"You weren't fine. Pradnakt can tell, if you're hurt or if something's wrong with you, and we scared her."

He flinches and curls down on himself. "I- didn't mean to?" (He doesn't get how Pradnakt can tell, and doesn't understand why she cares, but he doesn't want to upset her.) "I- you still. Wasn't your fault?" He's looking closer at Daisy, searching for something - damage maybe?

"It's fine, Nova. I'm fine, she didn't hurt me, she's not going to. She's not going to hurt you, either; she wants you to be okay, and that wouldn't help." She keeps her tone calm, soothing.

He looks at Daisy for a moment longer, before at the very least accepting that she isn't hurt. Then he sort of nods, and does something that is not-quite-straightening. (He's not as curled over, but he's still making himself smaller.)

"O-Okay," he agrees.

"Come on." She leads him over to the table, sits next to him, and pours him another glass of water. "What are you afraid is going to happen?"

It takes him a minute to take the glass, and he shrugs a little. "I- just. Something? 'Ll mess up. Always do? Upset people."

And that really is as clear a thought as he has. He knows something will happen, it has to (he's not that good at not messing up), and he won't like it.

"And you think you'll be hurt if someone gets upset with you. Because that's what you're used to." She pauses again, and puts her arm around his shoulders. "That's why we're out here, in a way, is that we didn't like it that that happens, and we wanted something different."

He leans a little into the contact. It doesn't make sense to him, not really, but... "Okay," he agrees (it's easier).

"Do you want me to tell you about it? I think it'd help you understand some things, about how things are here."

He shrugs, shakes his head. "I-" shrugs again. "Whatever you think best?" he says quietly.

She nods. "Okay. So, a long time ago, Pradnakt had a master. She wasn't a slave; he was supposed to help her learn things and keep her safe, and she was supposed to help him with his work, and do her own work, and her own playing, too. And they did, and they were happy, for a while. And then - we don't know why - he decided to kill her. He didn't do a very good job, and she lived, but she knew he would keep trying until he did kill her, and she didn't want that, so she killed him instead."

"But then she had a problem. The way he hurt her when he tried to kill her made it hard for her to understand things, and made it so that when she got upset, or was surprised, she would hurt people without meaning to. And she didn't understand that she had that problem, because she was having trouble understanding a lot of things, so a lot of people were hurt, and she wasn't very happy at all. But time passed, and she healed from what he had done to her, and one day she realized that she had that problem, and she didn't want that. So she came here, and I came with her, and we found a place to live where there weren't any other people around who might upset her or surprise her, and she started to work on not having that problem any more."

He winces a little curling around the glass he's trying not to clench his fingers around. "But I- I upset her?"

(He seems to be ignoring the fact that that didn't end with him hurt.)

"She's upset about what happened to you, that's different from being upset at you." She gives him a reassuring squeeze. "But, yes, that would have been bad, before. It's not bad now, because she did decide that she didn't want to hurt people just for upsetting her, and she worked very hard on it, and now she doesn't have that problem any more - she doesn't hurt people when she doesn't want to, and mostly she doesn't want to hurt people at all."

"...oh." He sounds more lost than anything else. Like that doesn't make sense. And yet he does seem a little bit reassured by that (at least if he's hurt it won't just be at random).

She gives him another squeeze. "What part is confusing you?"

He's not entirely sure how to explain. He just knows that things like that don't apply to him (not normally). "It's...I don't. Doesn't... not for me?"

"Hm."

"Maybe I could explain it better if I knew what things were like for you before. But you don't have to tell me if you don't want to, I know it might be hard. She does think it's for you, though - if your master comes to look for you, she'll kill them, that's the kind of person she chooses to hurt."

He shakes his head immediately. (No-one needs to know what happened.) By the time Daisy finishes speaking, he looks even more confused.

"But why?" he asks. "I- they didn't do- anything?"

"Yeah, they did. If they hadn't you wouldn't be so afraid all the time." She sounds sad.

He rocks slightly, shuddering. "M'sorry," he says miserably. "I-" He doesn't understand, but he doesn't want to upset her more.

"You haven't done anything wrong. And we don't need to talk about this now if it's upsetting you, okay?" She gives him another squeeze. "Do you want to listen to some more stories?"

He relaxes a tiny bit when she says they don't have to talk about it.

He chews at his lip for a moment and then nods a little hesitantly. "If that's okay?"

"Yeah, of course." She picks a disc at random and changes it out for him, slipping the old one into one of the paper jackets. "There you go."

"Thank you," he murmurs, but hesitates before reaching out to start it.

"I'm going to go get started on the food; you can interrupt me if you need anything." And she goes to do that.