"Scare off outsiders, keep away from danger?"
By the reservoir, Srimone carefully interjected, "Emerald City is quite safe, and you guys don't look like troublemakers or people with belongings, um, sorry, I mean, what danger could there possibly be?"
The abandoned reservoir quieted down.
Vonyak snorted.
"Danger? There's plenty of it."
Uncle Hauser sighed, "Everything, everything that comes from normal people, poses danger to us."
Srimone was completely baffled.
"Gazes," Sherryl suddenly spoke up, drawing the attention of many, "the gazes of normal people, their words, and everything they can do because they are 'normal', all that inflicts harm on us."
"That's not all," Uncle Hauser stopped his work and reflected, "their pity, sympathy, disdain, curses, exclusion, isolation, there's too much. And to them, on the surface, we can only ever be half a person."
He gestured to his own height with an ironic expression on his face.
