Ulla smiles when she sees the instrument. "Hello, Warren. I'd never heard a guitar before I came here."

She's more interested in that than the food, though she'll take whatever is in the basket. If she must have a warden, better to have one who comes bearing music.

"Double Trouble was teaching me to play piano. That isn't portable at all." Ulla agrees. She's still missing Trouble at least a little, and annoyed with herself for growing attached to anyone.

"I'd like to hear it." She appreciates the food and will gladly eat it, but as (almost) always, Ulla is hungrier for music.

Ulla lays aside her book and pulls herself a little closer to the platters. The food is good, though even raw fish is strange to her without the ever-present taste of salt on her tongue.

Far more of her attention is devoted to the music, which she loves. She's heard stringed instruments before, both in Söndermane and from Lark here, but she's never heard this style of playing.

She listens, rapt, until he draws to a close. She's transparently delighted when she tells him, "Thank you."

"Human instruments are the best part of being trapped here," she tells him matter-of-factly. "They don't work underwater, so I'd only heard any of them during the short time I spent on land."

"My people," if they even count as her people anymore; the people she came from, at any rate, "are all singers, and I'm a composer."

"Not really. Nothing like these. Most of our music is purely vocal." Ulla is fascinated with human instruments for a reason.

"I'd like to learn. Thank you." Teaching her music probably isn't going to make her open up, unless he happens to play the perfect song someday, the way Lark managed to. But she'll take it, gladly.

She nods, reaching for the fruit platter again and taking a piece of mango.

"I've never tried a lot of these fruits," she tells him. "They're good." Even before the storm that changed its climate, Sondermane was never tropical. The novelty is nice sometimes, though she misses her frigid ocean home, lonely as it was. Open sea to swim in, as opposed to the confines of this ship that wasn't built with people like her in mind.

"All I needed was my magic. Someone already asked the Admiral to restore that." And there's a slightly wary look in her eyes as she tells him so, because as her warden he has the power to revoke that request with a few words.

"You're human, aren't you? And from a different world than mine. No one here is from mine."

"Like Lark," she says, when he tells her what he is. She likes Lark despite herself, the only person on the barge she opened up to entirely of her own volition.

She doesn't entirely trust his promise, because she doesn't entirely trust anyone, but it's still better to have it than not. She inclines her head deeply in thanks, letting him continue talking.

As for Jacobi, Ulla has been untouched by recent events on the ship. "He didn't cause any trouble for me."

"Lark and I talked about transformations," among other things. "How changing hurts. It's supposed to."

"There's less technology. Some science. Sildroher don't have much use for technology, and I only spent a single summer on land in human form, so I can't tell you much of the lives of mortals." It was a summer that altered the course of lives, and the climate around the northern seas, true. But still only a summer. "Many of them fear magic, even some of the ones who want to possess or use it. They would have been frightened of us, if they knew what we were."

"That particular sort of cowardice seems rarer here," Ulla remarks. She imagines that comes as a relief to some people. It's mostly a jarring change to her. "There are cowards in any race, sildroher included. People who are afraid of anything or anyone different."

She grew up among a sea of whispered rumors, ostracized by most of her own people.

"Of course, I suppose I'm not quite sildroher anymore. There's only one of whatever I am."