Interesting. I do wonder what this place wants from us, then. [If not for kidnapping people no one would miss, Tessa would assume this city would take people it could use as hostages for some kind of ransom or another. (And perhaps the fact that she's considering the city as if it were its own kind of entity is a sign of how much she's trying to avoid giving into the despair welling up in her chest.)

She glances over at him, sympathetic.] This city does have...interesting timing. Plucking us from productive periods in our lives, as though deliberately interrupting us.

[She shakes her head, and she tries to focus on the way her entire body jolted, as if struck by lightning, when she had first seen Jem, Jem as he always was, instead of Brother Zachariah.] People do. I'm hopeful that, perhaps, those we've left behind might not even be aware that we're gone. Perhaps this city is...outside of the normal workings of time.