"Safe isn't for this city," Benji agrees, dropping her gaze from the walls to the flame, then back on the woman who died in another life time and dimension. "The fences are too high, too sharp, and they'd take one look at us and know that we don't fit in where it's safe." When she talks without really thinking it through first, her natural habitat, her voice is almost whimsical in its patterns, melodic without music.

She ducks her head to blow on the candle, but gently, too gently to eliminate the flame; it just throws light and shadow around wildly. As reality shifts aside as if the room were made of silk curtains shifting in the wind, it pulls apart, Stephanie bearing witness to her own fears that keep pressing in, trying to get footholds in this particular dreamscape.

The room, the manacles, the drain, and even the shape of a man that on paper bears no resemblance to anything specific but still snags familiar at her consciousness. All of these dance between the shadows that flicker along with the candlelight.