Sorvalh nodded and walked a bit away, toward a bench near the stand. Her body shape and height wouldn’t have made it comfortable for her to sit on, but for some reason it was less awkward for her to unfold and sit on the ground near a bench—a designated sitting area—than it was anywhere else. Sorvalh was sure if she thought about it enough, she could figure out where she had picked up this particular quirk of hers, but the fact of the matter was she was much less interested in that than she was in her now-cooling churros. She started applying herself to them while Tony’s stand was overrun with screaming, tiny humans, excited to cram fried dough into their gullets. She looked the other direction for most of that.

After a few minutes of quiet contemplation of her churros, Sorvalh turned to see one of the human children not too far from her, staring up at her solemnly. Sorvalh stopped chewing her churro, swallowed, and addressed the child directly. “Hello,” she said.

The child looked behind her, as if expecting that Sorvalh was speaking to someone else, then turned back to her when it was clear she wasn’t. “Hello,” the girl said.

“Enjoying your churro?” Sorvalh asked, pointing to the churro in the girl’s hand. The girl nodded, silently. “Good,” Sorvalh said, and moved to go back to her own.

“Are you a monster?” the little girl asked, suddenly.

Sorvalh cocked her head and considered the question. “I don’t think I am,” Sorvalh said. “But maybe that depends on what you think a monster is.”

“A monster fights and wrecks things,” the little girl said.

“Well, I try to avoid doing that,” Sorvalh said. “So maybe I’m not a monster after all.”

“But you look like a monster,” the girl said.

“On Earth I might look like a monster,” Sorvalh said. “Back home on my planet I look quite normal, I promise you. Maybe a little taller than most, but otherwise just like anyone else. On my planet, you would be the one who looks strange. What do you think about that?”

“What’s a planet?” the girl asked.

“Oh, dear,” Sorvalh said. “What are they teaching you in your school?”

“Today we learned about Abraham Lincoln,” the girl said. “He was tall, too.”

“Yes he was,” Sorvalh said. “Do you know what the Earth is?”

The girl nodded. “It’s where we are.”

“Right,” Sorvalh said. “It’s a planet. A big round place where your people live. My people have a place like it, too. But instead of calling it Earth, we call it Lalah.”