Sorra lets the weeping girl cling to her, not knowing what else to do--or what to say. Her first instinct is to say that it's going to be all right, but she can't help but think, in an oddly dispassionate way, that it probably won't be.

Maybe you should just let it out, is the next thing that springs to mind, but that rings untrue. Beneath the sea of the peculiar calm that's seized her today, she can still feel the hard, slick surface of cold rage. And beneath that something else still, that she doesn't want to think about but somehow knows does not look that different from the sobbing southerner clinging to her shirt. It won't trap heat as well if it gets wet, the practical side of her thinks, but she pushes those thoughts away--all of them, and hard--and instead says something true enough.

"Or maybe it's not as strong as you think. Maybe you'll learn to make it go back," Sorra says. It's probably not comforting, but it's the closest thing she can think of that feels true.