[ She isn't the same restless, energetic sort that Jaime is, even under stress; are her movements are deliberate, and the positions she takes are stable. She remains with her head against his shoulder, posture angled to accommodate the arm around her shoulders, her own arms slack with her hands at rest against the sleeping dogs. There's no more idle fussing or lazy affection; just the slow swell and compress for tired breathing. With the way she's curled, and folded, and — if not relaxed, then at least for how less tense she holds herself, she seems smaller, more delicate. After the fracture of crying not so long ago, it shouldn't seem so surprising, but for all that she always confesses her weaknesses, and calls herself frail, she rarely looks that way. Her rigidity, and her affected indifference, and her deliberate distance — they'd formed a sort of exoskeleton of some quality that's absent now.

She doesn't notice his scrutiny. The gentleness of approach reverberates in every point of contact; it smooths, and quiets, and comforts. ]

The air was cleaner. And bright. Like the good part of summer. [ Her speech drops around the edges of words, the sounds softened. She answers Jaime, but it doesn't seem like she's talking to him — caught up in memory, and fatigue. ] We were so close to the sky, it felt like you could... reach out, and touch the sun. Or the stars...

[ It's a strange feeling, thinking about that old house. That old world, that old life; it's so far away, and so long ago, now. It's strange, too, — after everything that's happened since then, over these past years, and months, and these last weeks, and hours — to feel safe.

She can't remember the last time. ]