"Perhaps you can try next time you happen across one."

"There's a fairly decent chance if you hang out around the cities enough. Ironically, the roads are comparatively safe."

"Are they waging a war?"

"The dragons?"

"It doesn't make much sense to attack cities over travelers, unless the goal is terror or to hurt as many as possible as quickly as possible."

"We honestly have no idea what the dragons are aiming for, but that sounds as likely as anything. Probably also depends on why they're even returning in the first place."

"I suppose talking would be impractical."

"They have a bad habit of not answering questions."

"Has anyone tried asking politely?"

"I think my sister was once stupid enough to try holding a conversation with one. In the dragon tongue, too, though who knows where she learned that. It tried to set her on fire."

"Of course she did. I don't know why I'm surprised."

"She very successfully then killed it! I think her problem is that most of her stupid ideas don't have long-term negative effects."

"We should all be so lucky."

"One of these days she's going to do something astoundingly stupid and end up getting herself killed."

"There's only so far you can escalate from talking to a dragon."

"Fist-fighting a dragon. Trying to ride a dragon. Attempting to capture a dragon. Getting mixed up in daedric turf wars, probably via objecting to the concept of the daedric princes. I have full faith and confidence in my sister's ability to escalate."

"Well. You know her best."

"Hopefully she'll get herself incapacitated or so thoroughly mixed up with dragons she won't get in our way."

"Somehow I'm disinclined to count on that."

"She'll probably be reluctant to outright fight me, she's sentimental like that, so."

"An exploitable weakness." This is almost-but-not-quite a question.

"Definitely. Though I'm not sure she'd hesitate if she thought it was important for the world or something."

"Good to know."

Shrug. "It's also been a while since we've lived together, the mission we found you on was supposed to be us getting back together like old times. I might not know her as well as I used to."

Eventually they get back to the castle.