I guess you're from a world where guys like me aren't around, [ Riz says with a crooked, familiar smile, like he'd been expecting a double-take more exaggerated than a bit of stammering. ] Most people around here are.

[ From worlds where there are humans, and only humans. Or humans and mutants, which turns out to be a word for someone who looks an awful lot like a human, but has special powers. Tomato, tomato. For the most part, all he feels for her is empathy; he had panicked in a way he's not proud of the moment he had arrived here, and had set out to make it everyone's problem.

If he woke up in a place like this, he thinks he probably would have fainted. ]

I don't know about you, but my dreams are never this creative. Or this long.