The silence isn't disheartening, as they continue - even with the voices around them, Celehar doesn't falter and fall again, keeping pace with a wild focus. It's miserable, but the emotion wears away at being evoked, turning the jagged edges of the grief into a round river pebble, held more easily in his hand, a weight more easily dropped to the bottom of the River.

He doesn't hear it, at first, when Need speaks. It's only because the sound itself is closer to his ears than the distant calling from the ghosts that he belatedly raises his head to consider her. "I..."

"If you like," he says, in the end. "To be told it again." He doesn't make the same offer, whether or not Need takes that for a denial of wanting to hear it again - he's preoccupied with recalling the voice, with listening now to that young woman's voice. "I - no. If she speaks it, I cannot hear."