Too long on the mainland, maybe. Too long wrestling the demons of atevi emotions, until what he’d studied grew commonplace to him and what he’d been grew foreign. He was fluent, he was good, he could find his way among atevi by the map he’d made, he’d made, whole new understandings that humans hadn’t had before—but he wasn’t sure he’d charted the way back.

— Invader by C.J. Cherryh (Foreigner #2) (17%)