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[survivra]

I need to learn how to make maps. Big maps—I know how to do towns and short distances between roads, but that's not big enough. And I want to know about trading ships. How far do they sail? Do their captains take passengers?

[ She rattles off her list of questions with no explanation, because don't these sound like any reasonable questions no matter why she's asking them? Katsa opens her mouth to say something else, stops, frowns, and then starts again with less of a demand in her voice. This is far more awkward for her, something she's unused to asking or even desiring, and so it's the more difficult request. ]

And... I don't wish to continue training on my own. I don't mean in magic. I've plenty of help. And I don't mean that I need teachers. I need someone who can challenge my Grace. Who can push me so that I don't stop becoming faster and stronger, as far as I can.

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[survivra]

[ She sees that flicker even in the bare, brief moment that it flashes across his face. It isn't that Katsa particularly tends towards reading others well—quite the opposite, in fact, for she often misses what is right in front of her face. But that lack of tendency becomes an unnatural ability to pick up on the smallest of details among the people about whom she cares the most, whom she watches and wishes to know when they are happy and when they are in pain. So for all that it's brief when the look appears on Arno's face Katsa sees it; and she knows, as surely as she has ever known anything, that something is wrong.

But in that short moment of silence in which Katsa nearly lurches to her feet from where she's sitting she cannot grasp at what could possibly be wrong, and the look vanishes. Perhaps she imagined it, she thinks, for Arno's response is almost something as normal as anything else he has said—yet it is not quite, something in his words too serious, something in his shoulders too stiff.

Yes, something is definitely wrong. And she's ready to ignore their banter of only seconds before and demand to know what that something is when she's notified that he's locked the feed. Locked the feed. A cold, horrible sinking feeling suddenly floods her chest and chokes her throat and she realizes what she’s done wrong. She’d been so comfortable. So secure. And so she’d forgotten how they were speaking and teased him for the secrets he’d shared with her, and their conversation hadn’t been private at all. ]

Arno—

[ The realization at what she’s done is striking in the look on her face that might almost be horror at her own mistake. She’s ready to apologize, too, and it’s halfway out of her mouth—Forgive me—when his face turns hard and angry and her name snaps out of his mouth in a way she’s never heard before. Anything she might have said dies on her tongue right then, and all she can do is listen. ]