from the destruction, out of the flame
He has much to learn from her.
He does not understand love but he knows that it exists.
He knows that his father loves his mother. Or that he had once. Before. And perhaps this is why he thinks children are born from love rather than necessity. He wonders if he and his sister are bargaining chips as well. If they are a matter of convenience.
He feels no glimmer of resentment at the thought.
It is not lost on him that she refers to the father of her children in past tense.
Was.
He wonders what this means, too.
He has much to learn from her.
He tilts his peculiar head, watching. And then she asks him, as if he knows. As if he has ever known anything outside of the realm of Pangea. As if he has lived far longer and far wider than she has. He blinks those freakish yellow eyes and might have rolled his own shoulders if to do so would have resulted in anything more than a ripple of darkness.
“I don’t know,” he tells her, the truth. Perhaps it is common. Perhaps the way his father loves his mother is the unusual thing. He studies her a beat longer before he turns his gaze to the river.
“How many children do you have with him?” As if it makes any difference at all.
As if he will not still look at her like doing so will be the thing that saves him.
you need a villain, give me a name