He was staring at his feet the whole time she spoke. He was listening, and trying hard to feel like she was right, but everything he'd encountered here seemed.... well, as a whole, far too normal to be a place where one should try to look extraordinary. Even with it's advanced nature, other unusual inhabitants, and old women mentors. He sighed heavily and did not answer her right away, turning his head slightly as she asked about the "basics". He nodded and smiled slightly, then bit his lip and let go of her hand, reaching down and beginning to undo his laces. Not only to prove a point, or two as it may be, but also to give the little woman a show of good faith. She was being nice to him, for the moment anyway, and he wouldn't go on moaning about a trouble he wouldn't even show her.
"There is every answer there. Well. Not about the soul of a person, I suppose. Not yet, but who knows what we'll find in the future? But physically, everything.... see. Your foot... I would assume looks like a normal human's foot?" he finished unlacing the giant shoe and hesitating. "It's all written that way. In your DNA. Every cell of your body tells exactly how your foot looks, and will look, if it remains undamaged. It was written when you were in your mother's womb. Just like mine was."
He looked up and down the streets, then carefully took the foot out of the shoe, a bulgy mass inside a sock. He stripped that off and let out a sigh of relief as his ape-like foot unfurled to it's natural state. Every toe flexed out, then felt the concrete beneath it as it rested on the sidewalk. It was always a relief to let his feet free of the shoes, but as quickly as the tension from the physical pain faded it was replaced by anxiety, and he looked around quickly to make sure that they were still alone before he pointed. "I'm determined to figure out why mine were made to be these. The difference between my foot and yours. And that's where the information is; in the genes."