they were not joyous or reverent. They did not greet you with cheers or thrown flowers or babies in need of blessing, as they would a hero. They did not even greet you with a hot meal or a spare bed, as they would a weary stranger. They only watched, as if you were a thing apart from them, neither man nor woman but some third chimerical thing, as likely to break bread with them as a dragon or a lion.
