Isopia was doing her level-best not to think about it. But of course, you know what happens when you try to not think about something.

You guessed it.

It's all you can think about.

And so, rather than not thinking, Isopia just decided to stop thinking. Though a feat such as that was almost impossible for one so academically inclined as Isopia, the demi-goddess took it as a lesson in control of her own mind.

And so, newly pregnant Iso just flew. The life inside of herself hadn't even begun to push against her flanks, but she knew that indeed something was stirring within herself, something very different from the sort of stirring that had gotten her into this mess in the first place. And so she flew, and flew, and flew, until she had nearly crossed all of Helovia. It brought her to the Heart Caves - at least the upper portion of them. She was familiar with this area - she had afterall, built Ampere's WHATCH statue not too far. If she squinted, she could even make out the shoreline of the island land of the Throat. Sniffing Isopia turned her back on the sea. She didn't know how far the Dragon's Throat borders came, but she assumed that she was more than far enough away from them, if indeed they even extended across the water.

On the ground, Hubris grabbed onto a stone which appeared to be something like a ruby. It was large, and red, and the colour matched perfectly with Volterra's eyes. Isopia's stomach gave a lurch, and she felt as though she was going to be sick. It was as though the spark of creation inside of her gut was reacting to the colour of the stone. As if it knew that something about that colour gave it life. The colour of blood - like Verzes name. The colour of Volterra's eyes ...

As these thoughts wafted to Hubris' mind, the dragon trilled apologetically and immediately dropped the stone.

"It's fine." Isopia forced herself to say, all the while trying to convince her stomach not to throw-up the meal she had just eaten.

@Sikeax

If Sikeax's stomp hadn't occurred almost directly after Hubris dropped the ruby-red stone, which apparently was the cause of everyones discomfort, Isopia might have noticed the trio sooner. As it was, the stone falling and the mare's stomp sounded more like echoes of one another, and so Iso's golden gaze was not immediately drawn towards the mother and child - and certainly not towards the seal.

Hubris sat up, after grabbing a much more mundane - and hopefully inoffensive stone - and began to twist it in circles, somewhat nervously. He peered over the rocks, unable to see the approaching child, but he could certainly hear him. As the pair neared - boy and seal - the small dragon blinked in surprise as both bared their teeth towards him. Although for the most part Hubris was a passive creature, he did know that such things were typically a sign of aggression. Was it the rock? Was this one bad too? Looking at the stone clutched in his talons, the bronzey dragon immediately dropped it, trilling an apologetic sound towards boy and seal.

Ma- It was now that Isopia allowed her gaze to roam across the landscape - finally picking out an amber champagne mare moving towards them. A boy and his mother- Isopia thought to herself, and immediately she thought about the life growing inside of herself. A life that she now knew was related to another colt, who looked oddly like this one...

Both were dark.

Thought this one had horns ...

But his confirmation ...

Why so tahaaaalll?

"Because my Father was tall." Isopia replied immediately, her voice as neutral as ever, and clearly not bothered by the boy's questions, even if she decided to only answer the second one. Even though her Father had practically shouted her name to all who were present on the Rip Tide isles that day, she still felt no need to broadcast the information to those who didn't already know.

Isopia shrugged her narrow shoulders towards Sikeax to indicate that she hadn't taken offense. "Who knows - perhaps if your Father is tall too, you'll be as tall as I am one day. You can see very far, when you're this tall." Isopia offered - meaning the latter part of her sentence as something like a joke, but because her academic tone didn't change at all, it hardly sounded like one.

Jokes were not Isopia's strong suit.

Hubris edged backwards slightly, his wings fanning outwards to try and make himself appear larger. While he could fly away from both boy and seal, it bothered him greatly that he didn't know what he had done to earn their offense. Sensing this, Isopia looked from the dragon back to Sikeax. "Hubris wants to know why they bare their teeth. Do they not like dragons?"

@Sikeax

Warily Hubris eyed the rougarou, though having never seen one before - and having failed to witness the creature shifting into a different form - the dragon just assumed it was a regular old seal. Still, the seal was larger, and, unlike the boy, appeared to be actually hostile. The more Hubris watched, the more it appeared as though the seal was the one initiating the aggressive posture, with the boy merely following along. This assumption became more and more certain in his mind as the boy seemed to want to play with the discarded stones that Hubris had abandoned. Carefully, eyeing the seal with large, blue eyes, Hubris reached for the ruby stone, offering it towards Zhu. The dragon liked how it sparkled - how the ruby edges caught and reflected the light into refracted fractals on the ground.

He must ee a tea- Confused, Isopia stared at the boy. Anyone else might have asked his mother to 'translate', given that parents usually could udnerstand their children even if others couldn't, but the demigoddess kept her gaze leveled upon him. He was the one who spoke, after all. "He is tall. The tallest in all of Helovia, if legends are to be believed. But what-" Her ears flickered slightly. "I don't know what you said."

As the boy tried to raise himself up, mockingly (though gently so) Isopia stretched herself to her full height, standing with proper posture than slumped over so as not to appear quite so large, as she normally was. "Very far." She responded with a smile, narrowing her golden gaze to try and refine the things she was looking at quite far away.

Iso's gaze flicked away from the horizon and from the dark boy, as Sikeax began to speak again.
...Zhu’s father’s dragons... Isopia only knew of one who had two dragons. Now, there were a good deal many others who had two, but only one that she knew of.

One that she couldn't get off of her mind.

One whose child grew in her belly and -

With something like nervousness, her eyes flickered to Zhu. No, please no-. Her heart sunk in her chest, and that familiar frigid feeling that seemed to weigh her hooves down began to slowly rise through her body. 

"I see-" Isopia answered, her voice slow and low, as if trying to fight off the impending storm of questions that were rising in the back of her throat. In this, for perhaps the first time since her pregnancy, her emotions and intellectual and rational capacities were aligned. Ask who the father is- Her mind demanded, with full agreement from her heart. Of course these battling components of herself wanted the answer for very different reasons, internally, Isopia could find no reason not to ask, save for the feeling of impending doom at the answer.

An answer she was sure she already knew.

"-who ... who is his Father?" She asked, with a weak sort of forced smile.

Please let the answer be anything other than him-

@Sikeax