Arialla was paying attention, as it happened -- she didn't pick up on everything, but she could tell the creatures were reacting to Mildew differently than they were to her, or would to any normal person. And then there was the way Mildew said "mortals" as if she wasn't one. At home, it would have been considered unwise -- if not positively asking for a smiting -- to demand an exact accounting of a strange immortal's nature, so Arialla just noted this fact as a reason to be extra polite.
"I'm twenty-two," she said instead, nodding at Mildew's comment -- both the one about her age and the one about mortals struggling with change. "I've certainly gotten better at adjusting. When I first arrived here, I ... Well, I've learned to cope. Not that it's not hard sometimes, but dwelling on the past won't bring it back."
This last sentence came out with a bit of regret, but not as much as once might have accompanied it. If you'd asked Arialla a year ago if she'd change the path of fate given the chance, if she'd make it so that she never came to Caido, she would have said yes. But since becoming an Attuned ... She never would have learned to fly at home.
please don't take my sunshine away
