"I’d like the company," Skater said politely, though he wasn’t sure if he would or not. He balanced the bread on the plate’s edge and waited. All of a sudden it felt like he was sitting down to one of those tense family dinners back m the tribal lands. None of his mother’s family had liked him because he’d been half-white and bom of an unknown father. He’d sat there at the feasts, waiting to eat, the saliva always thick and dry in his mouth despite the rumbling in his belly.