Diana observed the meal line from the side, taking mental notes about the behavior and demeanor of her new citizenry while Titanyana interacted with them proactively, conversing with them and collecting information on . . . Diana wasn't quite sure. There was a lot about Nekh culture and society that she wasn't clued in on, though she did understand the general structure.

The Strappers sat at the top, of course, their lineage being the uncontested rulers ever since the Great Csillacra introduced them some thousands of years ago. Uniquely, at least in comparison to other domains she had been introduced to, they seemed to be an absolute monarchs. They did not have any sort of nobility or otherwise privileged class of people to challenge the rule of the Strappers, nor did they seem particularly interested in one.

There might be complaints and protests about certain actions or decisions by the current monarch, Diana would honestly be shocked if such a thing didn't happen, but from what she heard they never escalated above a formal petition to the crown. One such petition had been made to prevent Titanyana from leaving, which Diana gathered had been born of a fear the bloodline might end, but once it was rejected Titanyana and Petunia alike claimed there had been little resistance aside from regretful remarks and anxious expressions.

Returning to the structure of their government, Diana was moderately shocked to find a lack of middle men. Lacking a noble caste was one thing, lacking an administrative strata between the monarch and local governments was a separate matter entirely. There were messengers to relay royal decrees and people who occupied vizier-esque positions to oversee and direct the monarch's projects and directives, but beyond that there was a great deal of trust in local administrations to handle their own matters. Taxes were collected on time and without contest, and subsequently distributed among the clans to fund their operations.

Diana had initially believed these clans to be tribal or feudal in nature, families of high status and great influence that the monarch relied upon to enact their will, but in reality they were more like guilds - associations of skilled individuals dedicated to a single craft or occupation - just without the monetary incentive. The Nekh, it seemed, had visible physical markers that correlated to their affinity for certain tasks. It should be noted that this extended beyond physical affinity, such as big muscles denoting skill with mining or smithing, and into the realm of psychology.

Petunia, for example, had bright amber fur around her ears and at the tip of her tail while the rest of her hair was black. This made her part of the Clan of Candled Ears, which had a predisposition towards what Diana would call the service industry, particularly cleaning and maintaining a household or public space. Leno, who had a pattern of orange and black similar to tiger stripes in his fur and tail, was part of the Red-Striped Clan, a martial clan focused around standard combat. In times of war they would serve to protect the populace as they fled, and acted as the bulk of the Monarch's military retinue. It was important to remember that these clanal indicators did not necessarily restrict someone to a given clan, though they could prevent them from occupying important positions. From Petunia's description of the institution, joining a clan that did not match your appearance was only seen negatively if you could not justify your decision with results, which was fairly difficult to achieve.

These clans did possess a hierarchy of sorts, however it seemed to be little more than a slight deviation from how the Monarch ruled. 

Each clan had a grandmaster, the de facto authority within the clanal structure, who served an advisory role to the Monarch. They provided guidance on matters when asked or felt necessary and alerted the Monarch to important developments or issues that would require their input or attention. Beneath the grandmasters were the chiefs, experts in the occupation of their clan, who acted as a form of governor for the members of their clan in a geographical region, usually a collection of cities and towns. Upon the resignation or passing of a grandmaster and ascension of that clan's named successor, the chiefs would convene to select a new named successor from the next generation of promising candidates. This act represented the single instance of democratic governance she had heard of outside of the Holifanian Theocracy, a promising thing in Diana's eyes.

While the chiefs acted as governors, they only acted as such to members of their clan. Each clan had their own set of rules for their members to follow, possessing the authority to enforce those rules and punish violators. It was a system that decentralized authority to an insane degree, but didn't appear to create conflict outside of contentions between individuals of different clans.

"Is there anything I can help with?" Diana had grown bored of watching from the sidelines and joined Titanyana, hoping to gauge the public through more direct means.

"We, um, not particularly?" Titanyana snapped to attention, causing the small group she had been speaking with to flinch. "You are more than welcome to join me, but, uh . . ."

Diana scanned the Nekh in question, all of whom shied away from her gaze. They were all women, tending towards the younger side but definitely a little older than Titanyana, and were all of separate clans. This, by itself, wasn't particularly strange. The menfolk had already eaten their breakfast rations and left to perform all sorts of menial labor, those considered unfit for such tasks being delivered their food while they recovered.

Additionally, the Nekh possessed a form of paranoia with regards to intersex interactions. As explained in the aftermath of Titanyana discovering her attraction to Donovan, Nekh women could only ever have one mate, a mate they could not consciously select. It would seem that this subconscious bonding was also primarily activated by scent - likely pheromones of some sort - so there was a deliberate effort to ensure this bonding happened free of pheromonal interference. This meant a limited number of men could be in the same place as unbonded women, with the men being expected to maintain a certain level of cleanliness.

"If you don't mind my asking," Diana decided to confront the gnawing suspicion head on instead of leaving it to fester, "where are the children? I understand you have had fertility issues in recent years, but I would have expected at least a few children running about."

The ears of the Nekh close enough to hear her flattened in an instant, a segment of the line which extended well beyond what she would have assumed.

"I-I-I-I'm sorry, Lady Empress!" Diana should have suspected the Nekh would have an idea of who she was given her proximity to Titanyana and her lack of a task, but she wasn't sure if she liked that title. "W-w-we will-"

"Shhh." Titanyana hugged the woman, who stood more than a head taller than her Queen. "She won't be disappointed in you, or think you have failed her, just for this. Diana just wants to hear from the people what the situation so that she can better formulate a solution."

"I-is there a problem I need to solve?" Diana had just stepped on a landmine, and was now in full damage control mode. Surely the fertility crisis wasn't that bad. "Did I say something insensitive?"

"Not at all, Lady Empress." An elderly specimen from somewhere further down the line hobbled her way towards Diana, balancing with a walking stick as her hips and lower back shook about without control. "The young lady there only worried she failed you. It is as much a woman's pride as it is her duty to rear the next generation, and yet we have found ourselves . . . unable . . . to realize this pride."

"So even you haven't had children?" Diana was quick to pick up on the use of 'we'.

"I am afraid so, though not for lack of trying." A listless, bitter smile spread across her wrinkled face, her thoughts revisiting better days no doubt. "I would be surprised if these young ladies met someone that has given birth in the last ten years, even more so if they had met someone who's child has survived past nursing."

Diana inhaled sharply through her teeth. If knowing someone who gave birth was such a rarity . . .

"There there, it isn't so bad!" The elder moved on to the sobbing woman, taking the burden of comforting her from Titanyana's hands. "You are young, and full of vigor! Look around you! Look at the grass! The trees! The flowers! The sky! The sun! Isn't it all so much more vibrant than that place we once called home? Life isn't over for us, not at all! It has only just begun, and it will be upon your shoulders to build it, right?"

The woman stopped crying, though her eyes remained wet. Several of the other women surrounded her, offering their own words of support.

"Are you bonded, young one?" She nodded, blushing as the other made some expressions of envy. "Then you have nothing to worry about! So long as you work on strengthening yourself and try earnestly with your partner, I am certain you will be with a child in time. Until then, you must keep yourself healthy and happy. Stress and sadness are bad for the babies, you know."

Diana caught Petunia's tail flick out of the corner of her eye.

"You . . . seem to know a lot about babies." Diana opted to avoid further interaction with the nervous wreck who had only just been put back together. She was far too jumpy for meaningful discussion, and the rest of her group had become preoccupied with keeping her calm.

"Oho! I suppose I do, at least compared to these young ladies." The elder laughed a little before clutching at her back in pain. "That is no surprise, though. My occupation was of a rarer variety, I'm sure you'll understand, and the clan to which I belong believed my remaining time would be better spent in paradise."

"And what is your job, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Midwife." Joy spread across her face, pride shining through eyes developing cataracts. "It may be true that I've never reared a child of my own, but I have made sure that the women given the opportunity did not have that chance unfairly ripped from them. My only regret in life is that I could not do more!"

Petunia practically jumped at this information, subtly signaling to Diana that she would like to speak with this woman. Those signals were incredibly skittish and mixed, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to connect the dots. 

"A midwife, you say?" Diana tried to make it natural so as to avoid suspicion, but anybody paying any level of attention would be able to gather clues from Petunia's little interpretive dance. "Um, if you wouldn't mind, could I pull you off to the side here and speak with you in private? I have a few concerns I wish to address as I prepare to become a mother myself, and it would seem Petunia, Titanyana's maid, has some questions of her own."

"Of course, Lady Empress." She smiled, revealing a few missing teeth. Strange though it looked, their absence did not make her appear strange. "These old bones of mine would appreciate the break!"

- - - - -

"Hmmm . . . well, in my experience, the biggest complication outside of the tendency for babies to exit the womb in a terrible state would be how often the umbilical cord wraps around the neck." She motioned with her hands, wrapping an imaginary rope around it before squeezing. "I see it happen in maybe one out of every five births. Of those, I think about half have died in the womb, starved of an already limited nutrition from the mother, while a quarter are somehow affected during the process of childbirth in such a way that they do not live long."

The old lady had de facto shut down Diana's questions about infant mortality before the questioning even began, a child living long enough to walk being considered a miracle in recent times. Instead, she shifted towards what caused the deaths she though might be avoidable.

"I am sure that here, in such a wonderful environment, the tragedy of a mother's body prematurely ending the life of her child will become much rarer!"

"How wonderful!" Petunia would have been taking notes if she knew how to read and write, so instead she was doing her best to memorize it. "W-what about other complications?"

"I shan't speak of the rarer ones, my knowledge of such is mostly second hand and isn't common enough to consider, so I suppose the only other complication of note would be the child being oriented in the wrong direction. The head is supposed to come out first, you know, so that the arms and legs do not get caught inside as the baby is removed."

"Ahem." Diana interrupted her. "It might be a few months or years before we get everything set up, but we have techniques that remove most of the danger of those complications, for both mother and child."

"You have?!" She jumped at the news, her old ears twitching about. "I knew there was something we would be missing! I'm sure we seem quite uncivilized in comparison to the rest of the galaxy."

"Er, not quite." Even with age, the instinctual head-tilt of the Nekh was cute enough to threaten Diana's attempts at a serious dignified disposition. "It is a surgical operation that involves cutting the woman open to provide a larger opening to remove the baby."

"B-but, would the bleeding not result in the mother's death?" The elderly midwife expressed her shock with a horrified gasp. "I could only ever imagine doing that if the mother was already dying! And imagine the pain!"

"Um. I'm not able to vouch for the degree of pain given, you know, my lack of experience, but I can assure you that we have effectively mastered the process." Petunia's tail flicked about wildly, relief and trepidation dancing across her face. "I must admit there isn't much we can do about the consequences of the operation though, such as an incredibly low chance to render the woman infertile."

"I assure you, Lady Empress, there is not a mother among the Nekh that would regret losing the opportunity to have more children in exchange for the life of their current one." She placed a clenched fist atop her sternum and rapped it twice, likely something of a salute for the Nekh. "To bring even one more child into this world of ours would be my greatest honor. It is a shame I am so old, or else I would have pounced on the opportunity to learn such a skill."

"Truly. It is plain to see that you take pride in your work." Diana rather liked this little old lady, and it was clear she possessed a set of skills and experience the rest of these woman lacked. She was a midwife, one who had delivered children before, which made her important. "After speaking with you, I feel confident in my decision. I would like to make you the headmistress of our fertility education program."