Tysathra smiles at her. She has a lovely smile.

Hesitantly, Irikaino smiles back.

"Yes," judges Tysathra. "Very lovely. Like a rare desert flower that only blooms after the gentlest of rains."

"...Are you flirting with me?" she wonders.

She laughs. "Only if you're enjoying it! If not, then I'm making my sincerest attempt to tease some happiness from you."

"Well. All right."

Smile.

"And don't worry about which you might prefer, I'm not very particular. Choose whichever you like. I'll not be offended."

"I think..."

Pause.

"...I might like to be friends."

Tysathra looks curiously at Irikaino.

"How curious. I think I might agree. I hope you don't mind if I have little practice with it."

"I'm hardly in a position to judge."

"Perhaps not, but perhaps you are. You'd be well within your rights to wonder how I could manage not to befriend anyone, with access to the world outside this lovely mountain."

"I have access to that world too. I stay here by choice."

"Oh, good. Else I might have been tempted to punch a sorcerer for you," she says cheerily.

...that startles her into a laugh.

"He probably wouldn't have held it against me, but I think it's best that I do not indulge."

"Yes."

"So what does keep you? The mountain's certainly lovely, but I imagine the company can get rather... melancholic."

She has a guess, actually. But she's not going to volunteer it, just yet.

"I did try living in the world, early on. It was... difficult. I had to move frequently or people would notice that I wasn't aging. And sometimes, when they noticed, they guessed why..."

She trails off.

"...Father loses his temper when I get hurt. It wasn't worth it."

Tysathra nods, solemn.

"I'm sorry. That the world was so unkind, and that you have to arrange your life to mitigate your father's temper."

"I think he might be better about it if something like that happened now," she says. "But the world is still... the world. I didn't gain much from it."

"It does have that annoying habit of being filled with people and all of their associated failings, yes." She considers. "Still. There's some beauty in it. Quiet places the tenants of the world have yet to touch, places where they've built magnificent wonders..." She trails off. Odd. For some reason, she thinks she wants to show this woman of several thousand years the majesty of the world outside this magnificent mountain.

"Yes," she agrees. "I don't know."

Smile. "Would you like to see them, one day?"

"Things... don't last."

"No. The curtains close on every play, and it always feels a grave injustice." Tysathra lets the words hang, for a few seconds. They're too weighty to treat them any other way.

"But what is a play that is not watched, even if it ends? What is a waterfall, a glade, a tapestry, if there is no creature affected by its existence, no person to look upon its splendor and call it beauty? A second death, in a way, and often more complete. Even as mountains fall, cities are built upon their flesh and bone. The mistakes made in the present teach the future, give them a stronger foundation upon which to build. A cruel cycle, but not made kinder by evasion and apathy, I think."

She smiles at Irikaino, wanly. "But then, apathy is not so much the problem, is it. I'm sorry, sometimes my reflections get the better of me."