Solarel has a context. She knows the windswept plains and the motions of the Gods. She knows violence and honour. She's seen the Evercity, still the grandest place she has ever been. She has seen the secrets of Hybrasil at swordpoint. She has hidden inside TC and piloted one of their strange Gods. She even (dimly) understands the concepts of permanence, fragility, and finance. It's enough to have her think that she is experienced, well traveled, even a little jaded. Indeed, by her reckoning, there could not be more than a dozen Zaldarians who have seen more of the galaxy or its alien cultures than her. She is no stranger to the strange.

But, this? This is a non sequitur. A madness. Tribes interpreted the Codes of Zaldar differently, and the Evercity also had its own way of doing things. But saying that Zaldar did not write the codes that she was renowned for writing? It was accusing the sun of being a liar, the moon of being sus. To do so out loud, in Heartspeak, to someone who was by anyone's reckoning an outsider - her mind didn't have a place for that kind of accusation. She flinches back, watches Annika with a deeply startled expression, and only calms when she steadies herself and returns to sign language. Her mind at last settles on an explanation: Annika is possessed. It explains everything; her affinity with her geists, her disrespectful way of speech, her outburst. A Spirit - or possibly an Ancestor - has slipped inside her head. Always a risk, especially for those who showed improper respect to the temptations of the spirit world. [i]Words of blue, woe for you[/i].

Well, the Code was clear on that, too: [i]The past must not rule the present[/i]. She would have to purge the possessing creature somehow. According to the stories the best way to do that was to trick the creature into admitting its true name.

So she goes with Annika, but as she does, she gingerly pulls her arm free from her grip. <Which Spirits await us?> she signs, falling back into the familiar habit, nervous if committing to speaking in Hybrasilian in this moment might further enrage the Spirit. <Do you... know them?> 

Super subtle. Good in.