[ Fenris. She mouths that name, wonders how its syllables can sound so familiar and so foreign. She cannot picture Kirkwall only from his words, but she imagines it a bit like Odette before her now, mostly stone and wood, perhaps also with vast looming manors and stained-glass windows and pebbled streets. She wonders how literal the explosion he mentioned was, or if he meant something like a surge of hot emotion, something that precipitated conflict like a spark to dry wood. To be truthful, his story only serves to create more questions: who were these companions? Whom were they all meant to be serving? Insubordination?

It's difficult for Kida to stay focused when all she wants to do is ask, ask, ask. ]

No. [ There's a note of relief when she says it. ] No, I have not seen any of my people here. They are safe at home, I can only hope. [ That she's been pulled here is bad enough; she needs as many of her hunters and warriors and fishers back in the city as possible. Life must continue without her. ]

My people live without war, but also without contact with the outside. [ Therefore, without conflict, without change, without new life. ] At the bottom of the ocean, we live locked away from the surface, never changing. Since the Flood, I've watched our civilization decline. [ If she sounds bitter, it's because she most certainly is. Her tone is sour and filled with longing. She looks around her and despite the darkness, she sees life, she sees a city on its knees but not bent. ] Our city was glorious, and now it lies in shambles, ignored and silent.

[ Her tone has sharpened, the 's' in silent nearly a hiss. Recognizing she's spoke too much, and her emotions are rising, she turns her face away, her mouth pulled in a thin, angry line. She raises an open, empty hand between them, a pacifying gesture to tell him nothing is wrong besides a lowering of her mood. ] I am sorry, Fenris. I feel strongly on this.

[ Her people wait. All the more reason, she thinks, to get that sun back in the sky. ]