Cosima can't help thinking (briefly, guiltily) of Delphine. They were sort of... what had they been? It was complicated, though future-Delphine had suggested it certainly got more intense. But for Cosima's, that's a might-have-been. Less real, now, than Herian in many ways.

"One war," she says, instead. "That's... wow. I mean, I'd never been directly touched by a war at all, at home, but they were always happening. I was just lucky enough not to be in those places. Granted, nothing on the scale of Corypheus, not in my lifetime, but..." She shrugs. "Of all the things that are strange to me about this world, sad to say the conflict isn't it. What the conflict's about, yeah, that's new, but now the actual fact of it."

"I agree with you, though. The best thing for people is finding a way to get involved that works for them. Even my sisters have joined a division, and neither of them are really, uh, joiners by temperament. I think just sitting around seeing what's wrong isn't good for anybody, native or Rifter. The difference is, for now, the rifters can't just leave."

Maybe one day. Maybe never. Still to be determined.