No, for once, Azizos was not going to move on from the subject until the possibility of animal racism was dismissed. "I don't believe my face is better than yours--- you must be able to see much more than I can," he offered with a flick of his ear and slight sideways tilt of his head. Darn cervid side-eyes.

"Astraea has mushrooms on him, if I recall correctly." The lion-stag moved slightly, as to get a better view of Kai's side. "I don't see any caps on you."

Kai considered this and deemed it: Reasonable. Perhaps she could see better, or perhaps Azizos was just trying to make her feel better. Either way it didn’t quite matter because now Kai was quite dead set on being Astraea.

“Well I have flowers,” she said with a few nods. “They’re almost mushrooms.” Practically the same thing, in her opinion. What was a mushroom anyway, if not just a bad smelling flower?

His mouth opened and closed --- lest he catch flies in his shock --- as he realized: "I have no reasoning against that."

Azizos stared down at his hooves, then Kai's in some sorry attempt to find another reason why his sister was not Astraea. He'd know right away, right? Ancients were powerful and--- oh!

"Well, how old are you?"

'How old are you,' Azizos asked, as if Kai ever kept a track of when the cycles passed and how long it had actually been. The hybrid gave a little shrug instead, shaking her feathery head.

"I don't know," she said. "Pretty old. Older than most, I think."

It was unclear, really, but what she did know-- "My mom was older, and past-me. They both emerged around the great awakening. I mean-- past-me musta, or maybe he was older. I don't really know."

'Older than most, I think.'

Well, he had been asking for a relative date. Azizos couldn't be trusted not to count the individual days he had been alive and divide them by thirty plus on--- oh, the past-me thing was back in full swing.

Better to not ask about that. "Yikes," he intoned softly, mostly to himself. That seemed like a loaded subject.

"Well, the ancients are the very first Gembound, I think, and Astraea's one of the ancients --- ergo, you couldn't possibly be, as you have Gembound before you."

A surprisingly unloaded subject. It's not like Kai had those memories or anything-- she knew absolutely nothing about past-her. Nor did it really matter, to her.

Though, she was a little disappointed at this scientific revelation. "I guess I'm not Astraea, then," she murmured quietly. Though, in an effort to lighten the mood-- mostly, cheer herself up --she added, "though! I could be if I wanted to be."

She nodded a few times, content with this much, at least.

Despite Kai pretty much being four million years older than him, Azizos felt legitimately bad for stomping all over the hybrid's slaveholding dirtbag-fueled fantasies. Not that either party were aware of Astraea's --- ahem --- activities.

She seemed to cheer herself up, though, bringing a smile to the lion-stag's face. It wasn't exactly genuine, but this conversation wasn't going anywhere unless he conceded. He nodded, "I'm glad we have squared that away, Kai."

Time to put this train back onto its rail, after letting it run aground for three miles: "this conversation, somehow, has me thinking; perhaps I should not blast a hole in Polaris's ceiling."

Kai definitely was not aware of Astraea's dirt-bag slaveholding and probable genocides and child-armies and the like. She'd probably, in fact, not want to be Astraea if she knew.

"Squared?" She asked bewilderedly, regardless.

Then, she blinked a few times, thinking. "Well," she said, in a tone meant to reason with someone about to make a rash decision. "I thought you had-- aspirations?" She tested the word in her beak.

"Squared, like cleared," Azizos tried explaining, but gave an expaserated sigh as he realized that that made no sense. What the hell was a square, anyways?

Another research project, he supposed.

Silvery eyes trailed, yet again, away from the ceiling and to Kai. "Well," he repeated, unintentionally imitating the other hybrid and explaining away his not-rash decision, "these aspirations may have a death toll should something go horribly wrong --- implosion, collapse, explosion..."

He pondered for a moment, brow furrowed and head tilted toward his hooves. "Ah," Azizos interjected with a rather epiphany-filled tone, "when I was a child, an odd creature fell through the roof in Pisces. That hole --- or at least what remains of it --- should be accessible, still, if we simply dig it out. Would you like to come along, still?"

.. hm. That didn't sound like a square at all, but Kai wasn't about to go and question it. Instead, she merely nodded along at the implication that Azizos' plans to blow up Polaris would probably have people killed-- even if Kai thought it would be more of the issue of the elders to clean it up. Everyone else would be free, right?

"Huh?" She asked distractedly, blinking. "Oh, I know where Pisces is. I can show you the way?"

Kai was, of course, already trotting off in the direction of Pisces. "Come on."


exit