Deal and profitable were words in a language that Signy understood; Johann's presence was not quite familiar, but it was of the same type, generally, as all that she had left behind. It was almost comforting, if she didn't think about it too closely (because if she did she started to think about the people Johann must have left behind to come here, and the darkspawn swarming like insects out of the ground somewhere not too far from here).
She bit back the image and smiled a little; she spoke as she walked, taking the ground at a brisk dwarven pace. Lee might have found the speed not as fast, but she had been blessed with surfacer legs that could stride ever so far. Johann's presence, too, the hand on her shoulder that had not come from far above it, the jocular, so very alive way of dealing with things, was familiar to Signy, even though Johann was a stranger (and surface-born beside). "Me? No, I haven't been on the surface long at all, but those sound like just one more thing I don't want to run into." There was a long list on the surface; hornets, a picture of which she was just beginning to hazily form, were quickly added. Because of the context they'd come up in, she could not help imagining them a little bit like darkspawn. The aggression fit; the buzzing, too, though she had no way to know that her image of hornets humming and buzzing actually matched the truth. "Are they common? How badly do they sting? Are they... No, I'm sorry," she shook her head, and looked ahead, up the hill again. "It's not the time to ask you about such silly things, you have much more important things to worry about."