Caprica smiled her relief that the bird was awake - and that it hadn't woken up before in time to hear her misspoken comment. "Recently I learned to value that stuff even more than I already did," she offered in response to Neela's words, but the remark about the fire and the cave gave her a warm glow, glad she had helped the woman - or perhaps the warm glow was just the whiskey making its delightful presence felt. "Brewed up a barrel of wine, or possibly juice. It takes such a long time to make!" Despite reading the books about wine, she had still been astounded to find how long it needed before a spirit became potent. And you had to keep the barrel safe, dry and out of the way all that time. She would be trying, of course, as soon as she'd replenished her supply of sugary sap in the spring, but it daunted her the amount of effort she was going to have to make. Of course, Caprica could have traded or scouted for her alcohol. But she was a true craftswoman, the need to get her hands dirty in every creative process she could was ever-present: and she liked the idea of being self-sufficient, able to provide whatever she truly needed for herself. She wouldn't know for some years whether her attempts had worked, so in the meantime she would have to continue to make do with wine and the generosity of others. It wasn't such a hard thing of course, she enjoyed seeking out traders and bartering for goods, being an absolutely irrepressible hoarder with an Aladdin's Cave of a den that would sooner or later be so full there would be no room left for herself.
Her eyes showed nothing: no pity or bemusement or curiosity at the woman's words, merely a soft understanding, or what she thought was understanding. Caprica had spent months alone in a nearby forest, living like a solitary creature, a bear, perhaps, on fruit and trappings and fish and scavengings. She hadn't been trying to find herself, but lose herself, much like Neela seemed to be saying, although maybe she had meant to clear her mind in order to understand her situation, not to remove all trace of thought from it. She had never really belonged there, though. A wolf needed a pack - a healthy wolf anyway. Caprica wasn't sure where exactly was the large territory that Neela thought she hadn't belonged to. The Dampwoods or her Ichikan home? Probably the latter. Nobody belonged to the Dampwoods. They were barren of homeliness.
But she'd been asked a question, and the polite thing was to answer. "I was out checking my snares round the borders," she explained with a tone of matter-of-factness: she had much less of a compelling answer to give than the other. "Then boom. Hell on earth." She nodded at the outside world, still a horrifying cacophony of hail, thunder, rain and wind. "Didn't rate heading all the way home in this, somehow." A minute before, with a lighter tone, she might have chuckled, but instead she just turned the rabbits on their spit slowly and thoughtfully, eyes shadowed by her hair as she leant forwards just slightly. She had never been the best at contemplating topics of deep emotional significance, especially with strangers. But here they were in a cave, and they were going to have to get to know one another. It only seemed polite to show she'd been listening and wasn't completely ignoring the woman, too. Caprica was an expert at bringing small gatherings round to a lighter tone, hating to find her own shadows being touched upon, but on a night like this and with the whiskey-fire courage inside her it all seemed a little more possible. Normal rules did not quite apply. "So uh... didja manage it? Convince yourself right back that you belong again?" No: she was not a wordsmith nor a master with grammar, but that was unlikely to ever change, due to the spontaneous way the black wolf enunciated her words. At least usually her meaning was clear enough.