Finally Dark turned to look at Xander again, rather than out at the yard and the sky, "I think I may just be talking. I apologize. Do not pay me too much mind. I only mean to say... It can be isolating, attempting to interact with... people, who have never had to worry for their safety, at least not in a prolonged sense, not in a way other than walking down the street at night or getting lost in an unfamiliar area of town, or trying to interact with people who have never--" He gestured, grappling for the right words, and then shut his eyes, spoke a phrase in Arabic, and said, "I have felt alone and different, alien, for much of my life, you understand, but here, with you all, and with Cooger, I feel less different and strange, because all of you are different and strange. And so I do not like attending events like--that, because it reminds me I am unlike them, in all ways. And even with the nicest of them, even with Mr. Hollis, I have never learned how not to be on the outside of it all." He frowned, feeling like he still wasn't making sense, and the more he spoke, the more he felt like it wasn't thoughts for his son to hear anyway, but it was the night, and it was the unending dance of trying to have open lines of conversation with his children without putting the duty of emotional care onto them. "It is late," he said, "Alec has already fallen asleep. You should go to bed, too."
