I thought perhaps they had adjusted, [ she admits. After a short, awkward pause in which she chooses how to couch her words for their invisible, supposed audience: ] You know I am not familiar with a setting such as this. Sometimes [ an almost imperceptibly short second hesitation ] people can acclimate to impossible conditions.

[ People, not mortals. That is how humans talk. ]

And, [ she goes on with a sigh, ] it was a kinder, less gruesome thought than imagining their minds had been taken from them, though there is no reason it could not be so.

[ It was her own brother's favorite ploy, after all, to shape minds like they were clay for his hands, remake them in the form he wished them to be in. That Circe had escaped that fate marvels her sometimes-- and the rest of the time, she merely misses Aeëtes as she remembers him as a babe and a boy, a fierce love that has never diminished twinned with her present fear of him. It makes her thoughts on mind control a little more personal than might be expected. ]