"I was sixteen," she says, a little vaguely; when they took her away, confined her and never spoke to her because she wasn't a person any more, just a specimen. A wrong thing, tainting their precious humanity--

Ilde curls her nails against her palm and thinks about Sonja, instead.

"You have to be careful here," more abruptly, touching his wrist briefly. "It's different, because we're all together, but there are still more humans and they still tend to think they're more important than we are." They are wrong, she's sure of that. Their fucking species is not inherently more worthy than hers. "We're xenians, here, it means 'everyone that isn't human' and anti-xenian sentiment is stupidly common."