"I appreciate that," Xas says, with all the blitheness of someone who has never been on the wrong end of Baedal's occasional xenophobia. His inhumanity is pretty well obscured by a t-shirt. He takes another sip of his drink - a small one, to hold on his tongue to taste and feel the muted burn - and then says, plying, "Strangers, then? I don't do that either, anymore. It got old."