Her endless well of optimism is as endearing as it is foreign to him. He'd smile at that, if he were in a shape that could. In the serpentine shape, all he can do is duck his head a little and flick his tongue through jaws half-parted. "I'll keep it in mind," he says, and he probably will, in fact.

He's not sure he'd be a good poet, himself, but he could certainly encourage those who are, or might become.

"There is Death," he says. "And then there is Death. A change in states versus a reckoning, versus an irreversible abandonment to entropy. But perhaps the one type is no more to be feared than the other. All things end, whether to be renewed or simply to cease to be."

"I mislike war for war's sake," he adds. "There is so often a better way. But valor when valor is truly needed is a beautiful thing."

He quiets, listening to her opinion, her talk of change and omens. And he has no desire to captain a ship made of the nails of the dead, but even here he's been a harbinger of change and battle, to the alternate of his own brother. There are few constants in the multiverse. Change is one of them. There is power in what she suggests.

He unwinds, moves a couple inches closer and rests his chin on her wrist for a moment. It's ambiguous, hard to tell if it's a thank-you for an interesting perspective or a seeking of affection. "Change," he agrees softly. "And blurry boundaries, and the breaking of things taken too easily for granted. Yes."