Dyssia listens.

And for once, that's all she does. One hundred percent all-in on listening. Doesn't spend time planning what to say. Doesn't line up sentences and examine them for phrasing and lyrical assonance in the spaces between parsing words. Doesn't, in the mental pause while waiting for the other person to stop talking, consider the number of tiles in the wall mosaic and, hmm, that one is chipped, isn't it?

None of that. 

He's trembling, she realizes. And the the teacup is cold against her scales. 

"You know," she sighs, and swirls the dregs of her tea, "I feel the same way, sometimes? Like, almost more so now that I know better than I did starting out?"

"I'm an Azura! An administrator species, for what good that hogwash title ever did me. A Publica Knight, a veteran of multiple battles and campaigns! I've become the kind of person I used to sigh about when I heard stories about them in the bars near the shipyards!"

She sighs, sagging back in midair as if into a heavy, padded chair.

"And somehow I still feel like the frightened kid that dove into trouble to avoid being caught by bigger trouble. I'm still… Still winging it. I thought I'd have things figured out by the time I became a hero."

It's like…

"Everything's so big, right? Like, biomancy, right? How do I [i]solve[/i] that? How do I take these hundreds of species with different wants, desires, inborn [i]needs[/i] that are at odds with each other, and make everyone happy? 

Quiet. Quiet, as if the words are hard to admit.

"I'm… I'm just one person. What good can one person do, against all of that?

"And I think the answer is, more than zero, if that makes sense? Like, maybe I don't have all the answers and solutions, but… I've made a difference, and a good one, in a limited sense. More than I would have if I'd just… let things happen. Just sat back and had an easy life."

She frowns, and swirls the dregs of her sugar slurry, before eyeing the top of the bundle of wool.

"And you could have too, Dolce. But you've chosen to… To help, whenever you can. To be someone who helps, in hundreds of ways, to make life better for the people around you. 

"And maybe, you know, maybe I'm just one person. And maybe you're just one person. But that makes two of us, and we're not alone anymore, and you know, I'm pretty sure a bunch of people working together can do what one person can't."

Are these the right words? She's not sure. But... But how can she not say them? How can she not look at this sheep and tell him how much he's already helped?