oh, these wings, they flicker and my feathers stir
'til I'm an ancient soul in a cascade world
The conversation is easier when it is not focused on him, and he does not comment further on his lack of gifts. The fact that he emits a faint glow feels like the most pathetic of gifts and while he is forever grateful for the companionship of Astrum, he does not count it as a gift of his own creation. She is the one with magic, with presence, and he is merely the anchor that keeps her here on earth.
He does not think that is anything to be proud of.
So he just smiles at her kindness before turning his attention to her stories, trying to discern that which she tells him—imagining the worlds that she describes. It’s difficult, especially given his rather sheltered nature, to think of such things. Gods and lands. War and corruption. He had heard whisperings of such things in Beqanna, but they were always that—just stories. His life had always been quiet, uneventful.
He laughs a little as she gets to their current land and he shrugs.
“Strange is a kind way of putting it,” unaffected by the evaluation. There were days he had much unkinder thoughts about the world around them, although he did not have true cause to look down upon it. Beqanna had never wronged him in anyway, but that did not stop his fear of it, his aversion to it. It was a world he didn’t understand. That was enough for him to spurn him. Perhaps before it could spurn him.
“It is a world that can be many things to many people,” he hedges his answer slightly. “To my one father, it is a place to dream. To my other, it is a place to protect. To my sister, it is a place to explore.”
He pauses, unable to hide the frown that catches his mouth.
“And to me, I suppose, it has always been a place to avoid.”
and I'm quick with the bullet when it comes undone
I got a head like a turret with a mouth for a gun
