Mhalir takes them over that way, and then lets Carissa take the lead as they approach; he can focus on maintaining awareness of their surroundings.

She casts Detect Thoughts again as they're getting close. "Excuse me? Is Brithombar this way?"

He is thinking that he was confused when she approached that he couldn't hear her at all but the woman just down the road mentioned there was someone wandering around with her soul malfunctioning. This woman doesn't match the description at all, though. He asks the first woman to look through his eyes and get a clarification. 

No, that's not the poor soul I ran into, the other elf reports. 

That's alarming. He hopes it's not an epidemic. "Is your soul not working?"

"It works fine! Can they break? I didn't know that! I have just stopped using it, as an artistic project. I want to explore what I notice about the world when I try to live in my body rather than my soul."

He thinks that's perfectly reasonable and very reassuring compared to there being contagious soul problems. "Huh. What've you noticed?"

"Truth be told, I don't have words for it. I think I'd grown too accustomed to having every friend and every answer at my fingertips. When you don't have that, it changes how it feels to interact with people."

"How long have you been doing it?"

"Two years."

He finds this not notable at all. "Well, yes, the city's Brithombar."

"Is there any recent news I wouldn't've heard about?"

"In the last two years....hmmm. They resurfaced the library, and there are some designs under consideration for the dock quarter."

"Well, I haven't been by in a long time but I remember thinking the library didn't fit the locale very well."

"It needed resurfacing but I'd have gone in for a stone facade, I think."

"What'd they do?"

"Oh, it's tiled. There's a new glass tile technique, and it's all right, but I think I wouldn't personally use a new technique on a facade for a big building like that, a lot of the imperfections aren't really visible until you've tried it at scale."

"That's a good point. What're they doing for the palace balcony project?"

"I haven't actually seen the designs yet? Do you want to help me with the wagon and we could go look it up when we get into the city?" This isn't flirting but it isn't categorically not flirting; she has demonstrated interestingness and good taste and they met in a moderately romantic fashion (by chance on the road when his wagon broke).

"I'd be happy to try, but I don't know very much about, uh, wagon repair."

"Oh!" he says, delighted, and launches into a detailed explanation, seemingly on the premise that anyone who doesn't know about wagon repair would dearly like to learn. 

"I'm afraid teaching me all this will just slow you down," she observes after a few minutes of explanation of axel alignment. 

He is baffled. Obviously it would be faster to fix the wagon himself but then she wouldn't know how. "Do you have an...urgent appointment?" To his mind such things are very rare. 

"Just a cousin who is expecting me for dinner."

"Oh? Who? I can let her know not to worry if we're in past nightfall."

"That's very kind of you but I generally prefer people don't do that, it defeats the purpose of trying to live in the moment without relying on my soul, if I'm just relying on other peoples'."

"Hmmmm. Perhaps I can just explain what I'm doing while I do it, and then we can be in the city sooner, if that's on your mind."