[Alex carefully wraps her hand around the candle, and she watches it intensely. Later, she'd write it down in her observations about being here (because you can take the reporter out of her story, but you can't take the reporter out of being herself) so she doesn't want to miss anything. But she follows the flicker of the candle up to his hand, and she smiles in something that's more than a little like amazement.

Despite what Strand may want her to be, Alex is a believer and this is something that's easy to believe in. Even if this is just some sort of placebo effect, it does help remove some of the weight that Alex wasn't even aware that she was carrying, because it had been a part of her for so long. Feeling more than a little bit loose with that, she just shifts her grin to him and nods.]

Super weird still. I mean, it's getting better, but it's still super weird. I suppose that's good, because it means that I'm not getting totally complacent or whatever, but I'd like it if it was a little easier. I'm slowly making friends, though.

[That may be a little bit of color in her cheeks there, that's not exactly from the candle, so she adds:] But I'm using some of the weirdness to make connections which us good!