Signy had curled in upon herself, staying hunched down well after she'd finished retrieving her runes.  She didn't need to look up to know that eyes were watching her, some hateful, some merely confused or disbelieving.  A young runecaster -- a true runecaster, not a charlatan -- was about as likely as the seas freezing at the height of summer.  It was something known only in other lands, something that happened in the old tales.<br/><br/>And so she flinched when the other woman approached, for all that she stood at a discreet distance away.  Signy looked up wide-eyed, gripping her bag more tightly.  "The runes want me to cast them," she said, flustered.  It was not her usual sort of reply, but it was the truth, for good or ill.<br/><br/>"You are the outsider," she added, looking for firmer conversational ground.  "I know little else yet.  But this threat has come before, to other places.  Brute force did not stop it then... Now we must take another path.  The runes have the right of it."<br/><br/>She said this last simply, knowing it to be as true as that the sun rose in the sky every day.  The runes being correct did not necessarily mean that all would be well, or that all of them would return to this place under their own power, but she let the woman think that if it gave her comfort.