Yinliff Zahir

When Zahir realizes that Odri was human once (as an infant) he starts to wonder, could he become a yinliff too? And it turns out he can.

There are a lot of interesting angles to take this:

* Zahir is worried to ask Odri about it, because he thinks it might be perceived as an unwanted appropriation of a culture he's not part of. (The yinliffs don't see it that way, they're all too happy to share their alien tech, but it's good he thought to ask.)

* Zahir is also very religious and - as interested as he is in exploring a new body - he doesn't think that's a good reason to leave the body God gave him for one he made himself. (He feels similarly about permanent tattoos.)

* He also doesn't want it to be a permanent thing - he can't go live with the yinliffs, he'd be abandoning not just his faith but also his family and also all the new Nintendo games. But it turns out, they can put you back into your old body, as long as you're an adult: the brain is less plastic and doesn't come to depend on the alien biology like a child's brain would.

* The thing that finally gets him to do it: he's working on a user interface design, and wants to make sure it's accessible for yinliffs, with their slightly different hearing and their two-thumbed hands. So he gets to do some hands-on testing (literally).

* Then there's the sensory overload of being in a whole new body with new senses. It's in some ways pleasurable, but also very distracting, and it makes him feel pretty vulnerable!