Aloth hesitated to approach the Watcher huddled near the firepit, but even over the raucous celebration that seemed likely to shake the very roof of the Gréf's Rest from its rafters, Lenneth somehow took notice of him hovering on her periphery and met his eyes. So there was no more avoiding it. With a smile stretched thin, he stepped closer and held out the cup he was carrying like an offering.

Lenneth looked at it as if it were another so-called "thermal pearl" about to sprout four arms and call her its mother. "Tea?"

"Tea," Aloth confirmed. "You were far too long in that freezing lake." So long, he thought, I was sure I'd never have this chance again.

She nodded, between shivers, tugging her cloak closer around her shoulders before reaching to take the cup between her hands. "I...wasn't really thinking about how cold I'd be if I survived that."

Because she had no expectation of surviving it at all. The thought hung unspoken between them for a moment as both the elves stood staring into the fire, an island of quiet amidst Stalwart's celebrations of the miracle the Watcher had wrought.

From the corner of his eye Aloth saw her take a token sip, then another, slowly and stiffly. Having given up the cup, his hands grew restless. He clasped them first one way, then another, fingers tapping against the back of his hand in what he belatedly realized was the rhythm of whatever shanty Kana was bellowing across the room while the townsfolk danced.

"Lenneth," he finally asked, "why did you do it?"

It took her a moment to answer, slowly turning her eyes up from the teacup. "Hm?"

"Any one of us could have wielded the hammer," he went on, the cadence of his voice picking up speed as he got to the point of what had been weighing on him like the weight of that moon-rock itself, sinking below the waves. "We would have. Gladly."

"I couldn't ask that of you," she said, her voice soft but her eyes now alert and wide as she watched him.

"Yes, you could," he argued. "The necessity was clear. And if stopping the Eyeless were our only purpose, it might not have mattered so much, but Thaos is still out there and you...are in a unique position to deal with him."

"Gotta make those nightmares count for something," she said with dry amusement, and if her grin was still a little stiff, he thought it made her look more herself than she had since they'd fished her from the lake.

"They will," he assured her with such conviction that her grin faltered and she returned her gaze to the tea. "Lenneth," he began again after a moment, "forgive my impertinence, but I'm still...perplexed. You've always struck me as a woman determined to survive, against all odds. Not that it's ever stopped you from taking ridiculous risks, but that's clearly just because you're convinced you can beat the odds, every time. But you sent us all away and took up that hammer like…"

"Like the odds had come calling," Lenneth nodded. "I know. I'm still not sure how I got out of that lake; it's all a bit hazy, like I was already half-drowned the whole time…" She shuddered. "Well. I just thought, if sinking that rock was the last thing I did, it'd be worth it."

Aloth clasped his hands tightly behind his back to halt the fidgeting. I thought I'd lost you, and I realized I never want to, he thought. Or, Whatever was worth dying for, isn't there - couldn't there be - something between us worth living for? Or, I have to tell you, before some other heroic moment takes you away from me again and there's no more hazy miracles to save you -

But as his mind grasped for the words, discarding phrase after phrase, she explained, "I kept thinking of my sister."

The word, so straightforward, cut through the miasma of Aloth's thoughts. "Your sister?" he echoed, glancing her way to see the Watcher now staring absently at the teacup again.

"If the Eyeless marched on the Dyrwood, what would stop them going further? I was in a unique position, as you put it, to stop them here and now, and if I backed down to save my own skin, and someday she paid the price for it…"

"I see," he nodded.

Lenneth met his eyes again with a rueful grin. "I know any of you could have handled the hammer. Gods know I'd barely even have the strength to wield it myself if it weren't magic," she chuckled, loosing one hand from the teacup to jestingly flex one slender arm and tease a smile from Aloth. "But I couldn't stop thinking of Bree, so it had to be me."

"Ah, so this sister has a name," he teased in return, abandoning for now, with mixed relief and frustration, the confession intended to go with the tea. This glimpse of a side of Lenneth he'd rarely seen was worth pursuing, for now. And perhaps he could draw her further out of the uncharacteristically quiet mood she'd fallen into since the Eyeless.

"Of course she has a name, you wit," Lenneth smiled. "It's actually Briella."

"You, of all people, can't blame me for curiosity. You never speak of your family, even this sister for whom you would sacrifice yourself."

Lenneth shrugged, pursing her lips in thought for a moment, then downed the rest of the tea. "Was that a challenge?"

"Consider it a request. From one who...would care to know you better."

She smiled so warmly at his phrasing that her chills at last seemed to subside, and she nodded. "Fair enough. I've nosed about in your secrets enough by now. About time I told my own."

Aloth grinned. "Oh, if it's fair we're aiming for, this could take all night, considering how many of your questions I must have answered."

Lenneth tossed her hair and grinned back at him. "No, no, too late to call that debt in now. You had your chance to question me back, every time I asked you things."

"Assuming I could get a word in edgewise!"

"Come on, you just have to append the question to your own answer!" She giggled. "Besides, you're older. There's simply more life experience for me to ask you about."

"Fine, fine," Aloth conceded with an amiable roll of his eyes. "So...your sister, at least."

Lenneth nodded but fell silent for a moment, twirling the empty teacup around a finger as she thought. "I was seven when Briella was born," she began at last. "And Bree was twelve when our brother, Tullien, was born."

"Wait, you have a brother too?"

"We had a brother."

"...Oh."

"Not for nearly long enough." Lenneth sighed, cradling the empty teacup in her hands again as if craving the echo of warmth. "Tully was the sweetest, most loving child. But Mom died giving birth to him, and Dad…well, he never really recovered from losing her." The corner of her mouth rose just slightly. "Dad was a tinker and a musician - I told you once wandering's in my blood. He was born in the Vailian Republics, spent most of his life traveling from city to city, making a living by playing in taverns and mending people's pots. Until he ended up in Rauatai, mended a clock for this beautiful trader from the Living Lands, and somehow persuaded her to marry him." Her eyes lit with the memory. "Mom always claimed she said yes because he was a wonder at fixing clocks but hopeless at observing their function, and he needed her to manage his comings and goings. Which Dad always laughed at but never denied." She sighed. "He was lost without her, that's for certain. From the day Tully was born it was Bree and I that took care of him. Dad hardly acknowledged his son existed. He sat playing sad music and tinkering with that old clock that had won him Mom's hand in the first place. He was never violent," she glanced at Aloth almost apologetically, "for which I'm thankful, but he was never fully himself again either. He just...slowly slipped away from us. Bree and I tried to...to manage his comings and goings, like Mom had done, or at least just to get him to go find taverns to play in or things to tinker. And he did, often enough that we didn't starve, at least, but never without our prompting. He withdrew more and more until, on Tully's first birthday, he never came home from his last gig." She sniffled, staring deep into the empty cup. "We found him the next day, drowned in the harbor. Never determined for sure if it was an accident or…" She broke off, her voice strained.

"Lenn," Aloth murmured, reaching out to her. She looked up and blinked, then accepted his embrace, sighing against his chest as he held her. "I'm sorry," he whispered against her hair. "I shouldn't have brought this up at a time like this."

She snorted a laugh and pulled back enough to meet his eyes. "As if our lives ever present a better time."

She had a point; they traveled from crisis to crisis, these days, and it was a wonder she kept as cheerful an outlook as she did in the face of recent trials, let alone long-past losses. At the very least, confidence was a mask she wore superbly well, and Aloth had considerable experience with such facades himself. He wouldn't press her to abandon the comfort of such a mask. "I understand if you don't want to go on…"

"Too late." She managed a fragile smile as she stepped back. "I just...haven't given this much thought lately. Guess I still miss Dad, more than I realized. But I know he was...kind of a disaster. All his life, really. Mom only mitigated it. And yet I wouldn't have traded him for the world. He could brighten any room, turn any frown into a smile, even if only for a little while." She shifted the teacup from hand to hand. "Sometimes I worry I take after him too much. Glad to claim his good qualities, but...well, I think that's why I fight so hard to just survive."

"You had reason enough to fight for that, being orphaned so young," Aloth observed.

"Yeah," she shrugged. "Plus the siblings needed me. We were on our own after that. Whatever other family we might have, they lived as far away as the Republics and the Living Lands, and our parents had hardly ever even mentioned relatives there. The Rauataians in general had little interest in a bunch of elven kids with no real ties to the community. So we fended for ourselves. I found work and Bree took care of Tully. It was hard...but we were doing all right." She arched an eyebrow at his expression. "Don't look at me like that, Aloth. We really were. Kids are resilient, you know. We were a little lost at first but it got easier. As long as we had each other." Then her face fell. "For a little while."

"Then...your brother?" Aloth prompted gently.

"I got sick first," Lenneth continued, her voice softer and her words coming slower than before. "Some sort of fever. I couldn't even get out of bed for days. I barely remember any of those days, but Bree says I must have been hallucinating, that I was talking crazy in my sleep the whole time. She...never would say if Tullien was the same way. But by the time I came back to reality, he was dead. He must have caught the fever from me, but he was too little and too weak to fight it off." She glanced down, swallowing back tears and running a thumb along the teacup's rim. "Bree never caught it at all. So she had to do everything. Bury our brother, keep me fed and bathed, keep herself fed and bathed…she was practically a baby herself."

"But as resourceful as her sister, it seems," he offered. Lenneth had resumed her original stance, huddled by the fire, clutching the teacup to her chest with both hands. Aloth restrained the urge to reach out for her again.

Lenneth barely registered the compliment. "I thought she blamed me. Tully was our little treasure; we both loved him, but he was Briella's whole life at that point. I was sure she blamed me for passing the sickness on to him."

"Did she?" Aloth asked, not sure he wanted the answer. Impressed as he had been with Briella's resourcefulness, he would bear a mighty grudge against her if she blamed her sister for simply getting sick. It was clear, whatever Bree's opinion, that Lenneth still blamed herself.

Lenneth shrugged. "Maybe. Probably not as much as I imagined, but kids do blow things out of proportion, right? Anyway, it definitely strained things between us for a while. But then...she was all I had left, as I was for her. As she got older, we got closer. It's not all tragedy and loss," she smiled. "I have years of wonderful memories with my sister."

Aloth hesitated before noting, "You travel without her now, though, and never spoke of her before this."

"Nothing so tragic this time," Lenneth laughed. "She...grew up and got married, that's all."

"Oh!" Aloth stared, wide-eyed, taking a moment to reset his mental image of this little sister from the tiny elf-child tending her baby brother to a woman grown. As Lenneth went on, he suspected she still had to pause for such a reset at times as well.

"So she's fine without me now - outside of, you know, stopping hordes of Eyeless for her," Lenneth grinned, resting a hand on the hammer now hanging from her belt. "After Tully died, Bree found work in a tailor's shop. We'd, ah, moved on from Rauatai by then. Some of my work...well, you already know it wasn't always entirely legal. I always ended up trying to pull off grander cons than I could really get away with. People caught on, we had to leave town in a hurry. Town after town. Bree disapproved, but sometimes we didn't have much choice - if there wasn't work to be had, we still had to eat. So she put up with me. We were making our way through the Eastern Reach when she took a job at this tailor's shop in a little village in the Ixamitl Plains. They do some fancy embroidery in those parts, and Bree turned out to have a knack for it. I found a dozen other jobs - mostly legitimate - while she stuck with this one shop." Grinning from ear to ear, she explained, "Turned out the owner's son had taken a fancy to her. She married him a few years ago, and, well, I stayed nearby for a while, but with no one left for me to look after, soon I took to wandering again. All the way to Gilded Vale."

"Not...all the way to Caed Nua?" he asked, watching her twist the teacup around a finger again.

"Well, yes," Lenneth said, looking almost surprised, as if she had forgotten about ending up there. "But - you already know that part. Ever since Gilded Vale…"

"I've been wandering with you," he smiled.