"My lion-dad's shown me them, I believe," Azizos shrugged, momentarily distracted from his quest to escape, "they appear to be lights or something. Orion's ceiling reminds me of them." They really were beautiful, even if he had never actually seen them with his own two eyes.
The lion-stag bowed his head in formal greeting; a sort-of curtsy, if you will. "Hello, Kai."
Kai listened, although one very minute detail confused her. Not about the lights, of course-- she'd seen Orion and if Orion looked like stars, it'd make sense. They did look like lights. Small and twinkling through dark stone.
Maybe it was meant to resemble a sky.
No, the detail that concerned her was Azizos' first three words. Lion-dad. "Your what?" Kai asked, bewildered.
Azizos was distant for a moment, silvery eyes drawn to the patchwork of colors that was Polaris as a whole: the Spire in the foreground, myriad gemstones and fungal life in the backdrop. It was a miasma of visuals and he quietly longed for the simple beauty of Orion, selfish as that seemed.
His... what? Mercurius? The lion-stag lilted softly, "he's a lion? He lives in a garden in Eridanus and tends to plants. I believe that he may be older than you or even your mother, if it were possible. He's very skilled in magic and storytelling but... I am unsure of hwo true his tales are."
Kai remained, for a few moments longer, bewildered. She stared across at Azizos with wide, barely-blinking eyes, then stared up at the ceiling for a moment, searching for whatever the other hybrid had been looking for before.
"Are you calling your second father a liar?" She asked-- specifically because Azizos mentioned his tales potentially being totally false.
"N-no, I'm not calling him a liar," Azizos demurred, ears flicking back as he cleared his throat. The statement had just taken him by surprise, that's all. "He's a li-on, kind and warm with a mane like mine. Feline?" He wasn't entirely sure if Kai had ever heard of or seen a lion, and perhaps mistook his pronunciation for the word liar? "I may have slurred a little, sorry."
Kai blinked a few times, then shook her head. "I didn't mean your slur," she clarified with a sigh.
"You said his tales might be untrue-- therefore you must be calling your father a liar?" She thought this much should have been obvious-- but she supposed that it must have been a common mistake. Lion did, in fact, sound like liar.
Oh, well, Azizos felt dumb, now --- completely of his own accord, rest assured. With a sigh of slight shame, the lion-stag looked away from the ceiling and at Kai. "Oh, well, I don't think that he would lie about something so beautiful, especially in the sky. If there's something like it in Orion, there might be something like it in the sky." For lack of a better explanation, he added, "call it a hunch."
Kai pondered this for a few moments, blinking very slowly. Then, again, she shook her head. "Well, why would someone tell lies?" She asked.
Having absolutely no concept of lying, or actual interaction, would lead to such a question, of course.
"I mean-- especially to your children and stuff? It just seems weird. I don't think my mom ever lied to me."
She absolutely did. Not that Kai knew that.
Why would someone lie? "Maybe for good reason," he mused aloud, rather unintentionally. "I believe he uses his imagination to come up with his stories --- I don't quite understand how he comes up with such fantastical things like a purple grassland called the Eventide."
Azizos added rather matter-of-factly, "he's told my brother that some were real and some were false, so the Eventide may very well just be a cave I haven't found yet."
"Oh," said Kai, silent for a few moments, digesting this new information. The word itself, 'imagination' was rarely used whenever she spoke with her mother.
In fact-- "my mom said imagination doesn't exist," she said.
Which. She had. Only once, and Kai was never quite sure why she mentioned it. Perhaps she wanted Kai to keep a realistic view of things, and not to let her heads get in the clouds, but regardless.
... Imagination doesn't exist.