[ Reynir reaches up to run his fingers absently through Kisa's fur. It is plausible enough; Reynir is aware that the history of the Old World was long, and he has no reason to doubt Kieran's guess is right. But it's strange, thinking about speaking to someone from the long-distant past. He's never really mourned the loss of the Old World, because he had never known it. Never known anyone who knew it - not his parents or their parents or anyone in the village he'd grown up in.

But it occurs to him, when Kieran calls it grim, how awful this news must be to him. Even if it is so far in the future that he wouldn't personally live to see it, it's still like hearing that the world he loves has a death sentence. Reynir tries to imagine how he would feel, if he heard that sometime in the future, something on a similar scale happened, and everything he knows and loves was changed beyond recognition.

Reynir smiles sadly at Kieran. ]

Yeah. Kinda.

[ And it's not like he's blind to the ways the Illness is still causing tragedy. He'd been sheltered from it, growing up, but recently... he's learned a lot. Solemnly, he goes on: ]

Where I grew up is really safe, but a lot of places aren't anymore. Onni, my friend, the one who's here... when he was a kid, there was an outbreak in his village. He and his sister and his cousin, they got out but... they lost everything, just like that.