"Despite the fact Kai crushes every flowercrown a spirit in Willow tries to place on her, the farmer she first stayed with, before I built the stable, said she is welcome to return come summer should the habitat in Wintermute offend her sensibilities, what with it being snow trodden year round," Mizu finishes explaining. She's only spoken at length about the stable she built with the help of golems, the hay and blankets needed to keep Kai warm in Wintermute, and the long discussion of how the year round winter of Wintermute (its summer meaning more light and fewer blizzards not withstanding) may be less tolerable to her horse than it is to Kai. It will be the mare's decision whether or not to spend the entire year in Wintermute. Everyone has to respect that.

Mizu serves herself yet again with hardly any prompting, a third serving, because she's truly famished and the food is too good to pass up. It's better than she needs and more, too. Of late, Mizu's eaten far more like she did on the road when short on coin, making each one stretch a long ways. Her days are busy and full. Sometimes she does not even make it to the library, all the more grateful for the way she's shifted to using the library for its purpose (borrowing books) to study them at home, whether that's her own or Vergil's. That some nights she falls asleep with the book in her lap is no matter. Kai is with her again, not only in Folkmore but in her own stable near Mizu's home, not in far off Willow (where the farmer's far more open to accepting Kai when Mizu wears a flower crown, an exception only being granted to the horse).

"It may mean more time spent in motion, going here and there," Mizu admits, "but a horse's needs cannot be overlooked. I'd gladly make the trek to Willow every day, as I did in the first days since Kai showed up on my doorstep."

Her lips curl up into a smile, and Mizu looks at Vergil. It was his doing, she's sure of it.