A beaded curtain hung beneath the sign. Roveg passed through it, taking a moment to disentangle a few of the strings from where they’d caught in the ridges of his shell. He took in his surroundings, and his heart melted. ‘Oh, stars,’ he chuckled to himself.

The Goran Natural History Museum consisted of a single room crammed with tables, and atop the tables lay … well, rocks, mostly. There were big rocks and small rocks, rocks in boxes, rocks in stacks, rocks atop sagging pedestals, shards and pebbles and vials of dirt. The ostensible exhibits were marked with placards made from the same printer as the rest of the Five-Hop’s signage, and proclaimed titles like ‘Planetary Formation’, ‘Early Eras’, and ‘Anthropological Relics’. This last sign was posted above the only table in the Goran Natural History Museum which did not contain rocks, but rather, everyday bits and bobs that appeared to have fallen out of the pockets of dozens of travellers. Every cheap gadget and forgotten trinket was displayed and labelled as though it were precious treasure. Roveg thought that perhaps, to the curator, that’s exactly what they were.

Outside, someone came running – four paws, hitting the path hard. The sound grew closer and closer until at last Tupo burst through the curtain with a loud clatter, nearly getting xyr feet tangled in the beaded strings as xe skidded to a halt.

‘Welcome to my museum,’ Tupo gasped. There was glee in xyr voice, a sound that had been completely absent when Tupo had greeted Roveg at the airlock, or offered him cakes in the garden, or recited anything that had been xyr mother’s idea. But said glee was somewhat smothered, as the child was out of breath. (Lungs were limited in that respect, Roveg had learned; he was grateful for the much more sensible layout of his multiple abdominal airways.) ‘If you have – if you have any quest— whew, hang on.’ Tupo rested xyr head against the back of xyr lower neck and tried to catch xyr breath. ‘I was in the kitchen when I saw you come in.’

‘Sorry, should I have found you before entering?’ Roveg asked. He hadn’t seen any signage out front about checking in or buying a ticket or anything like that. If there was one thing he was sure of about the Five-Hop, it was that there was a sign for everything.

‘Yeah, no, it’s always – it’s always open.’ Tupo’s breaths were beginning to steady. ‘It’s just … not a lot of people come in here, so I got excited.’ Xe pulled xyr head back to a respectable angle and looked at Roveg with huge, eager eyes. ‘Can I give you the tour?’

Roveg’s initial intent upon entering the building had been to simply take a peek at the place, and his impression once he’d come through the door had not given him any desire to stay long. But the situation had changed. Now, he had but one goal, and that was to give his full, undivided attention to the head curator. He’d have been a monster to do otherwise.

‘Tupo,’ he said, ‘I would love to see your tour.’

The child nearly began to glow. ‘Cool,’ Tupo said. ‘Have you been to a natural history museum before?’

‘I have indeed.’

‘It’s really hard running a natural history museum on Gora.’

‘Because visitors are so unpredictable?’

‘No, because there’s no life here.’

‘Ah,’ Roveg said. ‘Yes, I can see how that might affect the study of natural history.’

The little Laru looked at xyr displays and huffed. ‘Everybody has such high expectations,’ xe said, delivering this opinion with the gravity of someone far more mature. ‘They think natural history museums have to have fossils or plants or bugs and stuff, and I’m here to tell you that no, they don’t.’ Xe gestured proudly at xyr displays. ‘Rocks are natural, and they have a history, and they’re awesome.’

‘I quite agree. But … I do have a question.’

‘Okay.’

‘And you’ll have to forgive me, as I’m not a scientist.’ Roveg said this with all the courtesy he would utilise in a professional setting. ‘If your study is primarily rocks, is your field not … geology?’

Tupo waggled xyr neck in acknowledgement. ‘That’s what Mom said at first, but listen. I’ve done a lot of sims of natural history museums, and they all have the same story.’ Tupo rose up and walked on xyr back legs, so as to be able to gesture with both forepaws. ‘You start with planetary formation. How the planet got here.’ Xe pointed to the first table, which held a stick-and-ball model of the Tren system – an easy thing to make when you only had two orbital bodies – plus an ancient scrib that was playing a pop-up pixel projection of planetary disk formation on loop. Tupo nodded at the scrib apologetically. ‘I couldn’t find a vid of Tren, so that’s a vid of Hagarem. But planets all happen the same way.’

‘Yes, I see,’ Roveg said. ‘And there’s no shame in using a different vid. This one gets the message across. I’d say that was a good educational instinct.’

Tupo beamed and continued on. ‘Okay, so then, there’s rocks.’

Stars, yes, there were rocks, all tagged and dated diligently. Slate, 158/306, found by Tupo. Gneiss, 6/305, found by Tupo. Calcite, 184/307, present from the Aashikset feather family. ‘Who’s the Aashikset family?’ Roveg asked.

‘They own the tet house north of here,’ Tupo said. ‘We’re neighbours, I guess. Mom gives them a discount on fuel and they give her a discount on … um … I don’t know. I’m not allowed to go there yet.’