The chiding he got from the feline made his cheeks feel hot and he glanced away from her, watching the flame-wolf that was his shadow for a moment. The sting of abandonment as a foal was one he could still feel well enough, though he had not thought the wounds were still there. And he did not care for how his mind wandered to when he could have tried harder to reach out to his mother. Was the time they spent together while the rest of Helovia was living in the caves not enough? He hadn’t been able to gleen her purpose then and it was just a short time after that when the killings began.

It spoke of his own blame in the murders and this was not a foreign thought to Mesec - long had he agonized over his shortcomings. Always arriving at the scene too late or not at all, not once using the ‘gift’ his guilty mother had given him as they gathered on the sky island. Who was this animal to toss around blame, to assume that in his heart he did not blame himself more than his mother? “I recognize my own guilt in this, do not think that I haven’t carried that with me. I know my own failings but that doesn’t mean that I cannot also see hers.” He retorted with annoyance in his voice - though it did not touch the sadness in his eyes. “What is so wrong for wanting peace, to be free of pain if only for a little while? Why is it childish to believe in justice and balance that does not require murder to achieve? I’m trying to live my life as best as I can.” He did not want to be the lone-wolf demigod that the destruction of the Foothills and the scattering of his family had left him to be so he had joined another herd, he had made friends. He had been inspired into joining a revolution with Ampere to bring about justice. He just did not believe in his mother’s methods and he did not understand why that idea seemed hard for others to understand. They did not have to resort to murder to prove a point. Mesec embraced the mortal half of himself readily, believing he had much more in common with the Helovians than with their Gods. Why was that so terrible?

Immediate suspicion flared within him at the mention of a task and a gift and he noted how quick the feline was to explain that it was not a trap. As if it could be so simple. He had not understood how the last gift he had been given was supposed to help him find a murderer and he did not know what could be done to help him see things as his mother does. “If I failed so thoroughly at stopping the murders, why offer me another gift and another task? I’m not as strong as my cousins are, any one of them would be a better choice.” He was afraid of failing again, of what catastrophic results might come from his shortcomings this time. The fire-wolf that followed him paced behind him in the air and though it was not alive, it seemed to Mesec that it was growing impatient with this lack of movement. More likely, he was projecting his own feelings onto the flames. The desire to abandon this conversation and whatever came next was pulsing within him but it did not yet have a loud enough voice to cause him to stir.