Grishia sat, crossing her legs as she 'worked.' She was fully engaged in her task, now, lost in focus on her artistic adventure across Vestyge's armor plates.

Had her mother walked in, undoubtedly a heart attack would've ensued.

Still, she muttered to herself as if committing it to memory: "My meat is weird." Huh. But Vestyge's assurance about his 'specific tastes' seemed to mollify her, and she hummed a little (some nonsensical tune) as she drew. All the while, her little bone golem began to wander about, an empty gaze accompanying the clatter of its mindless walking.

But! Aha! A new question!

"Um."

Grishia paused, thinking. "I haven't read them? Yet? Not myself. Um. Mom reads them and she just told me how but if you want I can try it for you!" Her words were flowing now, shyness evaporated in favor of exuberance.

She tipped her head back, trying to remember. "Mom said... my reading said--the bones said, for me--that I wouldn't work good with someone. Or myself. And I'd have hard lessons, and dangers, and stuff. And scary sad hard things and I have to be careful!" She said all this with flippant obliviousness, having never actually suffered any of those things, at least not yet; the prospect of them brought no fear. She was, after all, sitting on a Valkhound's back and doodling: it was obvious she'd taken exactly none of her mother's warnings to heart. "She said I shouldn't give things up for get into fights but I should fight. Um. To overcome things. I don't know what it means, but she said it's what the bones said."

She paused, and awkwardly patted the drawing that she'd made. "You're glowing, now!" she assured Vestyge, in a very professional tone, and tried to drop off the Valkhound to the floor. "Um. Do you live here?" she asked, as if in afterthought, and wildly overusing 'um'; "Are we..." (She paused to think of the word.) "...Neighbors?"

Grishia slid down, brushing paws off on her fur. She pondered what Vestyge meant about it being 'screwed up.' That felt wrong, to her; she felt like she should... defend the bones, somehow. But she didn't have the words for it. Didn't quite understand.

And then the conversation was moving on. She picked her staff back up and stretched, looking around. "You lived here, too? Were you Bonebound?" she asked, blinking up at him with wide eyes. Oh! But he had a charge for her. A request. The gnoll cub's expression at once changed to determined surety. She gave the towering beast a firm nod. "Yes. I'll help!" Then she hesitated, expression clearing a little. "Um. How? I mean-..." Where do I start?

Grishia looked around, then looked back at Vestyge. She rested a hand idly on her golem's spine. "...What do you need to remember? I have to have something to touch! I could do it on you, maybe?" and here she lifted her hand to wiggle it at him, as if to demonstrate what 'touch' meant.

Grishia nodded very solemnly, this new and sacred charge stilling her childish enthusiasm into a serious expression. The splashed celestial patterns glowing on Vestyge's hide might now have seemed somewhat out of place, but Grishia didn't note that; instead she studied the Valkhound for a moment with a gaze that seemed older than it was, her brows knit in that way a young child's might--just before they came out with some ageless wisdom. Or toddler's idiocy; there was rarely any way of knowing.

But what she actually said was a simple enough question, one as she glanced around her at the littered remains of long-dead Gembounds. "Which bone?" she asked, and began to toddle about inspecting them. She was by no means certain of what Vestyge might value in one bone or another--what his criteria might be--so she'd let him choose.

Grishia took it, and no doubt Vestyge's perpendicularity was appreciated: she was still very small. Even the skull was a little large for her toddler's size; she sat back, lowering herself to the ground, and settled it in her lap. She too noticed its rodent-like shape, studying it with that child's seriousness. Then she settled her paws on where its temples would've been, and thought really hard.

Her magicka flickered up. She froze, hardly breathing, as the images began to come.

It should be noted that this wasn't her first Marrowsight. It wasn't the first time the small child had vividly witnessed someone dying. She'd sort of been eased into it with a couple more... mild deaths, or as mild as they could come. The gory horrors that her older brother had seen, filled with monsters in the dark, had thankfully evaded her.

This one wasn't so different. She could hear a gurgling breath--the kind that some might call a "death rattle." And she could see...

"It's dark," she murmured, and she still stared off at nothing as she narrated to Vestyge. She wasn't sure if the darkness were real, or just a facet of the weaker, flickering nature of this cast. "I can't see a lot. More bones. Um. Someone's leg. There's blood. Black. A lot of it."

They were lying in a pool of it, she saw. A pool that was slowly spreading.

"He--they--can't breathe right. I think they're already dying but... it must be--taking a long time." She struggled to find the words, to explain that the vision was seeing only the very end. Not whatever had caused these grievous injuries; it was clear that whoever this was had suffered. Or at least, had taken awhile to die.

"Someone's coming. I hear--steps. Scratchy. Oh--claws." She paused, and her gaze suddenly sharpened past the visions, focusing on Vestyge's. She stared, but kept speaking. "...They--stopped. No. They're moving. They-..." The claws lashed forward. It wasn't a murder, exactly. More... mercy. Even the kid could see that, but she swallowed hard and closed her eyes anyway. "...Ow."

It hadn't hurt, of course. But the IDEA of it was awful.

"I think--um. Someone killed them. When they were already dying." Her eyes opened and she looked at the skull, and then lifted a hand to point it at Vestyge's claws. "They had claws like yours. Whoever killed them."

Completely innocent to the identical nature. To the truth of her own vision.

Grishia had to take a moment, her faked composure not too far off reality but death was still a lot for a little kid to take in. Even the third time, the fourth... She took a breath, something about what Vestyge had said piquing her interest. Distracting her, just enough.

Maybe it was a grim topic for a child. But Grishia wasn't any child. She was a child with a pet made of bones, with a staff threaded through with death and life, with a home in a cave filled with the dead. So... suiting, maybe, just for her.

"...You know a lot about death?" she asked. Her tone was quiet, but... curious. Yes--she did want to learn. And now it was her turn to regard Vestyge with attentive seriousness; he was her teacher, for the moment.