All the World's indeed a stage

"Opal"

-from a race that has an unusually high amount of xenonite in their carapaces, which makes it look like her carapace is nearly see-through

-epidemiologist/laboratory scientist who is very, very, VERY against bringing a human or anything from Earth onto Erid. Who knows what kind of diseases would be introduced to the environment?

- refuses to speak directly to Grace for a while. Grace thinks it's because he's staring at the internal structures that are visible, she's actually just embarrassed about how outspoken she was about not having him her

-eventually starts working with Grace to figure out rudimentary antibiotics (maybe she keeps bringing him samples of... whatever counts as fungi on Erid)

-her name in Eridian sounds unnervingly like the beat drop from Sweet Caroline (much to her frustration, the rest of the researchers and scientists start doing three little stomps after it's said aloud. Nasty habit they picked up from Grace)

Her mate is "Egg", he's based on a cat's eye gem. I imagine he's whatever the Eridani equivalent of a teacher is. He helps decide which students are going to go into Grace's class

They have an offspring (I like the idea that they're called pebbles!) who's just about one Eridian-year old. Very teeny tiny, still learning how to walk and all that. I imagine that newly hatched Eridians aren't able to communicate super well, and make noises that sound like guinea pig squeaks when they need something