[ Claire knows more people who have never traveled far or at all, than relate to the way she grew up. It was bound to be odd, from the moment she'd refused to be shipped off to boarding school. An archaeologist and his traveling companion toting around a little girl from country to country. ]

Uncle Lamb went wherever the discoveries were being made, or where he suspected there might be something to be found. I think the longest we ever stayed anywhere from the time I was five or six until I was eighteen, was just under two years. Then I went to nursing school, then the war happened and that was five years of camps and bases.

[ She remembers just before the war, being young and married and thinking she would finally put down roots. It still hasn't happened, not in the world outside of Abraxas. ]

It wasn't a bad way to grow up, but I never really had the chance to make and keep friends, or go to school before I was eighteen. I could never relate to what the other girls gossiped over, and I ended more than one conversation with an awkward historical anecdote I thought was interesting.

[ It's partially why she'd latched onto Frank so young; he'd enjoyed history too, and it was one topic he actually engaged in conversation with her easily, even in their later years, when they could hardly stand speaking to one another at all. ]