[ He opens his mouth for a playful retort — he can say birds, but birds are humans, which runs into the same problem — but then that phrase drops so smoothly out of her mouth that he's taken aback for a second. He's been so used to adjusting to what the people here consider normal vernacular. This is the first time, out of occasional conversations with Broca, that someone's spoken in his own.

So he stays like that, mouth open in both the arrested reply and no little surprise, before he laughs softly and shakes his head. ]

Er — well, I wouldn't know much about that. I believe centaurs share ancestry with the Pegasi of Kazimierz, but out of the Pegasi I know... Well, Miss Whislash and I have conversations of another kind, you understand.

[ ... Listen, she's very pretty. ]