This black and bronze engineer truly had a gift, he thought, watching Ulrik open up his machine. The workings inside were...amazingly complex and fascinating, and he listened with rapt attention as his friend - was he? - explained about his skills, what this machine was, and the gods.
The gods, in a field, like a bunch of tourists. That amused him.
He did not know Ulrik well enough to truly catch the subtle shift in his demeanor from mad to normal. Thus far, Ulrik had seemed in control of himself and spoke to him like any other might, though with perhaps less tonal inflection and outward expressions."What gods and goddesses are there?" he inquired. "Where do they reside? Where might I go to speak to them?" Torleik wished for perhaps three: a god of war, a goddess of fertility, and a goddess of the moon and the tides. The soft crunch of snow beneath tiny approaching feet caught his attention and the dual-horned demon rotated an ear around to better hear the hoof-falls of this newcomer. As the sounds indicated, it was a child, and Torleik smiled a little. His smile vanished, however, when the child, as children do, asked a blunt and deeply painful question: Why didn't his home exist anymore?
He felt no anger towards the little one, for she knew no better. A child's curiosity was pure, an unadulterated wish to know, and he could not fault that. Such innocence would not remain for long and should be cherished. The smile on his face returned, sad, wounded now. "My home is gone because it was razed to the ground," he answered, then realized perhaps the babe didn't know that term. "Everything was set on fire, and burned away." For a moment, the smell of burnt hair, flesh and wood filled his nostrils and he snorted to push it out, knowing it was just a memory but unable to cope with the imagined scent still. Perhaps to comfort himself, he allowed his attention to be distracted by Kirchoff's antics again, watching the little pup roll around in the snow. Amused in a dulled way, he gently booped the pup's head with his bearded muzzle, the action in line with Kirchoff's playful flailing about. He returned his icy gaze to the horse-child.
"What is your name, little one? I am Torleik."
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