Nathaniel frowned, hoping he hadn't said something that made Garrison sad. "I'm sorry... I didn't know..." He had lived with the deaths of close family members too. He wondered how Garrison's race dealt with the sorrow of losing a loved one. When his younger brother died from a strange disease, Nathaniel didn't think he'd ever be happy again. "A lot of our young ones die before their first summer... There has been a strange disease, no one knows where it came from. I guess it's why many of my people are afraid of aliens..."

He stared back into the abyss, watching a black planet in the distance. "Back when my father was a kid, he said he met an alien. It was blue-green, with feathers and a beak like the Owers on my planet... My father said he was there to form some sort of peace treaty with our race. But my grandfather got ill and they chased the aliens off the planet..." He yawned, draping over the rail, his eyes closing. "There used to be a lot of us but... I haven't seen anyone else that wasn't in our village... My father heard that one of the tribes near the ocean had died out... I hope my family is going to be OK..." He fell asleep, draped over the railings like some sort of scarf.