"You may ask whatever you wish of me, Serah Yngvi. I am not ashamed of where I come from." If anything, her tone suggests the contrary. The alienage is her blood and her heritage. She takes a moment to think. "It is different, and much the same. It felt like a maze of narrow trees, where at times you looked up and couldn't see the sky but for faint cracks of blue or grey, because the buildings were built so close and leaning into one another, by design and by neglect. Some home might be parted across a lane from one another, but in their upper stories you could pass something from one window to your neighbour through their window, with neither of you struggling to reach."

She has seen it in other cities, in the poorest areas, where space was a precious commodity and people built desperately rather than safely. Many homes were too neglected for the upper stories to be safely inhabited, or there were multiple families sharing, or the homes were much smaller.

"I'm not sure I've seen damp in Kirkwall the way it could be in Starkhaven, as if nothing you could do could ever make the clothes dry or the house dry. People could get fearsome rattling in their chests in the winter, and in the summer the mud turned to dust." Much like every alienage, really. There is something fond in her tone, though; wistful. "Wildflowers could grow in the strangest places, though. They were determined to thrive against the odds." Not dissimilar to the people of that alienage, she thinks. Herian shakes herself, and shrugs. "I do not know all that ails this alienage, but I would say it is no better, and no worse. The people of all alienages suffer for their confinement and abuse, but so too can they be wondrous, despite all that adversity."

The alienage they stand in is blanketed in snow, with all tracks but Yngvi's recent footsteps already softened and distorted by snowfall.

"She?" The question is, perhaps, a little belated.