On his first day in the Underland, upon learning that there were no other Overlanders in the Land of Under, Gregor had, impulsively, to the face of a man who had only been kind towards him, assumed that the Underlanders had killed them.
The second the words had left his mouth, he had realized how rude and judgmental that assumption had sounded.
Yet looking back, he wonders- was his assumption so odd, coming from an Overlander? He knows his people. And he knows that the distrustfullness towards whatever is other which society teaches anyone at a young age runs deep. How many alien movies has he watched where the enemy indisputably has been the odd-looking, capricious creature that is so different from an "earthling"? How many stories has he read about monsters, crooked-looking or crooked-like, standing out in the ground or wearing the skins of "normal" folk to blend in?
It's very easy to conflate "other" with "threat."
Gregor learned as much in the Underland.
And once he had learned it then, he began to see it everywhere in the Overland, too.
So maybe him briefly taking the Underlanders for killers - which, he thinks morbidly, isn't even a lie - no, a threat, maybe that was inevitable.
But then, Boots never did.
Not the roaches, nor the bats. Facing them for the first time, those who would become his dearest friends, yet she ran to them with open arms.
Not even the rats she feared like he did. Not to the degree that everyone else did.
That's a funny thought - it is simpler to think danger innate in a creature than not. Yet his sister, a baby then, went the complex road. Or maybe it was because she never had been taught hatred, then - and not knowing those unspoken rules made objectivity all the simpler. While for the rest of them, it took much longer to learn.