She couldn't begin to parse what that was supposed to mean, but it sounded slightly far off from what she had said, or at the very least meant to say. It was easy to let go of as she listened to his story, he must have been a very cute kid but Kaine wouldn't ever say as much. "That's adorable." ... She wouldn't say as much until she did. "I swear, everything I hear about this man named 'Cort' makes me think he must have been my grandmother's soulmate. Or at the very least a comrade in snapping kids to attention."

Yes, a story for a story and, yet speaking easily came to her now. She had worried about what she might say or do, but it came out of her so easily. Looking at her with Bert no one could guess that she was genuinely shy with most everyone else that wasn't Nariko.

"I missed my parents all the time and that was a funny thing, missing people you don't remember correctly. When I was little I would cry over it and my grandma, she was so awkward with it. By the time I was eight she'd start clopping me with her damn cane, 'the soil doesn't need your stupid ass tears!' that's what she'd always say. I'd get so mad at her, I could never understand why she would say that. It made me think she was never upset at losing them."

Of course that wasn't true, not at all. She was grown now, and she understood that her grandmother had probably never felt their loss as deeply as she did when Kaine hadn't been able to restrain her emotions. "I wonder if we would have gotten along at that age."