Well... couldn't they just become one of the citizens of the new country? Do they have to just vanish? Countries are changing all the time, it's not fair to have them vanishing all over the place because a map has been changed.

Yeah, there are people here who sort of... they don't just represent the country, like leaders, they are the countries. I don't really understand it all myself, but I know one, Canada, who's really nice and friendly. He might explain it more to you.

Polite and private... that sounds like Japan. [She smiles a little. How odd to think of her country personified, but it really does sound perfect.

Her face becomes more serious as she thinks about what he said, though.]

There's no body, though, right? So you can't really bury them and have a funeral? Do you do anything to remember a dead country?

Oh, right, Aradia didn't know this either. It's... I think our planet is bigger than yours was, and there's a lot of land, so it's divided up to make it easier for people to rule. There are things like towns and cities, that might just have a few thousand or million, and then prefectures or... states, I guess, that have more, then countries, then continents. Continents don't have leaders, but most of the other levels do. Each level has a different amount of power... like, some things cities can decide for themselves, and some prefectures will decide for them, and some are decided for the whole country.

[A breath.]

Did any of that make sense?

Yeah. I don't really know how it works, but the person sort of represents and is the country all at once. I know Canada, and I met Germany, France and Iceland.