"I don't really know what I want. I don't know if it's fair to - what they did wasn't worse than what I did but everyone's mad at them and you like me so -"

"...what did you do?"

"I got pregnant out of wedlock and ran off to faeries to get them to tell me how to - and then had sex with them to pay for it."

"So actually all of those things are viewed differently where I'm from. Especially considering that it is not obvious to me that you signed up for all the sex at any point in that arc there even to the degree of being prepared to swap it for what you got. And like... even if you had in fact, say, stabbed a dude in the eye because he made a weird face at you and then run off to the faeries to escape the consequences of this, nothing about that has anything to do about whether you should have to hang out with faeries who scare you? It would have to do with whether the dude you stabbed should have to hang out with you but even if you are not telling me about some dude you stabbed in the eye I do not think he is here."

"Didn't - really get along with the baby's father but I didn't stab him.

I'm mostly just worried you're imagining that they wronged me when that's not really what happened and then there'll be something more than us avoiding each other."

"I acknowledge it's - complicated? But I don't actually think that they didn't wrong you. I'm not being as judgmental of them as I would be of well brought up human beings who knew better. There's definitely evidence that they didn't know better. I wouldn't want them executed. But you shouldn't have to be around them."

- nod. "I guess that's what I want unless one of them has some other idea about how to make it right."

Nod. "I wonder if any of 'em'll come up with something, that'd be interesting."

"I think they'll be confused, if we're even then everything's right. But I don't know."

"I've caught them acknowledging any nuance beyond that! But yeah, that's about what I'd expect too."

She nods.

"Would you like earplugs? So my coming and going while you're sleeping doesn't wake you?"

"No, it's all right. I like to know what's going on. If you don't mind."

"Oh, it's fine," he says. "I just do have some memories of needing sleep and not liking it to be interrupted."

"I eavesdrop on your conversations and I know I shouldn't but -"

"I don't mind, I'm not really discussing sensitive personal matters with faeries. If I do wind up doing that we might want a different rooming arrangement, I guess."

"Or a better door. Or you could just -" she frowns. "I'm sorry, anyhow, and I'll try to cut it out."

"I could just -?"

"I, uh, I think I am finding it hard to be motivated by 'this is the decent and good thing to do' when I have been mostly motivated by 'if you mess this up they won't feed you today and might hurt you very badly' and I know that you are committed to feeding me anyway because you are a being of pure moral goodness and everything but I don't know if being mad when I am obviously misbehaving is within your capacities or would even help."

"...I am not a being of pure moral goodness, I am just, like, a decent person. I am capable of being mad at you. If, uh... stealing my stuff doesn't work as an example considering... if you decided to start randomly lying to faeries and this caused me some kind of misfortune through a chain reaction I'd be mad about that? The rooms aren't soundproof. I have not been relying on them being soundproof. If I need to do anything that wants soundproofness I'll change that."

" - okay."

"I'm not really clear on what you're looking for here? Will I be more credible in finding you generally sympathetic if I identify something you have done and go 'ah, now that was no good' so you can be sure I'm not going 'you're fine' reflexively?"

"So I mostly - would like to actually do the right thing by normal standards and not artificially low standards that are there only because as far as your civilization is concerned I am both done-wrong-by and also presently vulnerable. But I don't know very much about what that is, and also in practice when I try to do it it loses to doing whatever seems least dangerous, and it'd be good if there were chances to practice at that but I don't want you to have to put effort into making some for me, that'd kind of defeat the purpose."

"Huh. That makes sense, but I agree that setting up practice problems for you might not be the way to go about it. - can you read?"

"No."