She is kind, though Tandavi was kind as well, and Tandavi is no longer with him. Caneo is better at drifting away than he is at keeping promises; a part of him wishes, maybe, that Essetia did leave. That part died in the desert far from here, died watching moonlight on black water, died waiting for the stars to show it something lovely or important. Her voices rings like a song in his ears and he nods. Will they meet again? Meet here? Or will he find her body one day – or she find his – lying out for everyone to see? His thoughts are growing dark and sluggish with the cold. This body spun by dreams of heat and an unblinking sun is unhappy in this place and yet with nowhere else to go it lingers, dying still.

        “You’re not keeping me,” Caneo answers simply. No one has yet managed to do so; the idea might amuse him on another day. He blinks then, in search of the easiness before Drom’s departure. He wants to forget all about her. He recalls his curiosity about this Falls though and wonders what they do there. Essetia is one of that place, as well – a sleuth. Is she important, then? Is everyone important save for him?

        “I have never seen the Hidden Falls,” he says. It sounds like water; it reminds him of the sea that morning on the beach, with Roland. Caneo wonders – is it anything like that? His mind catches on the memory and he pauses, glances at Essetia, seeing her now in a different light than before. It is a shrewd glance, not exactly wary but calculating. “Is a sleuth anything like a thief?” he wonders next, and his tone is innocent though he isn’t quite sure why he wants to hide his reason for asking it. Maybe for the same reason he keeps from identifying himself one of the Basin – a forgotten one. He isn’t, really, and he isn’t a thief, though once he wanted to be. A part of him still yearns to understand this feeling in his chest when he thinks of herds, of homes, of families grazing quietly together. It all looks like a dream in Caneo’s mind.

        He wants it, though.

        He might devour it all, if he could. Perhaps some of the hollowness shines through his pale eyes now, as he looks at Essetia, innocent, questioning, but always asking less than he feels. A part of him is here, in this dance, wishing to befriend her and meet her again in the spring. Another part of him is just beside the first, watching and doubting, failing to understand, at all.