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ENLIGHTENED turns to face her interlocutor with a calm, radiant smile. She speaks with deliberate pauses between her words - pauses on which SONGBIRD perches her rapt attention.

ENLIGHTENED: Yes?
SONGBIRD (shy): Um, I feel like we’ve met before. Have we? Met before, that is.
ENLIGHTENED: It is possible. Perhaps we have crossed paths in dreams.
SONGBIRD: My dreams haven’t been great, of late.
ENLIGHTENED:  Dreams within dreams, then.
SONGBIRD (starstruck): You speak as if... (catching herself) I hadn’t seen you until now.
ENLIGHTENED: I’ve busied myself keeping this vessel afloat.
SONGBIRD: Oh... (realizing) Oh! The shield.
SONGBIRD: It’s your color.
ENLIGHTENED: Indeed. Trivial connections sometimes appear as great mysteries.
SONGBIRD: And great mysteries appear...

SONGBIRD looks around, her attention suddenly brought back to the crowd occupying the room.

SONGBIRD: ...Trivial.
ENLIGHTENED: What troubles you?
SONGBIRD: Many of these people - I am quite sure it is my first time meeting them...
SONGBIRD: But I keep feeling as if it’s not. As if I’ve known them all their life.
ENLIGHTENED: Perhaps you have, and you only don’t know it yet.