They reflect in the black of your eyes as they shift: strange, thick beasts made up from wavering tongues of light, marching down her spine as if to battle. You stare at them unblinking, the word magic rolling like the tide through your skull. The girl is a strange and beautiful thing, in your eyes — a wondrous and precious thing. Her voice is kind in answer to your melancholy. Even stubborn as you are, unyielding as the oldest and most gnarled of tree roots, you let go of the darker feelings plaguing your chest in favor of her voice, her light. She's asked a question, anyway. You're getting used to answering now, though the ceaseless flow of words nears a point of exhaustion the further you go.

"Mama?" Your brows crease as confusion burrows between them. Mama is your mama, of course. The memory of her swells in your head, dark and glittering, resplendent in her quiet confidence. A little late, you remember not everyone calls her Mama because of course she isn't to everyone. "Oh!" How silly of you. "Mama is Ki'irha the General," you say proudly, remembering the meeting you snuck into a while ago. Then, just because you learned the fact recently and you're on a roll reciting your lineage, you add, "Mesec is my father." You don't know him very well; he's beautiful and strange, distant as a star even though Mama wears more of the night sky on her back. Still, you feel a little thrill as you say it, naming yourself, placing yourself here in the world. "Who's yours?" you ask the girl, glancing again at the beasts on her back, and wondering if her parents look like that only bigger, fearsome and bright. You don't particularly want to meet them.

There's a moment where you pause, maybe thinking about your own name — maybe just catching your breath. A lot swirls in your head right now, and your poor brain leans toward exhaustion. How do other people do this? Talk all day? Ears flicking, dulled by the fullness in your skull and by the desire to roll the word Kiada around until it loses meaning, you say, "Virga," to the rocks underfoot. Looking at something else tires you out less than looking at her. "Good meeting you," you add, because Ki'irha the General's son isn't entirely a wild animal, a thing without social understanding. You never expected her name to hang on you like a weight quite so much as it does now — like she's watching even if she isn't present.