The day after the Presentation, Harper was surprised by a visit from Ophelia.  Alexander was working on routine maintenance for the mechsuits in Building 14, so it was just the two of them talking.  This was the longest she'd ever been in conversation with someone from Earth, and the first time it had ever happened when there were not other Martians also present.  At first, Harper felt nervous, but she invited Ophelia in and tried to be friendly.

Ophelia, on the other hand, seemed to be very relaxed, and genuinely friendly, so after not very long they were laughing and talking together, almost fully at ease.  Harper was almost never really fully at ease, except occasionally with Alexander, so this was almost a new experience for her given that Ophelia was someone she had just met recently.  They talked for a few minutes about what living on Mars was like, what living on Earth was like, and what the trip from Earth to Mars had been like.  Harper was a bit intimidated by how much Ophelia had seen and done, but she had an easy manner, and by making a few jokes at her own expense (such as telling the story of trying to use a near-zero gravity toilet the first time), soon put Harper into a relaxed mood.  Then, came a knock on the door.

It was Dorothy.

Not that it was all that unusual for Dorothy to visit unannounced.  Since Harper had grown up in the care of Dorothy's parents, Dorothy was for Harper something between a niece and a younger sister.  Dorothy knew she was always welcome, and from time to time she would drop by unannounced.  It was, however, a bit of a coincidence that she was doing so at precisely the same time that Harper was, for the first time in her life, hosting a visit from an Earthling, a stranger.  Harper wondered, for a moment, if it was somehow planned in advance, but the reactions of both Dorothy and Ophelia were sufficiently surprised that she concluded that coincidence it was.

Many people have had that awkward feeling that comes when two people who we know, who do not know each other, come face to face for the first time.  It is in part a sense of obligation to make sure that they get along, and in part unease about what happens if they do not.  Will one or both of them dislike us for liking this other, objectionable person?  For most people, this is a minor anxiety, soon overcome.  For Harper, it was a heretofore never experienced avalanche of dread and tension, which she had no particular strategy for overcoming, except to clench her teeth and dig her fingernails into her palms and hope that it passed.

It passed.  Dorothy and Ophelia got along famously.

Dorothy wanted to talk about the rats, but Ophelia had not done much with them.  She had, however, quite often petted the cat, Loki, which had come with the Earthlings to Mars.  Harper had seen pictures of it, but was frightened of its claws and teeth.  Ophelia's description of sleeping with Loki curled up by her head or on her lap, made her sound to Harper nearly the equivalent of a lion tamer.  Dorothy talked about her brief visit to the spaceship, which Ophelia found to be an entertaining perspective on it, and they compared notes on their impressions when each had entered it for the first time.

Others might have found it annoying to have two friends, who have just met, start talking to one another more than either one talked to them, but Harper found it a relief.  She could sit back and relax and follow the conversation, saying only as much as she felt like, without any sense of obligation to fill the silence.  Dorothy and Ophelia were both good conversationalists, and each knew about a world that the other had curiousity about.

Eventually, the conversation circled around to the recent Presentation, in which Sophia and William had presented their baby, Nathaniel, to the rest of the Colony.

"It was just so weird," said Ophelia.

"Weird?" said Dorothy, sounding both surprised and a little offended.  Ophelia backtracked quickly.

"Maybe that's not the right word," said Ophelia.  "I just mean it was odd, to me, to hear so much fuss being made about being a mother, and it was almost like they were ignoring everything else about poor Sophia.  She's a whole person, not just a mother."

Dorothy paused, and thought.  Did Sophia feel like she was being ignored, except as a mother?  Dorothy had never really thought of it that way, and wasn't sure what the answer was.

"I doubt Sophia thought of it that way, did she?" asked Dorothy, but she sounded uncertain.

"Of course not, she's been told all her life that being a mother is the end-all and be-all of her existence," said Ophelia.  It occurred to Dorothy to ask how Ophelia could know what Sophia had been told all her life, but she let that point pass to make another one.

"Well I'm glad my mom was a mother," she said.  "And yours," because it made it sound not quite such a rude rebuke to Ophelia.  For her part, Ophelia seemed to take no offense.

"Oh sure, me too," she said, "I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being a mother.  I'm just saying that it's not like you're a failure if you're not.  Plenty of women who do lots of great things in life, who never become a baby factory.  Women can do a lot of other things, too, is all I'm saying, but you don't see everyone circling around them to say how great they are."

Dorothy was uncertain what to say, for a moment.  Had anyone said Sophia would be a failure if she didn't become a mother?  Had anyone even thought that?  Harper, on the other hand, was enthusiastically agreeing, as if Ophelia had just said out loud something she had been thinking for a long time.

"Yes!  That makes sense.  Do they not do Presentations on Earth?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that," said Ophelia.  "I mean, sure, the mother brings the baby with her to places for the first time, but it's not a big deal."

"That sounds so much more relaxed," said Harper, sounding suddenly very happy.  Dorothy decided to say nothing more about the topic, and the conversation soon moved on to other subjects.

They kept talking for hours.  Ophelia sat upright in her chair, one arm crooked behind her on the back of the chair, legs crossed.  Harper sat on her chair like it was a bed, feet pulled up onto the seat of the chair and chin on her knees when her head wasn't thrown back in a laugh.  Dorothy sat on the third chair with her hands on the table, tipping the chair back onto two legs and swaying it slightly back and forth.  They talked about every topic under the sun, on multiple planets.  Dorothy and Harper told Ophelia about everything funny or exciting that had ever happened to them on Mars, and Ophelia answered every question that they had ever had about living on Earth.  Harper wished that it would never end.

When Alexander returned,  he and Ophelia were cordial and polite to one another, but it was late in the evening, and the natural signal for the end to the three ladies' talk.  Dorothy and Ophelia chatted a bit more on the way back to Building 29, and when they arrived, Ophelia made a gift to her.

"It's a book!" said Dorothy, astonished as she flipped through it's clean white pages.

"Yeah, I heard that you didn't have a source of paper here," said Ophelia, "and sometimes it's nice to write things down on physical paper."

"Wow!  This is amazing!  Thank you so much!"

"Don't mention it," said Ophelia with a smile.  "Oh, and one thing to know, is that sometimes the blank page can be intimidating at first.  Just write, or draw, something silly and kind of stupid on it at first, just to break that spell that makes you think you have to put something perfect on it.  Just write your thoughts on it, for you to look at whenever you want.  Or doodle, or do whatever you feel like.  It's your decision, it's your book."

Dorothy thanked her again, and then Ophelia walked to her apartment and Dorothy to hers.  For some reason she wasn't quite sure of, she kept the book hidden inside her clothes as she entered, quickly said good night to her parents, and then got into her bed, moving quietly so as not to wake up Ruth.  She stared at the ceiling in the darkness for a long time.