Sunset Valley ma'am... some other sunset

Though he was not surprised to hear it — some part of him had expected something like this — it still pained him when the name left her lips.

"No. Nowhere," he replied, though he was still toying with the idea of returning to those same wilds. His eyes traced her figure, looking for any sign of familiarity, but even beneath her scars, she was a stranger to him.

"I lived there, too" he told her, though his throat threatened to close around the words. Not tears any longer. Just a Pavlovian response, shrinking away from the wild ache of it that he could no longer quite identify.

"In Moonsong. In Moontide."

He fell silent again. The conversation was painfully awkward, though he remembered that he'd been charming all his life. He wanted to be better, to put her more at ease, to be pleasant enough company that she might enjoy it. But he found that he could not.