"I'm glad you understand that it wasn't his fault," she said gently, "but it wasn't yours, either. I've heard about what the storms here can do to people ... and we know so little about how they work that there's not any logical way you could have protected him from this."

She paused for a moment, thinking of the story Lauri-Ell had told her at the meeting: the history of the Kree, her own role in it, her aspirations, her desire to be so much better than her cultural inheritance. "I understand why you'd be hard on yourself about this, after everything you've already told me ... but you need to be gentle with yourself right now."