Sadie could have pointed out that she had never been afraid of him, mage or not, but thought that maybe that was insensitive or inappropriate. What feelings she had nursed back then were for someone that really was essentially dead. The Alastrom of now was not the boy she had looked up to and cared about years ago. This man, a complete stranger in truth, didn't need, nor likely want, her thoughts and feelings regarding who he may have been a long time ago.
"Oh I don't know about all that, you had reason enough to be impolite, I was a pain in the neck. Looking back I can see that now, but back then I was just a little girl following around a boy I wanted to be just like." She laughed softly at that. Now that she was a grown woman she could see how irritating her imitation and mimicry had been for him, and felt a little guilt for being such a pest. Making him dislike her had never been her intent.
There was something else too. The name Alanna, that had to be Jon, then. She still didn't know if he realized what he was saying, but ignored it once again. If they wanted Alanna to be Jon, they had their reasons and she wasn't about to question such reasons. "Well, Serendipity is crawling with mages, I suppose. Probably more now than ever with the civil war here, my family can't be the only ones to try to escape. There are schools everywhere, for higher learning, for learning about mage, for all kinds of things, and no one judges you for magic, mages don't just fit in, they're practically the norm."
There was so much more than that. How could she even begin to tell him everything that Serendipity was or that it had offered and given her over the years? Connlaoth was her birth nation, but somehow Serendipity had become her home. It had been Donovan's home. Sadie felt a twinge of pain in her chest at the thought of her husband. "Women and men are equals in Serendipity, you're judged by your merit as a person – not your gender. I think I like that almost as much as the ability to be yourself as a mage without fear."
She closed her eyes, thinking about her home - about Donovan's home, back in Serendipity, and felt just a touch of homesickness. There was nothing there for her to go back to now, though. Donovan was gone, all there was to see was an empty apartment filled with memories of sickness and death.