"Ulla," he repeats; it's possible he did, but she rejected him then and he vaguely remembers a time when he thought perhaps it for the best to leave her to live her life in the oceans if she found peace there. He was confident then that she would come to recognize her mistake, but he has been disappointed before; the end result is that he put her out of his mind, and his time here has made details even harder to remember more than a hundred years ago.

"I've gone by many names," he tells her, honestly. "I'm known here as... Aleksander." He tips his head, watching for a reaction, wondering if that was the name of the boy she followed away to get her answers from their mother in the life she remembers having done so.

"They play tricks like that here, too. Tastes of having back my power at my command only to take it away again. It's a method of breaking the spirit."