"How did your whole village all decide to hide you?"

"I think mostly because they liked having a secret that they were keeping from the occupiers, and had liked my parents."

"Did purples raise you?"

"Yes."

"So you were adopted like me."

"I suppose a little bit like that, yes."

"Not very much like it?"

"The people who raised me did not think of me as their child exactly. And calling them 'mother' and 'father' was a lie I did for the occupiers and so not something I did in private with no occupiers to hear."

"Oh. Did you not like them?"

"I liked them. They were very brave. But I was a blue and not a purple."

"Oh."

"Being raised as someone you are not is very different than being raised as something you are, I think."

"They guessed because of my hair," she points out.

"Caste is a ...flexible thing in some ways. But my being purple was not really one of those ways."

"What would have been different if they had really adopted you?"

" - well, they would probably have discouraged me from skipping my work in order to read about politics on the internet, for one thing."

...that's not really what she meant but she's not sure how to reformulate the question.

Her great-grandfather does not seem to have Aitim's mindreading.

Eventually she tries "That's not what I meant."

"Oh? What did you mean?"

"Ummmmm... you said they didn't think of you as their child but that isn't just because you were different castes, was it? Sometimes people have different caste children."

"It was not just that, no, it was also that they were thinking of what they were doing as ...trying to arrange for my parents' sake that I turn into the person my parents would have wanted me to have the chance to turn into."

"...how did they do that?"

" - well, by explaining to me that I was blue and what that meant and how they died and what they were like and how to be like that, instead of not talking about those things which would have been safer."

Nod.