Like shit? [ Amusement flickers in his eyes. He knows what it looks like. And it is shit, with an unending chill and rats that nest in every corner. Pieces broken off of the walls and windows, blood staining the wood and stone. It's still home. ]

Humans burned it down when I was a boy. [ The answer comes casually. ] But it wasn't exactly full of good cheer even when I first arrived.

[ It is, probably, not something most can understand. How he feels about this place, his childhood. Because he knows another may look at it, at how he was raised, and think it cruel and unkind. He can't deny some of it was that. That and then some. But there's more to it, too. A warmth and belonging he's received nowhere else. Even with the old memories that have resurfaced, it's still to his slice of Kaer Morhen where he's retreated for solace. Maybe it's just that he's never had anything other than what he found here. The world has not embraced him outside these walls.

He studies her. ] I thought you were an Au Ra.

[ He's learned two things about her from the elf, and it's that she is not a dragon despite appearances and her ears are her horns. Or is it the other way around? In any case. ]