"Where I live is also distant from the sea," he murmurs, too new to this place to think of it as anywhere he's living, even on a temporary basis. Her polite inquiry of his enjoyment makes him smile, however, and he gives a slight incline of his head to indicate that he is, admiring the way the sunlight lights upon the dark brown of her hair into something nearer to gold. He's always enjoyed that about warm sources of light, like candle and hearth as well, so different from the distant shine of stars or the borrowed iridescence of the moon. The night he rules is made of ice and frost, moonlight upon the sea like shards of churning glass, the world a pale and lonely blue as he walks it.

There is nothing more diametrically opposed to him than fire, nothing which can hurt him more, and yet he is drawn to it in the way of lost children, the way of errant moths. He almost reaches out, able to imagine her sun-warmed hair beneath his fingers, craving to relive that tactile memory, but only just holds himself back. Strange, how his heart has filled with longing.

"I am. There is beauty here everywhere I turn, and people as kind as they are fair. There is a peace here I have rarely seen, and I wonder if it has to do with the vastness of the sea."