Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.
She agrees, but in the most distant, morose way to agree to something. I use those sort of yeah’s, too, the sort of sound that signifies that the mind is too busy working to come up with anything better to say. I like that she’s thinking, especially because it contradicts how I think she may not be very smart; maybe she is. Maybe she’s like what Grandmother Vaelenne meant, when she’d called me an accidental fool, when she’d accused me of not knowing simple things I should through no fault of my own.

I’d gotten mad at her then. I get mad at things I don’t understand a lot; I build walls, layer and arm them against the ways of the world which differ from how I think they should be. Now, however, standing in the peaceful, rainbow glow of the pavilion with Själ, maybe just another accidental fool like me, I feel guilty for having shouted at the old priestess. I feel guilty for not thinking about her as much as I do Xynia, waves of it washing over me as I remember how patient she had been to me, and how crass and short I can be with others.

Själ’s words draw me from those dark thoughts into others: it’s not always fun to be alone, is it?

No, no its not, is a long, heavy sigh I don’t give words to. You’ll never hear me admit it aloud even once, but sometimes I regret having left the Basin to be on my own. My heart drops into my hooves as she says the invocation, giving rise to that well of loneliness that reaches, burrowing its tunnels deep into my being. I’ve been alone a long time, the only one of my childhood friends to have left Helovia, and, while they probably didn’t mean to treat me differently now, they did. We all had too many stories that didn’t weave together; seen too many things that we hadn’t seen together. It was hard trying to be part of the same person, like I once felt we had been, when you no longer live the same lives. It was hard coming back to a home that was once yours, changed by time, not the same as it had been.

So I ran away, and made real distance to hide the distance that had grown between our hearts.

It’s easier that way.

I do it now, not saying anything but that broad exhalation in reply, as if not dignifying the words with a response will make it like she’d never said them at all. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I want to walk away, out, out into that wood, and leave her and these heavy thoughts behind.

But she keeps talking, so my hooves stay where they are, for now. In my hollow heart now erupts a flame of jealousy, which I try to stamp out before she notices its eager leaping in my eyes. Her smile hurts me in all the ways it makes her feel better about being lonely, mostly because she’s never really alone at all. Swallowing so my voice doesn’t break, I glance over at her with a dull smile.

"No," I reply quietly without as much bravado as I’ve stated most everything else I’ve said, "but I’d like to, like my family. My mother bonded to a griffon, too, but my father has a hellhound."

And Erebos has a kitsune, and I bet Aithniel has a bonded now too. That leaves me, the failure as usual. I hide that gaping wound with a smile, and a question which draws her attentions hopefully away from me, and back onto herself.

"How long have you guys been together?"