There are elements of this which are familiar to her ear--ones she is expecting, and ones she is not if the rise and subsequent narrowing of the enthusiasm stark in her face is any indication. Regardless, she listens like a particularly well attuned little beast: all bright eyes and tack sharp focus. Despite the papers about her and a natural impulse for note taking, her hands are still there in her lap.

"Oh, how happy," cannot possibly be the response he expects of her for indeed a moment later that keen attentiveness flowers into something that is most extraordinarily pleased and uniquely mercenary.

"You have no idea how relieved I am to hear it, Mister Dickerson. I had been under the impression--well, it hardly matters. Regardless of how you were or weren't taut, you are no doubt rated far above me. Still, there is a sort of cheering quality which common ground has for the soul. Library theft," she lowers her voice to explain, as if the provosts of some distance world might even now be listening for a confession to long suspected crimes and somehow hear her through time, space, and the Fade. "Is, I find, an under-rated means to an education. Particularly for people so old as ourselves."

But she waves all these facts aside, dismissive of whatever temporary satisfaction she might clean from them. No, what she is most interested in is--

"How does the summoning work? Or how would it work, I mean. Were you not here in Thedas."