The sight of the flickering lights was what at last confirmed - this had to be Regalia's son. Spawn. Descendant. Wilder wasn't sure. But she knew no others that spoke in lights in that way besides that which she once called her child.
She nearly jumped to her feet at that and stepped forward.
The pupils of her eyes disappeared as a cloud of cosmic pink and purple swirled across her vision as she came to see...a tunnel. She recognized it - Tunnel K, the haunted one between Orion and Canis. And
Regalia.
Floating before a small opal claw, encompassing it, and then floating away, leaving the thing behind glowing faintly with life before going dark once again. There was nothing else to see, as the tunnel went still and quiet. But Wilder did not have to stay long. She had her confirmation.
She came out of the vision seconds later, blinking away the shroud of magic over her vision, and stared at Arcturus. It wasn't a thought anymore, it was real.
Arcturus was slightly alarmed at Wilder's sudden movements and caught off guard, again, by the question.
Nothing happened - to him, at least, but he waited patiently for Wilder to do what she was doing. But when she pulled away, there came no explanation, just silence, disbelief, and something else stirring in her gaze. Arcturus liked to think he was good at reading people, but he wasn't sure what that look Wilder was giving him meant. He let the silence drag for a bit, before worry and anxiety sparked at this stomach.
Wilder flinched, startled out of her thoughts by Arcturus's soft voice. She looked back, their gazes connecting (and those were Regalia's eyes, no doubt, two gleaming stars) and found herself at a momentary loss for words. She opened her mouth and shut it again, thoughts whirling through her head too fast to catch.
Trying to order together how she felt about this, puzzling out how Arcturus had turned out like this when its parent had been so...not this. Regalia had been hardset in its delusion of godhood, unflinching, unyielding, losing its mind to its own illusion of power. But Arcturus was...sweet. Wholesome through and through.
Arcturus's eyes widened.
Arcturus had not wondered where he'd come from. He was alive and that was simply all that really mattered to him. But now that he knew that he'd been hatched out of the life of another and not the random creations that popped up here and there across the caves, he felt warmer. Fuller. Part of something!
She did not share Arcturus's enthusiasm, each second that he grw more excited, dread grew in her stomach. Since she'd told him, now she's have to tell him about Regalia's fate. Where it was.
She motioned with her tail, a stern look passing over her face.
She sighed.
Wilder's head was lowered. She couldn't look Arcturus in the eye.
Wilder's request to have him sit at first went over its head, too excited to even think about sitting, but then it washed over him that she was serious. Something about her had been drawn into melancholy and Arcturus's spirits dampened almost immediately. It stopped excitedly prancing in place and instead sat itself down, almost impatiently, scooting closer.
The revelation was worse then he was expecting.
He stared at her, disbelieving, speechless. It had thought, in the brief time it'd had to consider what its life-giver would have been like, that any child of this delightful cat would, too, have been delightful. And any parent of his couldn't be evil, right? He was anything but!
But...the sight that Wilder conjured for him, he took one look at it, and even though it had no expression - how could a cloud of gas express in any way - he could see the intensity in its gaze. The seriousness. And he could feel Wilder's longing and regret. It was his finest ability - reading others. Here, it only brought him pain.
He was silent through Wilder's short speech, and only after she lowered her head and apologized did he say anything.
It was painful, knowing that he had come from something bad, but as the moments went on, he felt more and more okay with it - after all, it had been a long time ago, if they had never met.