"People are arseholes," she observes, with a bare little sigh, and she might mean humans but she's always reminding herself that they're not all like that. They're not all just waiting to put her in a cage. (She knows this when the decent sorts are around; it's harder to remember when they're not.) "Of course it gets worse."

There's no use asking when she became such a cynic; anyone paying attention already knows.