[It's hard to miss an expression like that wince. Clarke's repressed it within herself countless times. Too many people here think that what Clarke's done for her people makes sense—that she was doing what was needed, what they needed. It's hard for them to fathom the countless lives. She doesn't need to know his good intentions to see how her framed statement could lead to the truth. She just also knows better than to keep carrying on with it.]

I was picturing something more—["Normal." She pants out a breath.]—well, more like what I knew my world to be like before things went bad. [It's a bad habit of hers: trying to slot people into boxes, into simplicity and easy lives. Just going off that wince? She knows there's something more here.

Clarke can guess that he knows what word was meant to go there before she recovered. She adds,] We never had magic where we came from. Just people believing hard enough that it could be real, that it could help them. And that belief helped them conjure up gods.

[Her skepticism is more cultural than anything. Her people couldn't believe in gods that would save them. Those gods had already failed. With it went any belief of divination or magic.]

Which is all to say that—I didn't expect magic. [A bit rueful. She continues onward through the tunnels, snapping pictures to the best of her ability with her neural implant.]