This puts the part where Thomas is coming back from a bath (I think it was in Good Boys Go to Heaven?) in a whole new perspective. And LOL they're very helpful at Treehouse, though maybe their standards of physical boundaries and consent aren't entirely the same as humans. On the other hand, with communication being a problem maybe "hands on" is the most effective approach after all. I found the crier hilarious, the concept and the actual words have a very Middle Ages feel.

It's also very interesting that the common language is visual. It reminds me of the "communities" from Octavia Butler's short story Amnesty, which are a race of organic clusters who had no sense of hearing at all and communicated by a visual and tactile language, while humans signed back to them.