There was sheer glee in those unnaturally blue eyes as Hana informed him that blowing up melons was easy. He liked melons, especially the ones that were red inside and green outside, but he once saw one drop off a cart at a market and since then he'd always thought about how fun it would be to wreck one somehow. Slicing, smashing, dropping, squishing, and now exploding. That settled it. He would absolutely have to track down a melon at the nearest opportunity and give it to her. That was worth swabbing the deck for. 

Honestly though, he was a little surprised to hear her say that she couldn't think of a reason for blowing him up. A crab he could understand--who would actually want to blow up a crab? But him? No one had ever tried to explode him, per se, but he had enough evidence in his short life to conclude that someone would. He thought that she knew that. Certainly if she hated vokurians that would be the case--those people looked for excuses to destroy his people. So maybe she didn't? If she couldn't think of a reason to blow him up, maybe she wasn't so bad as he'd originally thought.

Rohaan shrugged, quieting a little as he stared at his grimy toes. "I dunno. Other people do."  He said this with a kind of grim certainty that no ten year old should possess. And in that moment it was clear that what childhood innocence he had was long ago stripped away from him. Yet he had come a long way since he'd escaped the Barizians, and under Berlin's care and tutelage he had regained a little of the carefree joy that was entitled to a boy his age. He looked up at her, considering deeply with a thoughtful frown, and then  with a toothy smile he stuck out his hand for her to shake. "Okay, deal! I don't wanna eat everybody, just people that try to hurt me. And if you don't wanna hurt me then I don't wanna eat you," he said brightly. "If I did, who would teach me reading?"

Berlin, who had intentionally stayed silent during this exchange, watched the lad quietly with no small amount of pride welling up in his chest. He really had come a long way. He looked to Hana too and gave the tiniest little nod of approval. There was relief in his eyes; clearly he wanted the two of them to work and seeing progress in that direction heartened him. "Lad, there was something you were going to ask her, wasn't there?"
Rohaan thought for a moment, then, "oh! Uh...yeah.." He seemed to get a little nervous again, but only a little. "Do you, um...well tonight I'm gonna go on a long flight to spy on the Bar-i-zi-ans?" He looked to Berlin, who nodded. The word was new to him even though he knew who they were, and his particular dialect of vokurian did not have 'z' as one of their sounds, nor did they have 'p', which was part of the reason he never called Berlin 'Cap'n' and instead opted for 'Ca-mm'.  "Anyway I'm sore from training with Wheel yesterday and I was wondering if...uh, do you have stuff to make sore muscles feel better? Annndd....can we do letters again?"

---

Uban had a hunk of very dry bread in his mouth when Wheel took the kettle from him, so instead of actually saying 'thank you' he really just made some muffled noises of appreciation. He held out the mug in one hand; it shook in his grip. Swallowing his mouthful he nodded exuberantly and said, "Mm, yeah! It was fantastic! Man, you missed the finale--between her and me, we made something like grenadoes except they're a bit different. I set them off so they go off when I want them to. And like, I figured out how to arc to a fired ball so it's almost like shooting lightning, but they have to be engraved with this special...rune thing or something, an enchantment, and then I can...can connect to it. I didn't know I could do that at all until she showed me this medallion of hers. I'm doing all kinds of new things! Summoning drunk colossal turtles, making cannonballs explode..." His eyes were a bright gold, giving his expression a kind of wild vibe.