"I don't know the country very well," she admits. She doesn't seem terribly abashed about it, however, merely follows after him up the stairs. "The swamps were very different. I miss the water and the elegant boats, sometimes."

The swamps had always called to her, a wild song all their own, a place drenched with muck that hid glimmering secrets and beautiful bayous. There were so many dead things lost at the bottom of the swamps, sucked in by the stagnating water, shredded by things with reptilian smiles and cold blood.

"But still terribly damp," she concedes with a faint smile. "It makes a lady's day so difficult," she motions to her curling hair. It's a joke, the vanity is quite affected.

The amused expression quiets, however, when he mentions that no one controls the weather, looking a little distant and slightly vexed. "There are many things that control the weather. Today I think it may be God, breathing down the backs of our necks."