It's a bit awkward to watch someone to lipread while walking, but Ilde's been doing it long enough that she manages, and tends not to miss as much as she used to. (It used to involve a bit more tripping over her own feet than it does now, too.)

"No, it's not really," she says, shrugging, "but my family's very musical. My father." Her extended family is mostly unrelated; it had been Emery and his baby against the world for a long time. "He's a composer, and we had a lot of instruments; the first one I learned was piano, and I mostly focused on the cello, but we had a concert harp that had been in the family and I really liked it. He taught me, mostly."

Piano first because it was Emery's own instrument of choice, then singing lessons with the piano lessons, then the cello and harp later, and she's picked up violin on her own in Baedal so as to offer it as one of the instruments she can teach. There's a lot of music in Ilde's life, one way or the other, and she's accustomed to it being that way. It's the only thing, above the water, that she never has any difficulty in hearing.

It resonates in other senses.