"What kinds of books I'd gotten to read, how I learned to play piccolo, whether I was too cramped - like, physically, not getting to stretch my legs, seemed to be the question - in a tower all the time, what foods I like. Things like that."

"Seems reasonable. What do you think of her?"

"She seems - nice, I guess. Kind of - fluttery? Does that make sense? I'm very short on baselines to gauge people by."

"Yeah, I think I see what you mean by 'fluttery'."

"But nice. She was trying really hard. It's not her fault I've got no idea how to deal with her."

"You can learn."

"I'm worried I missed critical socializing skills that people can only pick up when they're five, or something."

"I do all right, and I didn't have the world's most inspiringly normal childhood either."

"Unpleasant. No privacy, but no friends either. The people who ran the place were about an even split between 'really invested in rules for their own sake' and 'just likes hurting people and keeping the kids in line is a good excuse'. About the only two skills I picked up there that were still useful outside were reading people's moods quickly, and hiding."

"How old were you when you got out?"

"Ten."

"And - then what did you do?"

"Learned how to steal things. Did a lot of that. Moved around a lot, too."

"How'd you learn?"

"Practice, mostly. It helped that I did all my screwing up and getting caught while I was still little and cute and half-starved."

"'Half-starved' is an exaggeration, but... they didn't feed us enough. And when I got out, well, my main sources of food were theft and the kindness of strangers. Neither one's what you'd call perfectly reliable."

"What? You keep - smiling at me."

"In this particular case - it's nice, that you don't like thinking about me being hungry. It makes me happy that you care about me like that. In general - I smile at you a lot because I like you a lot and when I look at you I feel like smiling."

"Okay."

"You're doing it again," Rapunzel says, and she squirms a little, blushing.