The storm breaks sometime before dawn, a slow-building grumble that deepens into a roar overhead. Fat drops hammer the tent canvas like war drums. The fire’s long since died, snuffed by wind and damp, and the chill creeps in up your sleeves, down the back of your collar, into your bones.

Minthara is awake. Of course she is. She sits cross-legged just beyond the tent’s opening, arm braced across a knee, hair damp and curling around her pointed ears. She doesn't flinch from the cold or the thunder. She only watches the trees with that same hard stare, as though she could will the storm to pass by sheer disdain.

She hates the rain. She just becomes quieter, more brittle. She didn't grow up with it in the Underdark, it's one of those overground things she will never come to be at peace with.

Her ear pricks when she hears you try to coax her back to you. She'd thought you were still asleep. “I don’t mind the discomfort,” she murmurs, like she's lived with discomfort for so long that she's forgotten she can choose comfort.