"Um. Mom. I cannot recommend tourism there at this time."

"Agreed. I'm sorry, I really am, but... They're..." He shifts a little, uncomfortably. "... I'll just come out and say it. One of them thought it was a good idea to pick up Vern and hold her. For hours. I do not want that to happen to you."

Isabella squeezes Adarin's arm.

Kesathi, from her place beside Charlie's chair, whines and burrows her head into her person's lap.

"How would anyone think that? That doesn't make sense."

"In his world they don't have daemons. Vernaia only appeared when he came here. They don't get it. I kind of explained badly; I mentioned exceptions and she got it backwards."

"I think to get it they would have to have daemons to get it. But it was still - even in getting it backwards, even if she got it wrong, there was nothing in the action that was redeemable. Nothing."

Isabella nods.

"I'm so sorry that happened to you."

"No daemons?" asks Charlie. "At all?"

"At all. It's like they're zombies, only they still manage to - be people, if occasionally terrible excuses for people."

"It would be really weird if coming to this world had not unzombified you. I am not sure if we could date."

He laughs. "I wasn't even thinking about that, that's also a nice bonus, being able to date you. I was just thinking of how nice it was to have her around."

"If we wind up having Kystlian immigrants do you think they'll take as well to unzombification?"

"Hmm. I think in the long run, yes, but at first there would be problems because they don't know what they are and they're freaking out. But if they're in a plane where everyone has one, then they would adapt reasonably well. Normal people, certainly, the mages I would put somewhere remote so they don't hurt anyone by being idiots."

"I mean - you did demonstrate that it's a vulnerability nobody from your planet is accustomed to having."

"... True. But I think I might actually be biased now. I mean, yeah it's a huge vulnerability I didn't have before, but - I don't even know. I'm happier this way, she helps with muscling through emotions, helping me be a better person, soothing doubts that I have with other people socially, keeping me company when I'm alone but with still the soothing feeling that I can get from being alone - or, conversely, actually being alone but having something feeling like someone is there. So I'm just not seeing why they wouldn't think it's worth it unless they were in a society surrounded by people who don't get it. In this situation, they would all get it by immigrating."

"I guess we can stress-test this guess by asking some people. Certainly it should be on the 'Before You Immigrate To Earth, You Should Know...' informational pamphlet."

Isabella nods.

"This who you're going to colonize Mars with?"

"...What'd I miss?"