Susan listened carefully. She was good at listening, as she was generally not a great one for talking. The situation Pan described was not at all the manifestation of human beings to which she was accustomed, but not at all impossible to believe. She knew souls, after all, and corporeal manifestations of incorporeal ideas, and creatures that looked like animals but were not exactly animals per se.
She understood pain, too, if not war. She had been only a bit older than Lyra when her parents were killed. As she recalled, she had pulled similar withdrawal tactics shortly thereafter. She hadn't missed Lyra's remark about not being stupid, either; since Susan was confident that no one here had told her any such thing, it seemed likely that the girl believed they might think so for some other reason. The tests when she'd first come, perhaps? They were generally geared for placing children with regard to the conventional schools here on Earth. If Susan had taken them, she knew she wouldn't have done particularly well herself.
"I see," she said, and let that cover all of Pan's statements. She didn't exactly see, but she thought she was beginning to. "Leena, may I ask...what is it you would like to do? In the future, that is, whether you stay here or go back home."