Brendan's expression brightened as Rafaela's earlier words finally reached him and his response finally reached her. "I'm glad you're okay," he said with relief. The words sounded oddly casual in the English language.
Rafaela felt a twinge of sympathy for the complaints of her stepsisters who had been used to speaking to local friends in real time before being dragged out to the outer sectors by their mother's sudden remarriage. The two minute time lag was tangling up this conversation, and she wasn't even sure why Brendan wanted to talk aloud instead of simply messaging. She'd asked her last question in the standard tongue instead of using the English language of her mother's system too.
