[Another quiet ripple of laughter at that, as though he understands the joke when in truth he isn't sure what cacti might be. But there are things he misses, things he longs for sickly despite that there is no comfort in them, only a sense of grounding, a sense of knowing the world and one's place within it. The flickering electric lights and the bright white walls and halls of the buried facility he calls home, the antiseptic overlay that could never quite hide the scent of blood. Even the madding crowds of the Underground, of looking up at twisting wires and concrete darkness, of that sensation of being securely contained.

He misses those things. The sky, big and bright and open as a wound-- it unsettles him. He isn't sure he'll ever get used to it. All this freedom that he doesn't know what to do with.]

Not comforts, but reassurances, perhaps. Certainties. Although I suppose one could say there's comfort to be taken from the familiar, no matter how hard that familiar might be.

[And as they walk through this strange new city's streets, he carefully keeps his gaze from straying too far upward, toward the wide openness above them. Tries to focus, instead, on the things he understands.]

And perhaps a different question, then. What is the strangest thing about this place, for you?