"The sloth didn't do anything. She was just a part of all this." She gestures around to the village, then drops her hand back down to her hand. One finger taps against the white dragon head. She chews on her lip as she thinks. She could probably make a joke about all of it--dismiss it without too much thought. But it's a hard thing to joke about for her with so many feelings attached to it all.

"I can't say it made a lot of sense. I went back and forth on it a lot. When it started, I was just trying to keep a friend company. She'd promised some asshole to make patrols around the village, and it seemed shitty and boring for her to do that alone. When she disappeared, I kept it going. Because it was needed. People live here, and I wanted to give them a safe place to live." Or a safe place to rest, in some cases. After hearing all the crazy places out there, it made this place seem all the more unique.

"But I still wanted to go back to the place I came from. There were people trapped back there, being put through the same hell I escaped from, and I couldn't just leave them there. I had to go back and save them." Her frown deepens, and the words get stuck in her throat. She licks her lips, then inhales a deep breath, trying to loosen them. The pressure in her chest doesn't ease, but the words do, quiet though they may be.

"About a year and a half ago, I realized that was never going to happen. They were already dead, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. People had been trying to tell me that since I got here, but I didn't want to believe them. So when it finally sank in, I realized this is the only home I have left. So I don't want anything happening to it."