Quiet that they can both feel, quiet is such an awful thing. The quiet of a cell, the quiet after battle, the quiet that comes with realising you will never go home again. It has many qualities, and not least amongst them, the ability to rot. Like a river carving a canyon wider, and wider, and wider, until it was possible how to ever cross it.

There's no point in pretending about it otherwise. So she doesn't. Simply she shifts, arranging the sewing in her lap to be out of her way even as she moved it closer, ignoring it for the moment and instead she pats the spot she had just vacated. "Come, for a moment."

She could say no, and it wouldn't be an insult, just an offer, the same as she had given her before. If involving a lot less impromptu dragging her off this time.