"There is that," with almost brittle wryness; it's not an inaccurate cynicism and Ilde has never been the most pollyanna of girls. (Or at home with that-- it was tiresome before captivity and it's nearly impossible in Baedal, when she has this kneejerk bitterness towards people who have anything to go home to.) "The sense of, um, novelty."

This is a conversation that Ilde couldn't have right now if Irene displayed that - that expectation of strangeness, that attitude of default vs the other, the way humans look at her like she exists to provoke them and as though she's something they need to get used to. It's not fair, sometimes, to hate the adjustment period that is in many cases natural and without malice; it's just something that tends to score deep into the scars Prometheus left when they spent five years teaching her that she isn't a person, that she's worth less than a human and that this should be taken as simple basic fact.

That she isn't humanity's biggest fan isn't really the most shocking thing about her, all things considered.