She is pleased when he begins eating the hare, and she preens slightly as she watches him, ears perked forward, head nodding along with him as if to show that she was supporting each movement. When he offers it to her, she shakes her head violently. “No.” Her nose wrinkles, and she wonders at how anyone can actually enjoy eating—her stomach always felt hollow. Never in her life had Anastasia had the desire to eat anything, and she is perfectly content with that. Still, curiosity has driven her to it once or twice.
“Rabbit is…gross,” she stumbles over the word, happy that she had finally plucked it out of the air, before she snorts. “Tastes old.” When she did hunt alongside her father, she much preferred the taste of big game—they tasted wild and free and strong.
Rabbit always tasted small to her, pitiful. Not that she liked either.
Finally though, they come to the root of the conversation: the whole point. She is not surprised, but she is sightly put out that their play was ending so soon. So she just sighs. “Home? Rho-nan has home?” The Chamber, in some odd way, still felt like a home to her, but not in the way that it felt for most. Instead, she found that the cold mountains were home with the fog rolling up them early in the morning. That was home.
“Anastasia would like to live at Rho-nan’s home.” A heavy pause. “Shadows come too.”
like the moon, we borrow our light
{I am nothing but a shadow in the night}