"Syx," Roxanne says. "Have you thought about wearing, you know, clothes-clothes?"

"Someday," Syx says, watching Roxanne put her notebooks, crayons, gluestick, colored pencils, markers, pencils, and scissors in her backpack.

They're going to their new school tomorrow (well, it's a new school for Syx—it's Roxanne's new/old school) and Roxanne is feeling a little nervous.

"Someday?" Roxanne asks, looking up at him. "Why 'someday'?"

"Jumpsuits are gender neutral," Syx says. "Anything else won't be appropriate for me until adol-e-sents."

That one takes Roxanne a minute to decipher.

"Adolescence?" she asks.

"Ah," Syx says, flipping open her box of crayons and beginning to re-organize them by color. "Yes. Adolescence. Anything else won't be appropriate for me until adolescence. Minion is such a stickler for—" He cuts himself off as he looks up at her and tilts his head quizzically. "Why?"

"No reason," Roxanne says quickly. If the jumpsuits are a cultural thing, then she's hardly going to— "I was just wondering."

"You seem—" Syx frowns, "worried?"

"I'm just nervous," Roxanne says. "About tomorrow."

"About—my clothes? In relation to tomorrow? Oh. Because I—won't be dressed like everyone else?"

"No! No, it's—"

"I think," Syx says, smiling crookedly, "that they're probably going to notice the blueness and the baldness and the…giant-headed-ness before they notice my clothes?" His smile fades into a look of uncertainty. "Do you—does it bother you that I dress like this?"

"No!" Roxanne says. "Syx, they're your clothes!"

He doesn't look especially reassured.

"Do you think my clothes are going to make everybody hate me again?" he asks in a small voice.

"No!" Roxanne says. "And if—if somebody dislikes you because of your clothes, then they aren't worth being friends with anyway. Same goes for you being—blue and bald and having a big head. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked about the clothes. I didn't know it was a culture thing. I wasn't trying to be rude."

"You weren't rude," Syx says, eyes going wide. "You can ask me questions! You can always ask me questions! Even about culture things. Especially about culture things." He sets down the crayon he's holding and places his fingertips on Roxanne's wrist instead. "I'm nervous about tomorrow, too."

Roxanne lets out a relieved breath.

"Okay," she says, "but. We're going to be okay."

Syx nods.

"We're going to be okay," he repeats. "And the—the jumpsuits are okay?"

"I don't care what you wear, Syx," Roxanne says, "as long as you don't mind wearing them. You—do you mind?" she asks.

(Syx did say that she could ask).

Syx shrugs.

"Not—really?" he says. "It really is pretty close to what I'd be wearing on Mega'x. Everybody wore jumpsuits there that I remember. Not orange though. And not this loose."

"Maygaox?" Roxanne asks, trying to pronounce the word like Syx had. "Is that the name of your planet?"

"Mega'x," Syx says. "It—yes, that's—"

"Mega'x," Roxanne repeats, copying his pronunciation, managing to get the glottal stop right this time.

"But you wouldn't call it that," Syx says, "because you're not from there. The 'x' sound indicates possession. When it falls at the end of the word, it means 'mine' or 'my'. So you'd say 'x'Mega."

"x'Mega?" Roxanne says carefully. She isn't used to words with an 'x' sound at the beginning.

"Yes, like—like that. Because the 'x' sound being the first syllable means 'yours' or 'your'. So you'd say it like that if you were talking to me or Minion. If you were talking to someone else about us and it, you'd say x'x'Mega. Because the double 'x' sound at the beginning means 'theirs'. And if you're just talking to someone else about the planet, and not mentioning me and Minion, you just say 'Mega'."

"What do you and Minion call," Roxanne pauses for a moment, and then says, "x'Mega when you're talking to each other?"

"x'Mega'x," Syx says. "The 'x' at the beginning and the end means 'ours'."

"What if the possession is the other way around?" Roxanne asks. "I mean, what if I wanted to say something about—I don't know, the ocean on x'Mega or something? x'Mega's ocean?"

"xss'Mega roh,' is what you would say," Syx tells her, elongating the 'x' sound into a hiss.

"Roh is 'ocean'?" Roxanne asks.

Syx nods.

"So 'Rox'," Roxanne says, "means—"

"My ocean," Syx finishes.

"That's so cool!" Roxanne says. "Does the rest of my name mean anything?"

"Sort of," Syx says. "aa-hn is 'sky' and the 's' sound is indicative of affection. The grammar is a bit—ehh, but you could stretch a translation to 'my ocean, my beloved sky'. Which sounds pretty! Even if it doesn't actually, you know. Mean anything."

"It is pretty," Roxanne says, beaming. "So what's wrong with the grammar?"

"Well—" Syx takes a breath and Roxanne props her chin on her hand, ready to hear the explanation.