"Oh," Laudna hadn't expected a handkerchief, given that-- well, she was drippy, and often it put people off for wanting to help her. Gilmore had been kind since her arrival, though, and so it shouldn't have been that big of a surprise. She dabbed away tears, before pulling back to stare down at it. "This is nice. Thank you."
Back to the tree, she looked. It was a nice sentiment, the one he had about the people of Whitestone. They were strong, and they had so much to give and fight for, when the Briarwoods had taken over. She knew of the resistance, she knew that people stood up to them despite the odds. Laudna hadn't been like that, she had been young and inexperienced and unsure of what to do, and hopeful that if she was meek, they would have taken pity on her.
They didn't, obviously, and now stood before her, rooted into the ground, was a reminder of that. But then she carried another one in the back of her mind, a seed that had been planted when things had gone downhill for the Briarwods.
"They can be." She couldn't deny him that. "I wish I could say the same was my experience, but my most recent memories of it were death. Death, then becoming this, and climbing down from this tree, rope still around my neck and nails scraping down the trunk. Ears clipped, feather still in my hair."