Power. The word itself was a powerful one he noted, a word that seemed to punch the air with sudden ferocity, like a bite or a kick. It seemed to break from her lips without thought, an instinctive response that made his ear flicker back from its impact. Depite the word's nature, he did not respond in kind; he nodded slowly, his eyes having followed hers to the delicate cracks that crawled through the ice.

Only when she turned to him did he do so too, a slower movement that seemed to drawl through the air before his own lips settled into the faintest ghost of a grin. He paused at her words, mulling them over before he nodded again. Then, he spoke, a quiet voice compared to the strength contained within her own. "Water creates," a pensive pause as he looked once more to the frozen river, "but...also destroys." He leaned forward then, a narrow paw pushing forward into the layer of ice by the shoreline. He pressed into the rocks and cold, pushing until it began to give beneath his paw ever so slightly. From there, a crack had formed, dark and formidable against the pure white of the ice. "And water...is not always...so powerful, so strong."

He turned to her again, head flopped slightly and eyes suddenly hard with curiosity. "Are you ever...afraid," he tested the words and swallowed hard, "of finding...those answers?" He had to know for himself, too. Was fear natural? Had he been infected with it? Did others know what it felt like to fear both the known and unknown?