“It seemed the right thing to do.” I poked gently at my ear. Sorcha clucked his tongue at me and batted my hand away, citing the threat of infection. I drew my knees into my chest and stared out at the falling night. From the edge of my vision, I saw the orange flash of a lit match. Sorcha drew on his pipe and handed it to me. I was alone, in a strange place. My ear stung fearfully. I was bone tired. And there was something about Sorcha I trusted. He was one of those people where right from the start there was a bond. A friendship sprung up fast, easily, all on its own, without any effort on either of our parts. There was a simple consonance between us. I knew he and I were different from one another. I knew what the grins meant, what they signaled. And it should have given me pause. It should have made me uneasy. But honestly it didn’t seem to matter much. I took the pipe with little hesitance. I smoked a little and fell into a coughing fit. Sorcha patted me on the back, laughing quietly, until it subsided. And by then the herb had taken hold, and I didn’t care as much about the pain. No one talks about this, but it’s an open secret among shapers: drugs dull the gift. Herb slows things down, closes you off, and lets you relax into a bit of privacy. It made me less aware how evident my pain was to Sorcha, which made it matter less to me.

Sorcha played the violin. He sang a little. His voice did not change much between speech and song; it was situated somewhere between the two naturally. I settled against the wall of the squat house, wrapped in his jacket, letting the music wash over me. It didn’t take very long for the fatigue to get the better of me. I think I may have fallen asleep; I’m not sure. Eventually, though, Sorcha tired of the violin or the outdoors or both. He elbowed me, and I started. “Want to crash proper? You look frightful tired.”

“Yes, I think so.” He laughed, and I looked at him in confusion. “What?”

“The way you talk,” he said. He shook his head. “It’s all proper. And you sound human, you sound mundane the way you talk. It’s just odd.” He laughed again.

I laughed with him. “If I stay here long enough, I’ll end up sounding like you.”

“Yeah?”

I nodded.

“How long would it take you?”

“I’m not sure. A week, maybe two.” He scoffed. I considered not telling him, but then it came to me that he was not Semadran and did not hold Semadran standards of politeness. “I’m a mimic.”

“You are not.”