"Yeah... I don't really understand the whole 'being the same person' thing," Lalindar admits.

"Maybe I'm just hallucinating again," Ruth says sadly, in a voice soft enough to be intended for herself more than the others.

Anderson catches it anyway, and narrows her eyes at her. "What do you mean, hallucinating again?"

"I- I got lost in the woods- I got, abducted or something, I don't know, I can't remember, I- I saw things-" she gulps. "It wasn't a pleasant hallucination. No one found me for months. It took a long time for me to get better."

Anderson looks at her in concern. "It took them months to-" she starts, then stops.

And thinks about barbecue forks and gangs on PCP.

"Do you think you were hallucinating?" she asks.

"Hallucinations always feel real to the person experiencing them," Ruth says.

The words sound- learned.

"What did you think happened?" Anderson asks carefully.

"Oh, all sorts of things," Ruth says, looking away. "The doctors said, um, the malnourishment and mistreatment led to a, uh, mental break. I mean... Fairies don't actually exist."

"If it helps... fairies definitely exist where I'm from," Mason puts in. Emmalina, Morgan and Anderson nod in agreement.

 "And that's why you're probably hallucinations!" Ruth says, voice rising with stress. "I don't want to go back, they're going to send me back-"

Anderson draws her away from the table before she can keep going, arm around her shoulders.

"She means her parents, doesn't she," Emarila says sadly. It's not a question.

"Do we all-" Emmalina starts, then stops when she sees everyone nodding. "All our parents are like that?"

"Mine aren't!"

"You're-"

"-adopted!"

"They're still great," Emra says stubbornly. "My egg parents only gave me up because I'm a shren, and my parents knew I was a shren and took me anyway."

"What's a shren?"

"No one has shrens?" Emra says, looking surprised by the confirmations. "That's... Probably good? Shrens are- they can happen to dragons, sometimes. Shren eggs instead of dragon eggs. It's- we're- bad. We can't fly, and it hurts, and- it's good, not having shrens."

Morgan nods with understanding. "I'm a monster, too."

"We're not monsters, just... being a shren is bad?" Emra tries.

"At least you can look like a human. I'm stuck in Avalon with the other monsters."

"...um. Are you a weird kind of centaur somehow? Centaurs where I'm from aren't monsters..."

"Uh, I don't know what you mean by 'weird', but I think I'm a normal centaur? Um, at least of the ones I've met. Monsters just can't look like humans, we don't have shapeshifting medallions."

"And what, you just... let people call you a monster!?"