rhonen
molten eyes and a smile made for war
It is easy to allow himself to distracted by her words, ease into the flow of the conversation, and lose himself in this easy thing. It’s nice, to have an easy thing; he has not had an ‘easy’ thing since before the catastrophe. And even then, before the disaster happened, he’d been mostly alone since the quest. He’d talked to a few people in the Falls and his grandmother in the Deserts, but his family is missing and he has not had their easy companionship for a while.
Her questions make him nod, giving his sharp-edged smile that is all he has left (there is nothing left of that boy he had been, except in the rarest of moments). But it is nothing if not a true smile, however sharp. “Yes, we had a waterfall. It fell from a cliff like a mountain, with crystal clear waters below. And all around we had meadows, and some trees. From the top, you could see everything. And the sound of the falling waterfall was my lullaby from the earliest age.”
In between the lines, there are other things. How sometimes, without the Falls he is nearly an insomniac at night. During the day he listens for it on instinct, and when the world is quiet and still or there are other noises, it hurts his heart. More than that, without the Falls, there is no homing beacon for his far-flung family, and he cannot be sure he will ever see them again. His golden mother, ever the sweet and eager. His nearly shimmering father, copper and bright, and so in love with mother. His older sister, with her stubborn need to return home and her banked fires. And most importantly, his twin. With her copper pelt, so like his, but the bright blonde of her mane and tail contrasting to his.
“What do you remember most, about your home as a child?”
