milk; Morgane thought it more like goat's milk. It had a flavor to it that reminded her of acorn meat, and could see just from that why they would want to drink it. Or at least from the perception of the children of the Sea, a regular human probably would find it unappetizing; since the parents of all the children didn't understand why they preferred acorn flour to wheat flour. It was as if there was something in it that they needed that wasn't in other foods in their diet., which knowing that they weren't quite human is probably all the explanation needed for that; it probably had something to do with their copper based blood.

With that thought in mind she asked Dylan a question while till scratching a 'manatee' on the head, the current one seemed to take a liking to her. “So does Simon have to be given a special diet as the school tailored the meals to the children of the sea?” Dylan looked surprised a minute and thought before answering, “I am guessing you are asking because of the flavor of the milk? Yes he does have to have a special diet, he eats the same foods as our parents do; not liking what we tend to prefer. I do say though that milk is wonderful, so I am guessing your saving you memories are so intricate that even taste smell and feeling are included?”