"Nah, second," she says. "My grandparents all left the Qun. Parents met in this little community they'd established with some others. But I've never met them. Mum and Dad moved us to farmland my brother and I were born."

Saying it like this -- just a statement of fact regarding her brother -- doesn't hurt. It's taken months for it not to hurt just thinking of him in even the most abstract way. But if she goes any deeper into thinking about him, then the hurt will return, as it always does.