On the surface, Solarel doesn't understand. She knows what loneliness is: It's the wilds. The mechanized harmony of the world, the susurrus of ancestors and spirits, the natural compliment of girl and rocket propelled grenade. Loneliness is not palaces, not dances, not an emotion to feel with a girl on your arm and your claws in another's brain. She [i]doesn't[/i] get it - this is terminal levels of sociability. How can someone feel lonely in the midst of all this?

But as the Sage wrote: [i]Speak not to the outsider[/i]. A sentence she had thought of as Zaldar's most straightforwards commandment had been transformed by Mirror into her most wise and complex thought. The inadequacy of speech, the impossibility of communication - each word, each gesture, a slash at an impossible problem. Mirror was touching her without touching, adjacent and miles apart at once. Just like how a mile of void could feel closer than a kiss when they sat astride their gods. 

Her mind rushes ahead, having half worked through the thought and moving onto her reply. [i]Speak not[/i] - if speaking was enough then the problem wouldn't exist. She needed to figure out... something. She wasn't sure she understood but she knew she had to reply. Even if she said the wrong thing it'd show she was still trying to communicate. They were First Contact, after all - the electric shock of two alien cultures coming into contact for the first time. The first fight. The first love. The first attempt to bridge an impossible gap. Not knowing what to say. Not knowing how to reply. What do we want? What can we accept? Is this okay?

There wasn't a way to exit this thought. She'd been in it since they met.