"I am too, Caneo," may be the sweetest thing Caneo's heard - ever. Maybe that means little coming from a creature born to desolation, but for him it means something. Her voice twists his name into a better thing than ever it was before. In the moment, he vows to live up to that, to be a harbinger of joy and not of loss. Maybe loneliness doesn't own him anymore than the rest of the world; maybe he stands still upon a precipice of choice. He smiles truly, and it's a surprisingly soft and weary thing, to match the threadbare velvet of his silver coat. Contentment unmasks him like little else, lays bare the weight of years spent wandering, dreaming of better things.

        He thinks he may have found them.

        Caneo quiets now, ears canting forward to catch the deep roll of Tandavi's voice when she does speak. He makes a better listener than orator; interest blinks keen from the cold depths of his eyes. He never dreams of interrupting, but he takes in the new name she gives him with curiosity. Amaris. A cousin. He forgets, in his own (narcissistic) fashion, how others have families, mothers and brothers and aunts and cousins, and Tandavi must be no different. The familiar ache eats at his heart, keening with its soundless voice into the darkness of a past life, but nothing ever answers. Family is a word reserved for luckier beings. He may try to paste it on the creatures of the Throat, but not with sincerity. Tandavi is what he has, and what he clings to, solemn as she spills the things kept in her own heart.

        "We've lost so many," and Caneo wonders if he once numbered among the lost. He wishes, for a brief and selfish instant, she could sever any care she feels for whoever else, but it's cold and bitter and the whim disappears between heart beats. Slowly the silver creature's head tilts, mimicking empathy, though he doesn't truly understand how the losses drive her apart. “Do you think they care if we mourn?” Maybe it seems a cruel question, but he's thinking of someone long ago as he says it, someone who would call him stupid for wasting the time. “Or do you think we're better off doing what they couldn't?” His eyes are far away as he blinks at the stream, recalling the terrible blackness of the water in his memory, the sound of hooves on a dusty plain. If he reaches for grief, he finds only emptiness. “Live,” he clarifies a moment later, the word barley audible.

        "It's hard, sometimes," she says, and Caneo's eyes travel back to her as he nods. “Yes.” Life is hard, he thinks. He never questioned why he engaged with its struggle so. For a long time, struggle was all there was. And it seems a luxury to stand here grieving the dead, when they themselves both live. “I won't be lost again,” he says with renewed certainty. “If you need me, I'll come to wherever you are. It's what friends do.” And it's the most he can promise, in his failure to understand those she mourns, and how she mourns them. “Is there some place safe for you to go?” Caneo wonders, because he has secured home for himself but never asked about Tandavi's. A part of him thinks, come with me, but he cannot bring himself to force his sacrifice on her. So he quiets that small voice, and waits.