Humans quietly did not speak of it.
Speak of it and it makes it real, yeah?
One of the leftover prejudices from Pre-Shattering.
In reality, it wasn’t so bad. Young terrans unmeaningly latching on to inappropriate first beings when they were beginning their Adult Growth cycle. Receiving mixed and confused information due to age and species wasn’t so odd, with all the travelling.
You just had to know how to handle it so it went from "No, it’s okay!" and not "What kind of counseling do you need, small Terran???"
The growing little ones may need help, but when you thought of it in terms as them seeing their surroundings as Perfectly Normal, it made much more sense. -- Anon Guest
Before Ships' Human was an occupation, it was an infestation. Stations that had Humans lurking in forgotten or neglected spaces ran the risk of infecting other ships with Humans. There were warnings. There were precautions. Yet there were no fatalities, regardless of the fear of Deathworlders. Many who gained Humans on their ship gained them temporarily, and tended to view them as a wild animal that had decided to declare a truce so it could reach a destination.
After all, the reasoning went, who was going to stop a Deathworlder. Moreover - how did they plan on even trying? They were Deathworlders. Surviving having one on the ship was something of a badge of honour. Some Havenworlders even tried to gain a Human or two for long voyages. Even then, many travellers understood that Humans would protect even a temporary home. On those long voyages, the Humans would start to bond with the non-Human crew.
That was when other secrets about the Ships' Humans were revealed. Many of them were juveniles. Some reached their maturation in the company of relative strangers. It was, owing to unfamiliarity, a rough trip for all concerned. The Infonets shared what they could, but confirmable information was as unreliable as the knowledge from the Humans.
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