There was a lot on Attikias's mind as he stepped over a grown-over trail, his arms close to his side in worry. Vivilene and gone out. She had been quiet (in the activity sense) lately, and that had set a stone of worry in the elf's gut, one that only grew with time. Now, she left, and Anne was the one to tell him.

Did she need to go? Had he been stifling her here? No, he wanted her to get out of Eridanus- she needed something other than this oppressive green and clogging trees. But, he couldn't pick up the clan and make them all move somewhere else- he'd been established here for nearly two years. Imagine what other people would think. Would they get lost? How could he even tell them where they'd gone?

Attikias shook his head, gripping his satchel harder. He didn't need to bring it, but something about having a strap over his chest gave him ease, like he was grounded here for just a moment. What if he found something, anyways?

Oh, who was he kidding. He wasn't here to find anything- his nerves didn't let him sleep all night and he was walking in the morning mist as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. It wasn't something he wanted other people to see, but he needed to alleviate worries, one that drew from places far beyond his reach.

Who was he? Who were his children? Did he do something wrong, by making them as an elf? Should he not have made other elves? What about the language, why did Vivilene know it? She was plagued by anxiety over everything, and he didn't want something like this to stress her either, and he needed to know for himself.

Taking in a deep breath, Attikias came to the place where he first met Astraea. The stag- no, the elf, had eluded him for a long while, especially since Attikias was never given a place that he normally was. He wouldn't be the kind of person to just shout out a half-stranger's name, either, but he was at his wit's end.

He let out the breath as he stopped in the middle. This is where he stood, right here, as Astraea spoke to him. This is where he heard the first words of that hidden language, locked far away and deep within his being. "Astraea," he spoke softly, reverently, as if the name would summon something far greater than he in a moment's notice.

Attikias steeled himself, standing straighter and cupping his hands around his mouth. "Astraea! It's Attikias!" He cried into the surrounding jungle, hesitating for a moment as he turned. Was Astraea even in here? Venari worked for him before-- perhaps he'd find the centipede-like being instead, and maybe she could lead him to the Master he sought.

Or maybe, he'd just find nothing.

The quiet crackle of foliage alerted him of someone not far off, followed by silence. Was it perhaps one of the lessers, wandering through? Or a Gembound, seeking something in their displaced daily lives? An amiable curiosity struck him, something he had not really indulged himself in in some time. Before Attikias had even called for him he had turned his hooves in his direction, a quiet crunching of leaves and rich, alien soil underfoot.

Ears cupped forward as the voice brushed them, and he recognized this one.

"I am here," he called out, and picked his way through the undergrowth. Ruby eyes searched the foliage until they found the elf in a clearing: dusky, soft-covered skin, primitive clothing, long tresses of hair. Faint jealousy and dim bitterness sparked briefly, but the regal stag bowed his head and spoke. "Imeára nur," was his quiet greeting, the old words still strange upon his tongue.

He had told this one that he would be of help, if it were wished. And Attikias had offered aid in kind, though it had not yet been needed. Astraea still had questions for him, but--as his ruby eyes trailed over the elf's taut face--he wondered if perhaps there were not something more urgent to be presented. "Do you need something, that you are seeking me?" Surely it would not merely be companionship he wished-? No, he thought distantly; that is not how any of them are. Not even this one, I think.

And the feeling it left him with was hollow.

@Attikias

Attikias's hands slowly drifted back to his satchel's strap when Astraea responded, turning to face the approach. There was a sense of relief washing over him in a wave- it had been so long, and he hadn't sought out the Master for any number of reasons. Had he dreaded talking to him again? Oh, and there came a sting of worry, one that stemmed from wanting to not be some sort of bother, probably the entire root of why he hadn't looked for Astraea. His expression was thick with concern when he saw the stag for the first time in a long time, and Attikias's expression softened, although he tightened his fingers around the leather across his chest.

"Imeára nur." Such simple words were enough to quell his worries, and Attikias found it within him to smile- a genuine, real smile- as he bowed his head back. He paused for a moment- when he brought his head back up- as he looked over Astraea. He seemed the same- tired, perhaps, but the elf half-expected that. Of course a Master would be tired. He'd been through a lot, it seemed, anyways.

But, did he need something? Attikias let out a slow sigh, his hands sliding down the strap and resting over his abdomen. How could he ask about elves? Astraea seemed just as surprised to find that he existed compared to Attikias learning that elves were a thing, after all. So, after a brief second of deliberation, Attikias gently shook his head. "I-- some part of me wanted to know you were okay." That was stupid. Of course a Master would be okay. "I thought you'd want to talk, if you weren't busy-- not any important talk, just wanted to, I don't know, talk?" He shook his head again, laughing softly.

"Sorry, I'm uhh-" he fluttered his hand in front of his face, glancing away. "I don't mean to be so flustered. It feels silly, to just want to chat with someone, doesn't it? But uhh- I mean, it's just been a while, and I thought it'd be good to-- see you again, to talk."

He swallowed hard, and despite his awkward words and lashing tail, he was rather calm overall. Maybe there was some level of childish excitement under it all- no, there definitely was some, when Attikias pried at his inner machinations. Excited, just to talk to someone. Well, an important someone, and a person integral to his character, but it was enough to maintain that smile he'd had on the whole time.

He shook his head again, minutely. "I'm sorry I don't have any drinks or food with me or anything- I've been awake all night 'cause of my daughter." He let out a rumble of a chuckle- ever the host, he was, and to him it really was unfortunate that he hadn't brought anything for a veritable picnic outing. "Besides, I don't think I have any sort of vegetarian only snacks-- I usually just offer people jerky." He rubbed at his jaw, shrugging.

"But, still- how've you been doing?"

He waited patiently through the mutterings, nodding here and there to show that he was listening. It was a shame, because he was somewhat busy at least all of the time, but Astraea had wanted to chat with Attikias, too, so there was a small relief when no sort of request seemed to come from the man's mouth. It was just a simple chat, then. He couldn't remember the last time he had an idle chit-chat with anyone that wasn't some sort of issue with the nest or some kind of drama. He almost felt himself declining, but the way Attikias admitted he was tired because he had been up all night with his daughter had flooded Astraea with memories of his own sleepless nights, taking shifts with Tenzin to feed and comfort Dawa in her infant and early years.

He smiled—a soft, warm, and genuine smile.

"I eat meat," he said as a casual opening, grinning at the statement. He didn't eat meat as well as he used to, but he could still. Oh, how he missed smoked meats the most...

How was he doing? For a moment, he only tilted his head to think about the question. His immediate answer was "Good," but that was a lie. It was never so simple, not anymore. He had opened his mouth to give this default answer but he found himself silent.

His expression softened and he gestured to a soft patch of foliage with a quiet, "Shall we sit?"

The crawling feeling of duty and responsibility invaded his skin, but he twitched these away with a quick flick of muscle in his back. So what? Chatting sounded nice.

As he settled into a laying position, his gaze drifted to the dense reaches of Eridanus and he felt himself ease into peace.

"To answer your question, I haven't thought about how I have been doing," he said finally. It was true. He hadn't set aside time to stress or mourn anymore than he had initially with Tenzin. Oh, the ache that gripped his heart at the thought of Dawa in Dhracia's cold hands. A pained expression flashed across his face for a moment before he shook his head gently, gaze shifting to view Attikias.

"Tell me of your daughter...? Is she keeping you up all night with cries of nightmares?" he asked with a smile. It was tiresome then, for sure. Whether Dawa needed to be changed, fed, or sung back to sleep, he missed it. There was a time, after all, that those things ended.

And he missed those things... the good and bad times; they were all moments he shared with his family, regardless of how frustrating they felt back then. He would never return there and it hurt to know that.

@Attikias

I eat meat. "Oh," was the soft response of Attikias, one of faint surprise. Typically deer didn't eat meat, but Astraea wasn't typical, was he? He wasn't even really a deer. Not truly. One hand slid down further to rest over his satchel, half-a-mind to check if he'd brought jerky. Of course he had- he almost always had some on him when he went out of the camp, always ready to offer it for a new friend.

Or, an old friend, in this case.

"I have some jerky, if you'd like it," he offered as he followed Astraea to the patch, sitting down across from him and tucking in his legs. As Astraea settled, Attikias retrieved a rather large piece of dried meat- it had been smoked, though it was a little bland with not much in terms of seasoning. Letting out a comfortable breath, Attikias let his muscles loosen as he held the jerky out for Astraea to take, as if he'd hand the meat to any one of his daughters.

"It's good to take some time for yourself, I think. Y'know, time to sit and just... let things settle in," he hummed out, closing his eyes briefly as his smile widened. "Even if it... Hurts, it's good to go through it, I've found." His mind flickered back to the various beings he'd almost hurt, to the pigeon in her chrysalis, and his expression dampened for just a moment.

His hair bobbed as he shook his head just slightly, his smile returning- though lessened, now. Vivilene... "No-- she's gone out on her own, a few days back," he spoke, quiet voice breaking through the noises of the jungle. His face warped into one of vague concern- concern for Vivilene, concern for what he should say, concern of over-sharing. "She's old enough, but I still worry about her. She, ahh-" He flexed a hand as he struggled to find out what he wanted to say next, the gears working in his mind.

"She deals with a lot of... Stress, I suppose. Of speaking, like you or me, and other people." He rumbled out, bringing his hands together in his lap and rubbing his thumbs over one another. "She's taken to our language like a fish to water, though. Ours-" and he waved a hand between the two of them in indication- "I mean." His tail thumped behind him before he curled it close, eyes locked onto his worrying hands. "She's my only child who can do that. Who knew what imeára nur meant, before I had to explain it like the others. She's so-- fragile, to me, I suppose, that I can't help but worry about her." He chuckled again before looking up to Astraea, his hands stilling. He spoke as though he'd had a child of his own, once- or still did. Slowly, Attikias's worried expression turned to one of gentle understanding, his hands letting go of one another.

"Do you have a child?" Perhaps the wording was blunt, but it was an offer for Astraea to talk about his own child- if he had one- a question of gentle curiosity and soft-spoken words.

At first he eyed the jerky with longing, before reaching forward to gently take it between his teeth and placing it between his hooves. The brief moment he could taste it in his mouth was almost like torture. He wasn't sure if he could eat jerky well enough but that wasn't going to stop him from trying.

"Thank you," he said as they both had settled, both to the jerky offering and the words Attikias had followed with. Astraea did not find that he often took time for himself, it was always for something or someone else, for one reason or another.

As the elf began to talk of his daughter, the deer gnawed a small piece of jerky free from the strip and tried it between his teeth—it was not easy to chew with his deer teeth but it would not be impossible. He answered Attikias with hums or noddings, and both when the elf gestured between them to indicate he meant the elven language.

Fragile... Astraea understood that one completely. Dawa had been very fragile. They could never quite find a cure for her but did their best to ease her afflictions.

He swallowed the piece he had been chewing and raised his eyebrows at the question.

"Yes," he said, then considered if that was the right answer. "Well, Dhracia has her now... Tenzin and I have mourned her death, we felt her magic dissipate, but Dhracia—" his voice broke, and he swallowed again before continuing. "Well, the Lord returned her magic, but now her stone is kept as a control piece for Raheerah, I think. We know the Lord took him and the moonstone; if she wanted Raheerah, she would not be able to use him without some kind of leverage. We fear for our daughter being used as such, but... if she remains within her stone, perhaps it will not be as bad." He tried a smile but it did not feel good, it was weak at best.

"Her name is Dawa, she is also a very fragile one. I understand your concerns so much, Attikias. When Dawa was in her teens and she began going out more, we worried endlessly. She had a curfew, you know? By supper. Sometimes she was late. Even as she grew older, I don't think either of us would sleep until she came home. And, oh, Raheerah." He shook his head and rolled his eyes. "You never want to see them pick the hooligan as their fancy, but here we were, fretting over their time together. Thankfully, I think he truly would have done anything in his power to protect her—anything, which is worrisome in itself—so on one hand, we had to accept she would be safe. But on the other hand, it was impossible to let go of the feeling that if we were not the ones watching over her, nobody was good enough to do it." And in the end, none of them could protect her.

His nose gestured toward Attikias and he grinned. "So I definitely understand your sleepless nights. Are you in contact at all?" Not that they could exactly write to each other, but were they sensitive to each other's magic? Did they have messenger birds or anything of the sort? "Have you tried anything to ease her stress?" He wondered if Tenzin might have some sort of medicinal cure, whether it was magic or herb in nature, and if it even sounded appealing to Attikias. It did not feel good at first to try Dawa on such things, especially when none of them aided her. It had been exhausting for all of them, but probably most for Dawa.

@Attikias

Attikias drew his legs in closer, holding one knee casually as he returned soft nods to Astraea when he began to talk of Dawa. There was a moment, a voice break- and Attikias could feel his heart tense, his face growing concerned once more. 'He'd... lost her.'

He frowned, mostly to himself, at that, wishing he could comfort Astraea in some way. He didn't know the situation, but it seemed, perhaps, the Master hadn't had time to mourn. Attikias wasn't sure how to even approach that. How would he feel, if one of his children died while he wasn't watching them? Astraea had Tenzin, but how would he ever tell the other parent that their child died in his care? Who could he even mourn with?

But, perhaps he didn't have to worry as much as Astraea. This... Lord, it felt like a powerful word, and he'd never met Dhracia. He couldn't even imagine any of his daughters in that situation, and it's one that flourished with empathy for Attikias. That... That was a veritable hell.

He understood, fully, why Astraea had been so busy, now.

When he saw the weak smile given to him, Attikias hesitated. His expression emptied, and he looked to the grass, before a look of pained sympathy took over him. There would be no way to know what Dhracia was doing, no way to give comfort to Astraea's worries. Perhaps all he could do was listen, and Attikias's heart felt for Astraea, aching for the scenario his family had shattered into. As he continued on, Attikias listened intently, nodding back and clearly interested with how he just barely cocked his head.

He could see, clearly, the love for Dawa. How the two of them raised her, cared for her, just as much- if not more- than Attikias did for his children. What would he do, if one of his daughters fell for someone firey, someone so protective? And here, he understood Raheerah, too- the destruction out of love, out of pain for Dawa, and the grief they'd all gone through. He'd thought of the caves powered by such death and hatred, but, perhaps, some aspects were strengthened by the bonds they'd made with each other. The desperation of love.

Attikias's knee drew up so he could perch his head on it halfway through, watching Astraea raptly as he sorted out his own emotions deep within himself. "I know of some spells to keep contact, but I don't want my own worries bleeding into her's too much." He shook his head slightly, looking up to the leaves as he thought. "I try to help her. But Vivilene, she has her own garden patch, and she's taken strides in practicing telepathy. She's so much smarter than I could ever dream to be- all of my children are." He let out a soft sigh, before letting out half a laugh.

"Well. Half of them. The other half remind me nearly too much back when I thought I wanted to be a hunter rather than a father." His head dropped back down, and he idly rubbed along his jaw- a standard comfort motion of his, but one he did out of thinking, this time. "Erebos is nearly feral, but I'm going to blame that on whoever the diamond belonged to before them." He chuckled, grinning and shaking his head. It was a moment before his voice dipped back down again- somber, perhaps, but his tone bittersweet. "But, I love them all so much. I can't imagine what it'd be like to lose any of them. I'm... So sorry, you lost Dawa. How long ago was it?" His head came back up to look to Astraea, his expression once again filled with bleeding empathy, his hands curled around his knee.

"I don't want my own worries bleeding into her's too much." Ah... that was wise, yeah. Tenzin had always been his voice of reason on such topics. Growing a garden sounded nice, though. He liked to see the random, personalized patches of the nest that the gembounds had created.

Astraea could not help but laugh along with Attikias when he mentioned how much smarter Vivilene was than him. "It is like that!" he commented quickly, thinking of Dawa's own strengths and her wisdom. She had surpassed all of them, even Tenzin it felt; but so much of it had been born from the deepest, darkest places of her heart.

As Attikias continued on about a few other of his children, Astraea nodded along again, and turned his nose up in thought at the question. Time was not so simple for him; he had lived here for over ten thousand years! "Mmm... last year," he concluded, though it was still so recent. It felt like yesterday.

The conversation reminded him briefly of the gathering in Orion's Forum; there was a brief flash of guilt that crossed his eyes as he held Attikias within his gaze. The nest's entire purpose was for the production of valkhounds for Dhracia and other Hands to take. Even Attikias's children could be next, though he did not personally see their designs as valuable to the Hands. The creatures born in Draco, however, were much more appealing. So perhaps Attikias and his family would be safe, even if they were doomed to live their lives in the nest. He frowned at the thought.

Ah— Attikias had been seeking him out, he remembered. Thankfully, too, because dwelling on the thought of Dawa began to grow a sour pit in his stomach.

"So anyway, to answer your previous question, I haven't had the time to do badly or to do well. I simply... am. But this—talking—is nice, thank you," he said, his voice dropping into a near-whisper as his lips pulled into a soft, gentle smile. "Did you have any specific topics you wanted to talk about?" He grinned quickly, adding, "Though I don't mind hearing about your children—they sound like a handful!"

@Attikias

At the addition of Astraea's words, Attikias brightened and let out another chuckle as he'd spoken his words. It was... Good, to find someone so similar to him, more beings who understood and brought more good into the caves. Even if Astraea was some all-powerful Master, he felt so down to earth and homely, that Attikias couldn't help but feel so comfortable in his presence.

He sighed out, when Astraea told him when Dawa had died. A year felt so long away, and yet not at all- though, perhaps he was just young. Astraea was old- much older than he- old enough to use the word imeára when they talked. Perhaps he was older than the caves themselves- though, that was mystifying enough to imagine that Attikias shoved it deep into some easily forgotten recess of his mind. What mattered was the present, and Astraea seemed discomforted by something.

Attikias only pinned it as recalling memories, and his eyebrows furrowed softly as he leaned in, supportive. It would hurt, he wanted to say, but nothing came-- he shouldn't be lecturing Astraea or anything, after all. He'd never been good in the therapy department of things, and that brought a twinge of memory to him; he'd meant to let Vivilene meet Astraea. But, she wasn't here, and he wanted to talk, and he put his head back on his knee as he run that thought through again. He could have just waited, but if he did, he'd be playing favorites- he could tell he was- and he hid a pondering look by putting one hand over his mouth.

"Well, if you're still around and kicking, you're doing a bit better than some people," he offered as a small chuckle. "I barely get out of Eridanus unless I'm looking for something anymore. I took a trip to Gemini recently, though, and I am planning a bit of a trip for one of my daughters and her friend to Cepheus. I still need to get the campground and stuff set up for them, if they want to go." He thought for a moment, drumming his fingers on the leg that still lay on the ground, humming softly.

"Oh!" His head shot up, tail thumping once on the ground. "It's a silly thought, but, do you know why you're a deer? Vivilene's part deer- a fourth, I think?- with the bottom half of one-- as if you took off my waist and put me where a deer's neck should be." He tilted his head, looking down to himself as he thought. "I thought there was some correlation, with Vivilene able to speak the language, but Thalia- sort of the same, just straight half deer and only two legs- she didn't get that." He tilted his head the other way, giving off a soft 'hm'. "I always found it... Odd? I don't know- like something hit just right for her to know it, too. But maybe it's just strokes of luck, huh?" He shrugged and rumbled out a soft chuckle.

"It's an odd question, but something that's been in my head for a while, now. I thought, maybe, I could introduce her to you someday, too, when she's settled down a bit more. I think she'd enjoy it." He paused for a moment before nodding to himself, smiling softly. There were so many other things he could ask, too, but all of those things would be too close to prying, and the others were simple not feasible for the two of them. They both had their own lives, and there didn't seem to be some magical trick to learning (or remembering) an entire language. Was there?

Still, he wasn't going to be rude and ask about that right now.