Ambassador by William Alexander

the games below. She shrieked with laughter every time someone got tagged, and her laugh was much larger than herself.
    â€œI’m Sapi,” she said, without looking up. “My peer name is Sapi, anyway. Is hydrogen the most common element where you’re from?”
    â€œI’m Gabe,” said Gabe. “And yeah, I think so.”
    â€œGood!” she said, delighted. “Everyone says so. If they know what I’m talking about. Hydrogen’s everywhere.” Sapi pulled a handful of leaves off the branch, wadded each one into a tight little ball, and threw them at the players on the ground. She laughed when they missed and she laughed when they hit. Some players shouted protests, but most of them just dodged.
    Kaen was still staring at him. Gabe stood on his own branch and looked out over the Chancery, trying get a sense of the place and its size.
    â€œWho made all this?” he asked.
    Sapi looked up, surprised. “You don’t have an academy, do you?”
    Gabe felt a flush of embarrassment, along with a hefty helping of annoyance at the Envoy and Protocol for tossing him into a great big roomful of aliens without so much as a hint about what this would be like. He tried to shrug off the annoyance and shame.
    â€œNope,” he said. “No academy. Just learning as I go.”
    â€œWe all made it,” said Kaen. “One piece at a time. We’re still making it. Everybody’s home environment helps to shape this one, so there should be one corner that feels like home to you. The rest is translated to look at least a little bit familiar.”
    She stood on her branch with her arms crossed, not moving. It looked kind of badass to stand in a tree without using her hands to hold on. Gabe wondered if she actually had hands, but he didn’t squint at her to find out.
    Sapi, by contrast, kept in constant motion. She jumped between branches, threw more wadded-up leaves, and tried to disrupt the games below.
    â€œI didn’t expect all this to be a big playground,” Gabe said.
    â€œOf course it is!” said Sapi. “ Everything plays. And starting up a game is usually easier than talking.”
    â€œBut we’re ambassadors,” Gabe protested. “Shouldn’twe be doing—I don’t know—important diplomatic things?”
    â€œYou don’t know very much about games, do you?” Kaen asked.
    Gabe didn’t know what to say to that.
    â€œBe nice,” said Sapi. “He’s new and confused.” She climbed from her branch to his and then leaned in close as though she had something extremely important and secret to say.
    Gabe leaned in to listen. Sapi laughed when he did. “Have you noticed how different ambassadors have different comfort zones?”
    That wasn’t the sort of important secret Gabe had expected. “No,” he said. “I haven’t been here long enough to notice.”
    â€œIt’s hilarious,” she told him in a whisper-laugh. “Some prefer to stand farther back and shout at each other, and others don’t really consider it a conversation if their faces aren’t touching. So when two ambassadors try to talk but don’t agree on proper conversational distance, one of them is always moving in while the other is always moving back. They don’t even notice it most of the time. It’s like dancing. You’ll see it happen if you stay up here in the trees long enough. Just look down and watch people talk.” She reached over and tapped the tip of his nose.“I’m glad you’re not the sort who needs to be shouted at from a distance. Kaen over there doesn’t mind close conversations, either—but only once she gets used to you, and that takes a while.”
    Kaen said nothing and did not move.
    Gabe had noticed the same sort of thing living in Minneapolis. Lots of people there were Scandinavian, or at least descended from Scandinavians—tall,