Qebhet liked how animated Much grew in conversation. Not in a domineering way— he could talk, and she knew from their last meeting that he was a keen storyteller, but it was there in the listening as well, the way he held her eyes with what felt like genuine interest and nodded along eagerly. She could see the truth of his words in that alone. (Yes, there was a coy double meaning wrapped in that last part, but that didn't make it any less true, or appealing.)
"People are wonderful," she agreed warmly. "For most of my life, I've been among my own." (Three and a half thousand years and thirty-two dynasties. Another thousand or more buried amongst their bones, slumbering formless within the stone-carved glyphs of a language lost from mortal memory. For all her great age, she had only been away from her homeland a bare two hundred years. Probably not much longer than Much.) "There were always others, of course... we were not insular. But it wasn't like here. It's one of the things I love about this city, I think. It's like a... a tapestry of humanity."