Once the Blades had asked her to do something for them, she who had denied them so little (the Falinesti Incident, it carried weight, and if there were men with weight and purpose behind them that she'd been prepared to throw her lot in with then it was them) until they'd asked too much. To kill a dragon too close. Paarthurnax atop the mountain with air so chill it stung to breathe it. What is better - to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort. She thinks that when he speaks. That had been a test. The Blades. Her. Paarthurnax. Who won, she doesn't know, doesn't know if there was even a victor only that all of them are alive with others are dead. "It's not always about wanting it. It's about doing it. Having to do it because you can, because you're the only one who will," and that-- that catches unexpectedly in her throat enough that his jokes are safer ground.

Will is a strange and dangerous thing when it comes to a dragon's soul.

"I know a jester." Correction: she knows a mad assassin who wears the motley, one who tried killing her but family is family and she wasn't ever open about that anyway. "He told terrible jokes, he had this silly hat," she tries sketching it in the air (what's the world coming to when she thinks of Cicero with something you could squint at and mistake for fondness?) since it's easier than attempting to describe the walking disaster that happens to be Cicero (her brother, the way one of her families measures such things). "There was more singing? Rhyming. There was a lot of it."