It wasn't something Aleksei had picked up on, certainly. It wasn't something that would have been guessed--or, really, thought overly much of beyond the initial telling. Scars had been a fact of life back in Hungary as well, after all. Things which weren't spoken about or commented on had been a large piece of his grandparents' generation, instilled on him from a young age.

It wasn't, in his experience, as if everyone didn't have something that wasn't freely shared.

But all that was far away, now. Now was a time for shrugging and sending a stone skimming briefly along the top of the water. "Point, I think, is less to do it well as to-- spend time in practice. And with-- friends."