Like a shadow passing overhead, her fear returns. It lingers in the quiet of her voice; when Caneo bothers to glance at her, surprised, it gleams in the inkwells of her eyes. Is it him? Has he given out too much, spoken too long, let into this new place a bad thing best left unremembered? His expression is subtle but somewhere around his eyes rests a thin white sliver of alarm. “I have been alone in the night.” He assumed and he assumed incorrectly; he blinks at her, wondering what scars she wears inside her own skin. And he wishes silently, like a promise to himself, she does not understand his pain.

        But he wishes too late; they are lost children alone under a careless sky.

        Without any way to repair the damage he caused, Caneo listens again when Tandavi speaks – this time of Natraj. Her words slip, the syllables clicking together like pebbles falling – inelegant. “He says he is stuck with me, whether he likes it or not.” She describes their bond like a chain binding two ways. It is nothing like the way Lena spoke of her kitsune; they both radiated joy, one drawing light from the other, an infinite loop. He found such a flawless system difficult to comprehend, but this... he watches the sun’s daughter quietly, and watches her dark companion. They seem to burn with light despite themselves; it warns off the dark but coldly.

        When at last she answer his question in the negative, Caneo stirs from listening and speaks. He has been slowly building up some sort of answer for her, slowly piecing together what he needs to say. And he is not certain it will be right, or even helpful, or even kind, but a sucking hollow place inside of him wishes never again to hear her speak of being alone, to understand the quiet tremor in her voice when she runs over the word. “Okay,” he says slowly, not cheerful but mild, his tone gentle and inquisitive. “I would help you look, if you were looking.” The tip of his tail twitches again, the sparse hairs dangling like loose cobwebs from its tip. “I’m good at finding places in the dark.”

        Uncertain, the boy peers at the meadow and wonders if maybe he’s doing this wrong. He is not warm enough; he is too honest, and full of too many holes. One ear tilts delicately to catch Tandavi’s next question, and surprised again his head snaps toward her, his eyes wide and questioning. Me? he says without saying. He cannot imagine himself beside a fox, or beside anything. He cannot imagine a single creature living inside his head, inside his soul – cannot imagine himself torturing another thing with such a life. But the seed is planted; he blinks at Natraj, and frowns. “How?” he murmurs. And the other question, the deeper one, lingers unspoken in the back of his throat.

        What kind of creature would want me?