That I have described the land of my raising as what it is and the stallion still bears it interest is curious to me; I feel a brow rise at his first inquiry, sensing that the need to know is strong within this man, and that it would be wise to leave any and all descriptions aside that might actually lead him there. What he says next makes me laugh, too, but for a different reason – no one ever did cross the women of Elysia. At least, not without vast punishment to fall down on the poor victim once he was discovered. That to cross a woman in Elysia could be something so simple and uncontrollable as the gender which you were born to is a thought that adds to the sharp laugh that wildly finds its way free from my lips, Dog whining softly as she sweeps her eyes up to catch my own, wondering if the poison is driving me mad or if what the man said truly was of humor to me, her heart prying away for the emotional reverberations that leak away from my soul into her senses.

"Just?" I breathlessly manage, looking at Murdock with a humored light gleaming in my eyes and my lids partially shut to squint at him thoughtfully once the laughter dies on my lips, "they have never been such things in Elysia. But, no, none cross my foremothers." The same smile that had framed my face as I laughed leaks back into place, uncontained by the dark hilarity that lies in this all; the image of bodies strewn across the stone before the palace, the procuring of the images of the slaves deep down at the bottom of the pit, so haggard and weak it was hard to tell if they were dead or alive, only given away when movement touched them. Most simply lay slack and were drug along by their stronger companions, too exhausted or their will too broken to bother walking like dignified, living beasts are born knowing to do. "At least not to have the last laugh."

My finishing statement comes with a collection of images, the sight of my dam and her council laughing over their herb lunches about whatever poor slave had just died at their hands, or been sent to the pits; they even laughed as they discussed pulling that one man apart, piece by piece, for daring to give my aunt a son rather than the daughter he had promised when they had paired. I had been only two at the time I overheard that lovely tidbit of Elysian culture discussed as if it were as tranquil and innocent as a day at the beach – and it still settled about as well as curdled milk inside me, no matter how deeply the perverse poison had inched into my heart.

The conversation turns, though, for which I am grateful; its not that I’m unused to curiosities when it comes to minds who do not know the tales of the lands they hear in passing, but that I find that the thought of this one finding his way to that wretched land is almost as awful as the thought of returning to it myself. While we have only just met, he is kind and displays manners that I’ve found lacking in others, the most simple denotation of this behavior being that he asks as many questions of me as he answers of himself, not focusing the words on one side of the fence as those who seek to use others are prone to do; while this stag is not one I can define in detail as my sisters or the cruel keepers of Elysia, I do know that my homeland is no such place for a man with gold in his heart such as this one.

He’d have a good life as someone’s personal soldier, until she seduced him and he failed or he grew less handsome and less capable than his younger competition - whether he could fight or not, he was fine stock to breed from. Either way, it wouldn’t end well for Murdock and his strange black coat.

His smile falls as I what once was his home, and I watch the change of expression with a passing interest that does not care that it hurts. Much of the things we will learn in our lives are unpleasant truths that, had we been given the choice, might have wished to never have heard – but it did not change the fact that it was real and tangible, that it was how it was in the present hour. And while I feel sad that his home as he remembers it is gone, cast across time like sand into the wind, it is not so much that I regret telling him what he needed to know as I regret feeling so cold and without compassion for it.

He asks me what I do there after a short pause, as if he has digested that time has mutilated everything once again and has accepted that home is no longer there if it ever was. My eyes glimmer in thought and a single ear tools backwards as I try to remember the word for my ranking, a strange thing contrived by Seele and her lunatics that, surely, might have been an easier one if they’d only thought a little longer on it. Skýlos makes a chortling, low toned barking sound alongside me that I recognize as laughter; I swat her with my lion’s tail with an audible shkk-pop to get her to shut the hell up before answering. "A Genetrix, of the lowest tier," my accent is heavy around my rank and makes the strange word for the learners sound even more foreign than it is, "I seek answers to what there is to know." I don’t know what my job is called in other herds, either, and so I cannot suggest much more than an added description of what I do.

The thought of bringing to mention the runes in the caverns seems interesting, but the caverns are tied to dark events and I have already spoiled the conversation with solemn topics too many times this not so fine, blustering eve.



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