She manages to get a brief snort of laughter out of him with the sarcasm-laden reply, but after that comes another stretch of silence.

"A sea without end," he finally starts, "full of islands that are driven up or torn down by the summer quakes."

He nods his head back towards the nearest wall. "We don't build like this because there's no point in it. No telling whether the land will be good for one year or a dozen. Eventually we have to set sail and move on."