"Oh."

"I'm really jealous of the just-seeing thing, just-seeing pollution would be great."

"I don't have it for pollution though, I have it for whether I can eat stuff."

"Yeah, Kan said pollution didn't make any sense to you. It's okay, you're blue, you're not really ever going to have to think about it."

"I can remember things, if I have to. Since it bothers other people."

"Well, don't touch garbage or diapers or toilets or reds but mostly for the reds' sake if you touch them they'll figure your parents will have them killed."

Nod.

And Isel eats dinner with them and then heads back out to work.

"Do you feel a little better about everything, sweetie?"

"I guess."

"I'm sorry that we scared you."

"I'm okay."

"Still. Do you want us to look for children's books about all the horrible things in the world or should we just be sure to explain them when they come up?"

"Books is better than surprises."

"There might not be children's books about all of the horrible things but I will look."

"I could read grownup books."

"You think so?"

"...they're still just made of words."

"....usually small children have trouble with the concepts and sentence structure and so on. I have grown-up books if you want them. Maybe we could read them together and we could explain concepts and sentence structure and things."

"Okay."

So he gets Aradeh: Anatomy of a Massacre and The Second Straits War and When Do We Execute Innocents? and The Case Against Killing Children off his bookshelf. Aitim makes a face at him.

...gosh. She glances at Aitim before turning past the cover of the top book in the stack.

The table of contents and introduction inform her that this book is a detailed reconstruction by some Orvaran historians of the events of the Aradeh massacre, with an explanation of how they drew their conclusions and what remains uncertain.

"Honey, it's a big world with a long history. You don't need to learn everything awful in it. That's not fair to you and it'll make you so sad and it's not helpful to anyone else either."

"...you already had these books around," she points out.