Grouse Thicket A black fly in your chardonnay.

The woman proves her point. She has clearly always lived here on the mainland and finds her own sense of value within it, a comfort, and Minerva can appreciate that senitmentality. She is devoted in her own way to home, even though the island is so far away from her and so far removed from her current circumstances. When the woman brings up the topic of how she arrived here, Minerva feels suddenly too foreign to explain herself: this woman is proud and powerful, and appears to have a down-to-earth sensibility that Minerva doesn't feel would mesh with her truth, so she doesn't immediately launch in to the fanciful notions of gods and new paths and all the superstition she, herself, was raised with. There was time aplenty for Minerva to convert people to her way of thinking—this was not one of those opportunities.

But she didn't have to lie, either. The tale came easily, and Minerva tried her best to make it as simple as she could without screwing up with her accent and broken common-tongue.

I did not wish to leave, she admits, first of all. I was given mission. To find new space for another tribe. There are places on my island home that few have gone, but I thought—'Pick me! I can do it!' so, I was sent. But there was danger. I got too close to edge of water, I slip, water takes me away. It was as too-the-point as she could make it and afterward, Minerva is sighing, feeling utterly deflated by the thought that she might never see her home again. So I am here, and have nobody, have nowhere that is home.