Jedao lets himself stumble back a have step with the shove, exaggerated, and straightens back up. Everything is a game. People hate the Shuos for treating it that way, but it only recognizes what's true: there's rules behind every interaction and guidance toward certain choices. Cheating, naturally, is also a part of games. Another reason people hate the Shuos. The Shuos make themselves indispensable, at least when they aren't devouring themselves with infighting. Shuos-zho keeps the faction together well in recent decades.

"Glass shards, a memory vampire, a teenager," Jedao lists with shrugs. Not the formal terms, and more accurately Cheris was the memory vampire stealing his memories, but it made her him... sort of. She had more of him than he did, for years. "I only just became who I am now moments before I came here."

Yes and no. It's a simplification. Truth, however, is that his voice was sore from the hours of screaming involved with the ritual, so being required to talk as soon as he arrived in order to stay warm, well, wasn't his favorite.