[ With Shinji gone, brood Mirfac is faced with what many hosts already know - that sudden and endless feeling of loss that stems from a comatose broodmate. Gildor isn't one for burying his emotions away, and despite the artificial taste of symbiote-induced grief, it hurts, and he allows himself to acknowledge that pain. It hurts like the day he awoke to find Kagolin gone, and suddenly the pain is compounding with drudged up memories of the past.

After attempting and failing to call the boy back with music and magic, he's grown desperate to find something to fill the void, and quickly. Music has already failed, and half the nest is out to hunt, (including his queen, and what if she were to fall the same way as Lavellan?). So he does what he hasn't allowed himself to do on this pilgrimage, or anywhere else he's been in over a decade-

Gildor steals a bottle of that grassy Hyrypian drink, uncorks it, and finds a spot on the beach to lay with it in private. After a while he stumbles back towards the festivities thoroughly drunk, with less than a quarter of the liquor left in the bottle. ]

One should always be drunk! But with what? With music, with poetry, with love, with virtue, with roasted whale-meat! That is for all of us to choose. Tonight, I choose wine!

[ With that, he ungracefully clamors through the sand and appears to collapse on his back. But he sways right back up, all the while holding the neck of the bottle expertly so as not to spill a drop.

A couple of Tyrisson locals wander past, unable to keep themselves from staring as they dart around him. One whispers to the other- ]

What’s a whale?

[ Gildor is mostly quiet during Casiria's visitation, save for the two-second play he puts on. A quick-thinking excuse that should erase one of their more conspicuous comatose hosts, (and potentially cause gossip, though harmless in nature). Even the orchestra in his head goes quiet as he sits back and listens to the mental conversations happening below the surface of the collective, and observes those observing.

No host presides over the meeting more intensely than Rust - his focus sharp enough to draw blood from Casiria over something worn round the Descendent's neck. For a moment Gildor idly and openly wonders if the detective notices he's being mentally watched right back. When no response comes, he guesses not, and goes back to listening. But once the aunt of the murdered girl leaves them again, he rises - moving gingerly because the symptoms of symbiote backlash and hangover are not yet fully cured - and approaches Rust. ]

What was that about?

[ He holds the image of the necklace in his thoughts, though it's Rust's own intensity surrounding the necklace he recalls. The rest are abstract colors he has no names for, the symbol that's not quite right in his mind, and the impression he has a greater reason than curiosity alone for asking. ]

You know what to do.