Another sting of grief. It's a familiar pain; it doesn't make it any duller. Dimitri scoops up his teacup, one hand underneath it, the other wrapped around it just enough to steady it, and takes a sip. "It's perfect. Thank you."

He swallows the lump in his throat, and gingerly sets the cup down. "I think it's obvious that I'm not one of the Lost. Not fully, at any rate." The Wyrd eddies around him, and there's a whisper of something like a Mantle, but Dimitri lacks any Mask. "All that's here is what I was born with, more or less. I didn't traverse the Hedge, and I wasn't ... taken, as such. Not in the usual way.

"On the ship, I grew close with another pair of Changelings. Survivors of a cannibalistic House, and a Keeper that called itself Master." Just in case Dimitri's off the mark ... though he doesn't think he is. "At the time I had only a vague impression of what they'd been through, and I had no desire to press for details. But something happened -- I couldn't tell you what, or why -- that threw us into each other's memories. It was there I met that would-be Master in person. And for the same reasons that drew my friends and I together, I survived at its table."

Dimitri shuts his eyes to take a breath. His head aches. " ... sometimes I think it would be better if I had not."