"Thank you."

"You're welcome. Anyway plenty of espers just cuddle."

"So you have like, double cuddle incentives?"

"I do. It's supposed to be amazing, guiding. However compatibility wants opposite backlashes so I might be looking at a pretty wretched situation in that department, but it's not super predictable so I will have to shake a lot of hands and see."

"Oof, yeah.  I hope we get some working portals or whatever pretty quick."

"Yeah, me too. My parents must be frantic."

"What is having parents like?'

"Well, mine have been divorced since I was a baby, so I'm probably missing out on lots of stuff that most people have. I assume you have people who are responsible for getting you whatever kind of education you're getting, and making sure you have food and clothes and stuff? Parents do that, which you probably knew, and are also, like - my mother Ren in particular has treated me kind of like her best friend and roommate who happens to need her for any task requiring legal majority, since I was like six, but I think that's not typical, I think usually they're more managerial about it. I live with her most of the time, I visit Charlie most years."

"I did know that first part," she affirms.  "...I think I don't have any friends, either."

"...well, not everybody does but it's unusual. Do you not want them?"

"I don't know.  Are they nice to have?"

"I don't really collect them either, though I expect to have to, if I ever wind up in a position where I want to be using my powers. I think people who like having them like having them but that's as tautological as it sounds."

"Friends are great.  I hope you get the chance to make some.  ...What about at school, isn't that a good place to meet people?  Or is yours bad in some way."

"I like my educational institution, but it's made up of tutors and not peers."

"They don't have you mixing with other kids? Like, even at... lunchtime or whatever between tutoring sessions, even taking as read that all the instruction is one to one? I feel like that'd contaminate the experiment, that's not normal - it can't even be normal on your planet, the economies of scale don't work -"

"I've met other children.  I just don't see them every day as part of school.  It's a favor to me when I'm older, to have there not be too many people my age who will know me then and also know me now."

"I'm not sure how that's a favor."

"It's because I'm not -"

"If I may hazard a guess, Kennedy," Xavier interjects.  "At least in my own life, I was very different as a child than an adult, and didn't feel drawn to continue close relationships across that border.  It led to incorrect and out-of-date expectations about what sort of person I was, when I tried, and I found those expectations stifling.  So it would make sense to me, if that remains consistent, that they're trying to preserve more potential relationships for you as an adult by somewhat limiting the ones you have as a child; does that sound right?"

"Yes, I think that's about what my adults have said to me."

"Why not just... move to another city or something?"

"Verona is not a big country..."

"...is it bigger than one city? You're not exactly limited by your parents' jobs or anything, considering, you could be brought up in a random farm village with six other kids, then grow up and go somewhere else and deal with there being six people your age who you don't want to see again."

"It is not very much bigger than one city.  And then I would have to live in a farm village."

"Would this be awful? Ren's an obligate city person but did not realize this confidently till after I'd been born."