[They had not known them. They could not have known who this drifter was, who stumbled, blue-skinned and wheezing, and collapsed upon the ground with their blood pooling underneath their mantle. They could only have known their occupation and their illness - and their race, evident by their cobalt tint.]
[Any individual one of those things would have been, had been, more than enough for entire villages to turn them aside.]
no subject
[That had been the crux of it.]
[They had not known them. They could not have known who this drifter was, who stumbled, blue-skinned and wheezing, and collapsed upon the ground with their blood pooling underneath their mantle. They could only have known their occupation and their illness - and their race, evident by their cobalt tint.]
[Any individual one of those things would have been, had been, more than enough for entire villages to turn them aside.]
[But not this one. Not this one.]
few were