The chair scrapes slightly as Ellis scoots it in towards her, putting his right hand palm down on the table. His left hand rests on his thigh palm up. It'll be easier to move his fingers once he's gotten warmer.

He realizes he doesn't know how to start this story. It's maybe the easiest to tell, because half of it would have been easily puzzled out by Wysteria if she weren't a Rifter, or if she'd read any of the thick, dusty historical tomes on the Blight that Fitz had irritably shelved along the bottom of bookshelf.

"I was eighteen at the time of the Fifth Blight," is what he says, looking down at his hand on the tabletop rather than at her. "Younger than you were, in the dream."

Younger than she is now.

"Did you come across anything on it, in your reading?"