'Caneo', he has said, chimed and hummed in the the chirp and vibrato of a child crown, a halo of lilies and chasteness and spring, the pink of a sugared tongue sweeping away the taste of dust and ancient notes of silence with a single, fragile lyric; a name of which belonged not to a king. Luster and alabaster in rare twinkles of sun was the thin frame of he, the rosy gild of armor-lacking arms, summer soft intention, contrived of such dulcet whispers of winter, of gossamer purity, a luminescent presence against the tendrils of wickedness that was she, soiling, tarnishing, ruining what would have been so beautiful, so easy, the contrast of their stances, their sways, their essences jarring. She sees his unease as she kneels to him, the questions boiling, the dark lines of apprehension drawn deep into his folding skin, and immediately she finds herself distressed, for his displeasure must be directed towards her act, her pose, her still dance of worship, and she thinks herself wrong, too eager, perhaps, but then he speaks again, and she is reminded of his child's mind. A curious mind. An unknowing mind. No; not a king.

Prince Caneo.

His voice paints her skin with an odd, diluted hue, muted and tender and so unlike the garishness of men that she is startled, confused, and she moves carefully toward him with the side of her head bending, arching, careening, a single tulip-petal ear flittering gently with the push of his breath, devouring greedily his silk and cordial sound as if it glass and porcelain, so easily breakable, so easily wasted. Her eyes are awake now, and they roam and carve into his silver cape and silks until he is stripped and bare and bone, whittling into the dark places between his rosy cheeks, the malleable discs of his spine that bend now with uncertainty so as to decider this act of boy, this mask of ivory and feathers and innocence that so hideously adorns him. He commands not, but asks so sweetly to know her; to know that they are herd-mates, to know that she, too, possesses a mortal name, a title embodying no more than a father's whimsy and ill humor, an echo of the harsh, death-branded word that is her own. He asks, his song a woman's plea, as if there is the option to decline, as if, it it were to please him, she would not have given him her identity, her crown, her flesh, her humble, soiled knees at the sight of a frown pulling upon his lips, and she looks up to him (for he is taller, a man after all) and narrowly shakes her head with pity, for he recognizes not even his own might, and to live as such for surely as long as he was indeed a pitiful tale.

For the fates to bring him to her was nothing short of miraculous, and with a heavy heart, she tasks herself with enlightening her liege, the little prince.

"Yes," she bestows upon the air, coming forward another step so that he may hear her clearly, and she is close enough to smell the freshness of him. "Liriope; I am a soldier of the Basin." And so as to hear him speak it himself, so as to ask him to paint vividly his very weakness upon the air, his flaw with his lovely, lovely breath, she trails her fire and liquored gaze up his paper chest, his ghostly hips, the hollow sound of his ankles' clinking, and adds:

"Are you not a soldier, too?"