Private What's a Hugh Man Doing Here?

Of all the things Hugh was struggling to get used to, food was perhaps the most unusual. For a long time he'd been provided food that amounted to nutritional blocks. After a while, he'd been forced to live on what he could harvest for himself. What he could hunt. What he could make.

But the foods he ate were what was provided in his enclosure, and none of them were from Earth. They weren't even attempts at earth-bound things.

Which was the only reason that anything on the tray was even vaguely familiar to him. He recognized the dark red meat of a Knokkin in the stew, and some of the preserves looked similar enough to what he'd eaten.

He carefully reached out, taking the tray to set down on the table in front of him, and then looked up to the woman in front of him. She was... she was something, alright. She looked a lot like humans were supposed to look, but he'd come to realize that wasn't a truly uncommon thing. Two arms, two legs, one head was a very common body type, one seemingly held by the vast majority of alien species.

"You're human?" Hugh asked, which was not how you were supposed to start a conversation, but he took the book anyway, setting it aside without looking for it. He was most interested in humans and their ways, in large part because he was supposed to be going back to live with them. He didn't know much at all about them, and the only human he'd met so far was only half human and... less than helpful.

Hugh didn't really understand how it was possible for someone to not know. He'd been raised in a place where someone's species had been absolutely vital, so the idea of not knowing was... strange.

"I don't know that place," Hugh said. "Or that other place." He didn't know what CES was, or Formosa Grande. He listened to her explanation even if he didn't understand it, and when it was done he simply sat there for a moment, his shoulders falling.

"I think there are... a lot of things I don't know." He'd assumed he would have been more ready for it. That he might have understood better. But right then he simply didn't.

Before, he hadn't even understood the scale of his own ignorance, and now...

"So you aren't a human," Hugh said, making a weak attempt to make himself a shade less ignorant. "But you don't know what you are?" He was of the opinion that most humans had the same body type they did--two legs, two arms, a torso, a head--but he was sure there were differences.

A Sudari. He'd never heard of it, but that didn't really mean much, did it? He'd never heard of a lot of things.

Hugh shook his head at Azlin's question, and then paused, considering the question again.

"I don't know," he finally said. "My early memories are... they blur together with what I've read. I'm not sure how much of it is mine, and how much is just books. I think there were..." He paused, wrinkling his nose as he tried to figure out the right words. "I think there were fields. I remember running through fields of... of corn. Or something like corn." He wasn't sure if it was really corn or not. He wasn't sure it mattered.

"What was thirteen like?" He didn't really know and what he'd picked up from the crew was partial at best. He knew thirteen was a number, but simple context and having heard the whole title told him it was a planet.

"That sounds bad," Hugh said, which was perhaps the largest understatement in the history of understatements. His eyebrows knitted together as he tried to wrap his head around it, but it was... well, it was hard.

"I don't understand why people would do that to each other," he said after a moment. "Shouldn't they help?" In a lot of ways, his viewpoint was downright childish. He didn't really understand the nuance of things like crime and punishment, or even the horrible things people could do to each other. "Earth isn't like that, right?"

Well, that was something, wasn't it? He didn't even really understand what kind of an offer that was. He didn't understand the scale of Azlin's generosity. That was the problem with Hugh right then: He was so ignorant that he was even ignorant of his ignorant.

There was food to be eaten, so he started to eat. He wasn't exactly dignified with it, drinking the soup much like one would a drink. He didn't really do cutlery. There'd never been a need.

"What will you do after?" He asked, curious about what the ship was going to do. He sort of understood in general terms that they took jobs, but not much beyond that.