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The boy’s excitement fizzled to a low hum as Mauja said almost nothing – certainly not to them, only his sire – and his eyes narrowed to mere slits as he stared at the ground. If the other Lord didn’t want to say much of anything to him, took no particular interest, the scion would do the same. He didn’t partake in telling the Edge King of his mother’s stories: how they’d been conquered but rallied again in the deepest portions of the Steppe, how they’d wandered and waited and stumbled upon the chiseled kingdom of the Basin until the God of Spark and Time had granted them their icy territory. He said naught of the way the mirror had shifted and reflected back the spotted Lord’s figure, caught and tethered in some unknown absconding, and then everything after remained just the same; enigmatic, twisted, strange. Erebos only lifted his gaze to be riveted and raptured in Enna’s direction, a particular arch to his brow that called for mischief but everything else told him to silence it, not to strain the already odd experiences. Was there anything more they could do? He was utterly useless, a blank slab of blue stone and devilry, the feeling of excitement and adventure had funneled and churned into a prickling, unsettled nuance, only prince by name and blood, and not by action. The lad shifted again, stare called towards the little herbs and other plants Enna had brought with her from their mountains, meant to be shared and traded, now ignored – just like them. While his father tried, attempted, to gather the strings of reunion, the other pair were left to mire in the abyss, search over the silent rubble of glass and quiet blades of mist, fog – so he drew himself closer to the Mender, merely a gesture of methodical movement and careful, intertwining grace. He smiled, a grin traced by Cheshire, rogue, ruffian, and gallant knight parcels, tucking it within the corner of his lips and sketching his maw closer to her ears, choking back the notion to laugh and chuckle. Instead, the air curled around his mouth and tucked stalwartly towards her frame, puffing out warm pockets of diligence, decree, nearly inaudible to the elder stags, painting over a canvas of what used to be, what he’d known but never saw for himself. “My father and Mauja were once in the same herd, here, within the Edge. They all were.” He could almost imagine the ghostly edges of the abyss clustered around them, pockets of warriors, knives, and daggers, fighting off beasts who wanted, who craved, the edge of the earth for themselves. “But there was a war, and they lost. They were forced to flee to the Steppe, before the God of Spark granted them the Basin.” His story, brief, only a summary, only a snippet of what Huyana had told him amidst rain and fire, waned and drew to a close, and his eyes, narrowed in impish delight, scorched over Enna’s. “Have you heard the tale before?”
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