"Trust me, if you'd grown up - mostly alone - somewhere where you sometimes found yourself staring down two boulders' worth of charging batodile and the only way you could save yourself from very pointy teeth was by thinking up a way to use vines, rocks, and maybe a stick to build a trap - in thirty seconds or less - you'd be intellectually sophisticated, too," Guy said to Joan with a wry raise of his eyebrow. His tone was gentle, though, as if he didn't hold the assumption against her.

He really didn't. Not now that she'd apologized. Not when she'd been so kind.

"Or you'd be dead. I guess." He shrugged. "People survive by strength, smarts, or numbers where I'm from. I'm not tossing-boulders strong and I lived what you might call a-" His face twitched oddly, and his eyes went a little wide, as if he was trying to make something bad sound less negative "-a solitary existence. Lots of solitude."

He nodded to himself as if to say, 'Good job, self, for how you worded that. Have a mental banana.'

"Anyway, I wish I'd known the eyes could do that or I'd have played dumb. I thought they were just watching us now. But you're right, I can at least play dumb this time."

He nodded to himself again. With one last look around, he started to climb down from the tree.