We are at war. There will be scars.
Is he the first child to be born into the new Chamber? Is he the first Prince of Ash, the first one to wander amongst the skeletons of trees? Have all generations before him felt the embrace of the pine needles the way his mother did? He takes in her words with a frown (so serious!), looking every inch the grown-up that he is still so far from becoming. He likes to think of things like this, likes to dig deep into the past, to search for the truth that other foals would consider boring, to learn the stories of the past that his elders, his mother, and his father have to share.She speaks of the Gates and the Falls, and he knows of them, too. He's heard of them; the stallion Texas, a visitor to their borders, had come from the Falls. He has seen so little of Beqanna, he thinks, and frowns. It's not that he wishes to leave the Chamber; it's more that he understands the necessity of traveling, of going elsewhere so that he can return here better able to serve.
He breaks the silence just after she speaks of the Chamber's secretive beauty, his voice quiet, hushed. "This kingdom is still beautiful, Mother." he says with a ghost of a smile on his lips, reminding her of something he knows she already knows, not correcting her. "It didn't destroy grandfather's heart." He says with a small, almost grim smile, and his voice has strength like iron in it.
He listens with rapt attention as she comments on the use of the unnatural. He's seen several mythical horses by now, enough to accept that some of them may have wings, horns, etc. But he's never encountered one with magic. "An unnatural disaster." He says, comprehending the meaning behind her words. "How long ago?" he could tell that it was neither yesterday, nor a hundred years ago, and he's curious (about this, about everything.
His eyes scan the skeleton-woods before coming to rest on Straia once more. "What did this? And was it just to us?" he asks, without a trace of fear in his voice. He is not worried that it may happen again; whatever it was, if it does, they will simply live or die, and then rebuild later. If some vengeful, spiteful god is determined to wipe them from Beqanna, it is unlikely that any of them could change their fate, and so he does not worry.
And he is silent, waiting to hear what she has to say. He does not waste time with questions like "why" or "how" or even "who"; would Straia even know who specifically was to blame? Would she know that it was in fact her newly minted ally, the Magician-Lord of the Valley? Certainly Erebor did not. To him, the world is Warship, Straia, and their small band here in the Chamber. The rest is largely unknown, like a landscape shrouded in clouds. Piece by piece he'll pick apart a comprehensive vision of the world, but it's slow going when you're so young and life is so vast. That's true even for him, the child who is old before his time, impossibly precocious.
Erebor
Native Prince of the Chamber
warship x straia