Pride was too busy munching the peach--tail flicking, the rest of it now lowering to the ground, where he chewed like a normal deer--to answer just then.

He heard silence, though: his gaze came up, peering from beneath pale brows, even as he ate. Was she trying to communicate-? He aimed to open a link to Vivilene, to offer an open path, but immediately realized that she was already speaking (in a sense) to Thalia. He remained quiet, then, just sort of mentally eavesdropping as he finished the peach, until she had finished.

(I'm here, too,) he mentally murmured, a quiet aside and a heads-up as to his accidental intrusion.

"You've done well with words," he said at last, warmly, "but I see your magic is stronger, now, too." Both bits of praise, given quietly and unobtrusively; by instinct he didn't want to draw too much attention to her prior muteness, and still near-muteness, but he offered the support nonetheless.

He was glad, too, to see her demeanor shifting, and the expression he offered up--as he finished nibbling the last of the peach from its pit--was kind. He didn't move to take the grapes, though, still licking peach juice from his chin.

It had stained his mouth a little pink-orange.

Thalia listened brightly, silver eyes wide. She hadn't expected the mental chat, but as she listened (and hoof-clicked back over to happily take a couple grapes, too) she kept on smiling.

"Oooh, that's like Dad's magic--Pride's, I mean!" she exclaimed; Pride had told her he did 'mind magic,' mostly, whatever that meant and at least part of that meant mind-talking. As for her own magic? She glanced at her fingers, face briefly scrunching up as she chewed and swallowed a grape. Her other hand still clutched a half-eaten peach. "Uhhh, I'm not real good with it? I mostly live with Dad--um. Attikias? Is that you who you mean--like, who I look like?" she went on. Attikias had taught her most of what she knew, and she'd lived in warm, familial company in Eridanus for most of her life, with frequent visits by Pride. What she'd learned, then, was more about hunting and crafting than about magic. She was only here as a visit now, in fact. That said, in adulthood she'd travelled as much as not, wandering the caves trying to learn all about them. "This is all I can do," she added, lifting her free hand.

It immediately went black, swallowed in shadows, the light sucked away and vanishing.

"UM," she said, eyes widening with faint alarm. She shook her hand, as if to get the weird not-light to go away. "Not that-! It isn't supposed to do that," she added, first inspecting her palm to see if it had dissipated (it had not) and then again shaking the hand some more.

She gave up after a moment, staring with consternation and confusion at the shadows, and took another slow, thoughtful peach-bite. "So, uh--you're older than me! By... double, I think?" she added, sparing a brief glance up at Vivilene between stares at her failed magic. "We both have antlers," she added, mood slowly seeping back to cheerful (at least the now-fading shadows didn't hurt), and smiled up at Vivilene's.

@Vivilene

i need someone to look into my eyes and tell me

"Hi," Vivilene responded to Pride, in an excessively casual but still gentle tone. What else are you supposed to say to someone announcing they were listening in to your dead-silent mind-conversation, after all?

She didn't seem to notice how quiet he was, either-- muteness was just a way of life for Vivilene. At his praise, though, Vivilene perked up further, eyes shiny. Although validation wasn't few and far between for her, it was welcomed regardless.

Content, the cervitaur plucked a grape off the vine and ate it, listening to Thalia. She nodded along again, politely and gently-- including one nod to indicate that yes, she did mean Attikias looked like the faun.

However, she damn near dropped the grapes when Thalia's hand turned black.

Vivilene reared back alarmedly, half-panicking, looking around. Her first instinct was to find a solution-- the light chased away the dark, so therefore, Vivilene had to somehow get light into Thalia's hand to make it the right colour again.

She looked around, and stumbled to pick up a rock. It was nothing special-- it fit nicely in one's hand, but it was jagged and-- well, a rock. Vivilence cradled it carefully in her hands and furrowed her pale brow as silvery-blue light filled it, as if the thing were made of glass.

Gently, she reached out to place it in Thalia's blackened hand. Fixed.

She nodded.


"girl you know you gotta watch your health"



@Pride

Pride was now, by all appearances bar diamonds all over him, Just A Deer. He stepped forward, each step careful, head held low and out, to pluck a couple grapes from Vivilene's hand or pouch and nibble at them. He remained silent, mind link left receptively open but his own mental 'words' absent as he let the pair work and discuss.

A glance at Thalia's failure was met with a brief mental note, and nothing more; he'd told her several times not to worry about backfiring magic, and that it happened to the best of them. Pale eyes flicked to watch the bauble formed, and handed over, but still he said and thought nothing in particular, jaws just chewing contentedly at the grapes.

Timing was everything, and it was pretty greatly-timed that the silvery-blue glowing stone was placed into the backfired shadow-engulfed hand just as said shadows dispersed. Thalia's eyes widened at this astonishing display of magical prowess, lifting said eyes to stare in awe at Vivilene.

"Whoa. That's incredible," she said, voice quiet with amazement. "Thank you! Uh--do I--can I keep this or--if you wanted it back it's fine," she added hastily, unsure if it was some sort of powerful shadow-curing rock that Vivilene had just made to chase shadows away. If she'd, you know, need that again some time. "What other magic do you know?" It was asked with genuine interest, fruit half-forgotten in one hand and Pride gone wholly unnoticed.

Thalia hadn't focused on magic. While Attikias had taught her about people-things--about fabric and leather, weapons and fires--she had, on her own, been something of a daydreamer. She sat alone in the forest for hours on end, happily humming new songs to herself or thinking up grand stories like those Pride had told her as a child. Now she was half-regretting not having learned some of this frankly awesome magic.

For now, Vivilene's antlers were forgotten.

@Vivilene

i need someone to look into my eyes and tell me

Vivilene hopped from one hoof to the other, bouncing excitedly. She was proud-- not smugly so, but the kind of pride a child would carry when they achieve something. She half-turned to see if Pride had saw, but decided it might have been better to leave him to it, taking the vine out of the satchel and offering the whole wad of grapes to him.

In reponse to Thalia, she shook her head. She moved to reach out to squeeze Thalia's rock-holding hand a little tighter over the bauble, indicating her to keep a hold of it. Or maybe she was just squeezing Thalia's hand for absolutely no reason. Unclear.

But magic-- "what other kinds of magic do I know?" she asked of Pride for absolutely no reason, going as far as to not really wait for an answer.

She loved magic. She loved practising and learning more. She loved learning something new. If she could find some water, she could have shown Thalia Attikias, or Eridanus, or something else in Polaris-- but she didn't know Orion well enough to know where the nearest water source was.

Plants-- she could repair broken plants and maybe even people who were hurt, but it was draining, and Vivilene partially didn't feel like going back into a heinous, migraine-induced nap again. Especially not in front of her family, who she just met.

Instead, she could show Thalia something fun.

Vivilene stopped bouncing to settle back down and concentrate a little, flexing her fingers. The next spell cast was a fairly simple sight-- summoning a blue-white, wispy light. That was, until it started spinning.

It didn't go very far. In fact, the wisp just stayed between the two hybrids, but it went careening in little shapes. Circles and figure-eights and anything else Vivilene could think of, silvery eyes drifting between the wisp and Thalia expectantly, waiting with barely-contained excitement.

"girl you know you gotta watch your health"


@Pride

He was so busy happily munching on grapes--tail flicking, ears moving this way and that, lost in oblivious contentment--that when Vivilene's question came through, he froze.

Grapes hung half-chewed in his mouth, ears and tail abruptly still.

His brain offered no response, just blankness, for a moment; by the time he blinked and tried to formulate a response (he had no idea what her entire magic was--he knew that she could speak mind-to-mind, as he could, but beyond that-?) Vivilene had moved ahead.

Pride blinked and took a step after her, resuming motion, chewing the grapes as his ears swept forward to place the full attention of all his senses on her magic.

Grapes were swallowed.

"Ahhh, that is a good magic," he approved. "Light in dark places, but be careful; I've known those wisps to lead us to the Masked Merchant. He is not particularly good for our survival prospects," the white stag added dourly. "He is the one who runs the Trials. So if your wisp ever appears on its own and flies away, be careful about following it. It will not be safe."

Like, lured into a moving, breathing black cave full of pits unsafe. Like, hallucinations and black water full of corpses unsafe.

Luckily, Pride had closed the mental link, and no evidence for the reason for his sudden shudder flashed through to either 'child.'

One hand was covered with Vivilene's, and Thalia smiled. She took it, at least, as assurance that it was a gift, and responded with a bright, genuine "Thanks, then!" and a broad smile--oh!

A wisp!

Thalia--the remains of her peach stuffed in her cheeks, hamster-like--(but she was chewing)--quickly stepped closer, with clicks of little black hooves.

She reached her other hand up, delicately careful (and it might've been graceful if there wasn't peach juice all over her fingers) to near the wisp--not touching it, but close. Her silver eyes were wide. "Whoa," she said (after, mercifully, swallowing the final bite of peach and shamelessly spitting out the pit); "that's really cool! Are you--making it do that? The, uh--flicking all round like that?" Silver eyes shot to Pride as he spoke--a warning about the Merchant, someone she wasn't sure she'd heard of. Then she looked back to Vivilene.

"...I really gotta work on my magic. Where'd you learn? -Or did you teach yourself?" Her interest was entirely focused on Vivilene, now, fascinated.

@Vivilene

i need someone to look into my eyes and tell me

Excitedly, Vivilene kept nodding. The wisp was dismissed once Pride started to talk, to which she stopped bopping her head and half-turned to listen to him.

Masked Merchants and Trials weren't anything she had ever heard of before. "What do you mean?" She asked (in her own head-- in the chance that Pride was still lingering around in there), taking a quick glance to Thalia before looking back to the white stag. "What are the trials?"

Curiosity bit at her, but when Thalia began asking more of her own questions, the cervitaur spun around again to listen. She nodded to her sort-of-sister's first two questions-- she was making it do that, she was fairly sure.

To her next two, she was still nodding. There was a pause-- a quick cast of magic that didn't come to fruition, and then Vivilene settled for more nodding. There was an awkward moment of silence, one that didn't entirely go noticed by Vivilene herself, but she felt relatively satisfied that she could be understood fine via nods and shakes of her head.

"girl you know you gotta watch your health"

@Pride

Of course, he wasn't holding that link open any longer. He wasn't thinking to, that assumption that Vivilene's magic simply wouldn't fail preventing it. Instead he just kind of stood there, half-hoping for more food to magically appear and be handed his way-...

Ahh.

Nodding, and silence.

He blinked a little, and looked to Thalia, head coming up--but she was smiling broadly, brightly, and so Pride didn't interfere.

The stag felt a little foolish, for a moment, struggling to grasp for some conversational topic or other that could be safely and politely breached, and finding... nothing. What could he ask about-? He was in touch, if vaguely, with family; he had already asked how she herself was.

And most of the goings-on in the caves were, well.

Grim.

Ahh, but one wasn't. "I've another new daughter, actually. Thalia's younger sister, I suppose-? Half, at least, ah--Jampa, if you see her around. She looks rather like me, a little birdlike--and I think she could do with a friend," he added. It wasn't said as if Jampa were alone--she wasn't--but that Pride genuinely thought she could benefit from having Vivilene around.

He didn't mention Jampa's other parent. That was something that--for her sake and for Tenzin's--he was keeping quiet, for now. "If you meet her, maybe you might get along."