The crescent cut face breaks out into sunshine, glowing with a brief and brilliant light. Her smile is shy, radiant and fleet; it echoes his and compounds it, more vibrant than gentle, more eager than soft. It quickly fades, dissipates and spreads to the corners of her eyes, lingers like sunspots at the curve of her lip. Even when he promises there is nothing to fear her bright eyes grow dim but do not darken; it is a lie, but a sweet one, lacking the bitterness and bile which usually chases doses of cold deceit. There is much to be afraid of, but the boy does not know, and she knows that she must do all in her power to protect his gentle heart from that shattering fear.

She listens intently to his voice, black eyes serious as she glances across his frail shoulders, follows the lines to the infant horn which peeks so shyly from behind thin silver strands, and drifts away to look back to the moon, now further progressed on its journey across the skies. She wants to ask him more of her past, but in a rare show of sensitivity stills her tongue and does not question. There is time, after all, for her to learn his stories. They are friends now, a promise given and returned; friends stay together bounces through her mind, and she refuses to look at the doubt which gnaws it, the nagging memories of those who are gone and the abysmal absences left in their wake. Is the slender boy destined to disappear, too, or will he truly remain if she only keeps him close?

Unconsciously she takes a step, shifting and swaying minutely toward him, light dancing playfully from the pendant on her neck. Ebony eyes return to his face; she nods, curious, and watches his eyes, waits for the click of a question to form. When it does she regrets she did not see it coming; the boy is a moonchild as she is the sun, a denizen of darkness bathed in pale starlight. "Yes," she says slowly, and pauses, unsure. Should she speak of her mother, of the Moon and their bond? The Moon is her family's, the goddess of ancestors, the light in a world of perpetual night; she thinks Caneo might like those stories, but is not sure she is ready to tell them, ready to confess to all she has lost.

Natraj rolls at the boy's feet, sending up a spark of flame to illuminate his narrow chest. Gold eyes glitter with gleeful mischief; Story time! he teases, staring at his silent sister, small back wiggling against the overgrown ground. Copper ear dips back into the golden mane; she looks at Caneo and he makes her bold, and before she can second guess she begins to speak. "She's a goddess," murmurs the alto hum, "And I only met her once a long time ago, but my family... we lived in her lands, before the darkness." She pauses and swallows, shutting her eyes against encroaching fear, aware once again of the nighttime around her. We're safe, says her brother, and she forces a smile.

"We live with the Sun now," she tells him softly, willing the panic to flutter away. "But where my mother was born, and my aunt and my uncles, the sun never rose. So Mother used to say that we're children of the moon." She thinks that the boy would have liked it there, that he would fit in well with her moonlit family... better, perhaps, than she ever had. Where did you go? When will you come back?