Guilliman was indeed somewhat surprised.
This was not wartime, and the Eldar were famous across the Milky Way for their almost pathological "cleanliness obsession."
Yet she had appeared in Macragge's bustling public square.
The Eldar's standards of hygiene and aesthetics were utterly different from humanity's. Clean human tap water might be filled with unbearable "filth" and "vulgarity" to Eldar senses.
This alone had caused no small number of incidents between humans and Eldar.
Once, a Milky Way trade caravan received an Eldar envoy.
They offered him a glass of purified water, and after drinking it, he immediately vomited in disgust.
The two sides had nearly gone to war on the spot.
After all, in that Eldar envoy's eyes, the humans had forcibly made him drink a cup of sewage!
Human sewage, at that.
Eldar excrement was a crystalline, viscous substance, somewhat like blue crystal slime dusted with fluorescent powder.
Not only did it lack the stench of waste, it even carried a faint natural fragrance.
Some Imperium nobles even mixed Eldar urine and excrement together to create distinctive perfumes.
One could imagine just how unbearable the human living environment was to the Eldar.
Although the Ultramarines had kept this square spotless, to the Eldar it likely still counted as an area "awaiting thorough purification."
"Don't look at me like that."
Yvraine seemed to understand the confusion in Guilliman's eyes. She shrugged, her movements elegant yet carrying a warrior's easy confidence.
"I am not one of those delicate young ladies raised in the Craftworlds who cannot bear the sight of even a speck of 'dust.'
"I am a warrior who clawed her way up from the lowest levels of Commorragh's gladiatorial arenas, a war leader who led the Reaper Host through the edge of destruction.
"I discarded those pointless old habits