Motek and Alt have a little talk. Transcript under the cut.
Alt snorted. “Right,” they said. “Because we’re not… we’re not enough for them. We’re not alive enough, not human enough or orc enough. We’re not enough like a person for them to treat us as such.”
“It’s not--”
“Yes, it is like that,” Alt said, blowing out softly. “They can overcome it easily, that’s true. They get used to us and how ‘bizarre’ we are. But it’s not us as a race or species they get used to. It’s us, the ones that they meet. They will be casual around you because they know you. Not around any other elf. Any other elf will need to work as much as you did to not be treated as other.”
“Some are wary around strangers,” Motek said. “Some had bad experiences.”
Alt gave them a soft look and shook their head slightly. “You know,” Alt said, still shaking their head. “You know and you’ve lived through it. Why are you defending them?”
Because it’s not true, Motek wanted to say. But they’d lived in Tehnurin, they’d traveled across countries, and they always saw how adults would snatch children away as they walked past. How every place was glad to be rid of them or ogle at them. They knew how hard everyone had been trying to get them to leave Tehnurin, to just go back to their own fucking home.
They knew, and as much as they wanted to believe that wasn’t the case here, they couldn’t help but recall the stares they’d first received by the group and the bafflement regarding them. So they just shut their mouth and turned away.
Someone had to be guarding the rear, after all.