How could a mother --- or a parent --- tell a child that imagination wasn't real? Azizos sputtered slightly, astounded by the notion. Didn't it clearly exist in the form of storytelling, as he had indicated just moments prior.

Completely on autopilot and unable to formulate a proper response (causing a great deal of internal stress) he bleated, "imagine that."

Oh, Caves no. Pride's dad humor was infecting him, too.

"Sorry."

This pun, at least, went right over Kai's feathery head. Nor did she really think about the horrible implications that her own mother told her that imagination was a farce sculpted by people who, clearly, had the imagination to come to that conclusion.

"I guess," Kai responded, quizzically. And then she moved right on.

"So, this hole," she said, looking up to the ceiling. "How do you make it?"

Thank the Caves that pun had gone over his new sister's head --- Azizos wasn't sure if he could live with the knowledge that anyone had acknowledged that awful humor but him.

Content to march right back to the subject of the Ceiling Hole Plan: "well, my deer-dad --- not Astraea, as he is sometimes called by that nickname --- is very skilled in powerful magic that manipulates energy itself---"

And in a show of marvellous memory, Kai asked, "who is Astraea?" Quite abruptly so, in fact-- enough that she completely cut Azizos off mid-sentence.

Which, incidentally, she did not realise was really a bad thing. More than thirty-six cycles of being a glorified hermit and not speaking to anyone might do that to a person, especially when the only interaction they did have was with a stag who spoke, maximum, ten words.

Azizos was abruptly cut off by the Gembound with memory of the year. Silvery eyes stared for a moment, slight shock actually on his face. "The deer with mushrooms? I think he has a red stone between his eyes."

Hoping that was clear enough, he continued, "he can manipulate energy into these... hm, cannons. I believe I should be capable of the same."

It wasn't.

It was, however, enough for Kai to draw a new conclusion from that imagination her mother told her didn't exist. As Azizos mentioned a stone being between his eyes-- on his face --Kai spoke again. "I, too, have a stone on my face."

Because. You know.

She did. Which clearly meant she was Astraea.

By introducing this hybrid to imagination, Azizos has inadvertently derailed the entire conversation. If he had arms, he would've stood akimbo. Instead, he did the closest approximation: standing with stocky deer legs spread out slightly, jaw dropped slightly in shock.

"I-I..." --- clear throat --- "I don't believe you're Astraea. You don't have... the face."

This was indicated with a brief once-over. Everything else checked out in the deer anatomy department other than the excessive fluff and bird-like face.

Kai’s eyes narrowed briefly. There was definitely a mistake in introducing the hybrid to something as complex as an imagination, but for now Kai merely offered a further insight into her childhood.

“My mom says I can be whoever I want to be,” she said. It was unclear if Isi had actually said this or not— surely it’d contradict he stag’s opinions on imagination, but it did at least seem like something that a mother would say to her child.

Even if that meant being a homicidal deer who potentially had slaves in the past.

That was absolutely a contradiction and Azizos was astounded by it, for lack of a better word. And Kai had thought he called his parent a liar.

"Perhaps you can in a personal capacity, but..." he began delicately as possible, "I do not believe that may go beyond our actual physical appearance." A breath. "I think that Astraea may just have a face similar to mine or your mother's."

For a moment, Kai put her single brain cell to work. She decided that people with faces like Azizos and Astraea and her mother must have thought they had the Superior Face.

“Yeah but your face isn’t better than mine. I could be Astraea no matter what kinda face I have,” Kai nodded.

And then she tried to move on with the subject. “What about the hole?”