Something in the way Ash Paw's expression changed, when Ceridwen suggested meeting the King of Dread in person, and this curbed her enthusiasm and made her wary. She sensed that besides the very cool ability to converse with the dead there was more to that truth. Perhaps, that part was more important than the shiny packaging. 

 "Bones? The edible part or... have you ever tried to assemble a creature?" here Dwin's mind jumped miles away to the next topic. "You pick all the bones you can find and then put it together and try to guess, what it is - it is a fun game," which she was not going to play with anyone anytime soon, because she was on her own. Dwin's face fell at this realization. 

"Oh, I know plenty about the life after death. I have - in fact - decided that after I die, I will become a thanatonaut! After all the death is the last unexplored realm," she told. "Do you know, what thanatonauts do?"

"Reading future from fantastic beast assemblations never occurred to me. Just think - there might have been full-blown prophecies right before our eyes and we just missed them!" Dwin mused loudly, wondering, what other fateful signs she might have missed along the way. Her mind hopped to the next idea: "But isn't the future something that we make ourselves? I mean, how can you predict my future, if my mind changes like eight - ten times a day? The possibilities of ending up somewhere are endless!" 

"Oh, yes. Thanatonaut is someone, who travels the Realm of Death. After I have explored everything here, that's my next destination," she told. "Your Dreadfather maybe is a thanatonaut too. He fits the description at least."

"Well, maybe there are ranks or levels of achievement for thanatonauts. Maybe to become a Dreadfather you have to cross those seven circles of hell or something. Or do something just as extraordinary," Dwin liked the idea, but then... if being the explorer of Land of the Dead was just as lonely journey as on the Land of the Living, did those titles matter? Who were to see your successes?

"Has he brought any dead back alive?" she blurted out the next question that popped in her mind, only to realize that her inquiry had not made any sense. "Or - even better. Say - bind a dead spirit to a living body? Or fresh dead body?" now that would be truly something! "Sounds like a very god-like thing to do. OH! What do you think - are souls made new every time or the dead ones just put back in a new form?" she was getting carried away now, her ideas buzzing like in a beehive. 

Dwin could accelerate from 0 to 200 km/h, if properly encouraged (fuelled - let's stick with car metaphors). That spark of curiousity about everything in the world had already been there and Maia had done a very good job to groom it from a single wheel and a stick to a proper question making engine, who could run for a long time. The girl loved stories and history, but was not very good at retelling them word for word. She often forgot the details and then replaced them with creations of her own or borrowed items from other tales. She manipulated with the facts freely and could drown her conversation partners in them, if not stopped in time. 

Ash Paw was in a very real danger of being swept off her feet by a tsunami. "That's interesting," Dwin nodded in agreement. "I would not want to come back either, if that next world was more interesting than this one. What is that you want to see in this world that you have not yet seen and do not know off?"

Dwin's first instinct was to interrupt and ask - why on Earth would anyone want to see a forest full of all the plants necessary for healing - but she remembered that Ash Paw was a healer by trade. And therefore - the idea was very practical. The next suggestion offered more room for imagination. A cave that cried and glowed. Hmm...

"Why would it cry and glow?" she asked Ash Paw to elaborate on the subject. "You know - my mom told me a story about mountain trolls, who are hu-u-u-u-ge and made of rock. And you can go around and wander inside a cave and in reality it is the open mouth of the sleeping Lauren," she retold the tale, but it was quite possible that she had improved some details and forgotten others. 

"Well, that is not the horrible part, though I imagine that smell must be something awful," Dwin mused. "The worst part is being inside that mouth, not knowing about it and then the jaws go shut," she clicked her teeth for added effect. "I think that in a case of being inside a mouth made of stone and not being able to get out is as good as a death sentence," or would turn out into a noteworthy adventure, if you made it out more or less whole and lived long enough to tell the tale.

"What landmarks does Basilica have?" she returned to the earlier topic about Ash Paw's home. "O-o-oh - do you have ghosts? My home is full of them." 

"Well, that would work, but then think, how much free space is there in your mouth, when you close it shut?" Dwin shot back a question. "If a Lauren's mouth and tongue are made of solid rock, he closes his mouth and - bam - you are very likely to be crushed like a... a... frog that Jay has sat on," she finished with a metaphor that needed some explaining and there was none. Sometime Dwin found that the existing vocabulary was not enough to describe everything properly and she came up with unlikely random strings of words. 

"A graveyard? That is awesome. My mom showed us our graveyard - my aunt, my cousin and... and... I forgot, who else are buried there!" she told, racking her brain on, who else she had frogotten. "You know that there are some spooky rituals to talk with the spirits and such? I wanted to try that - you know - siblings are sometimes boring and annoying and ghosts would be a nicer company - but my parents did not let me go there alone on a full-moon night. Said I was too small. And that ghosts would eat me. I would like to see them try," she finished her trek across the memory lane.

"Besides, what kind of ghost aunt is it, that tries to eat her niece, right? THAT would be awfully rude," she sighed, then remembered that she was not at all alone here and Ash Paw had mentioned another interesting thing about her home. "What is that sacred place? What happens there?"

"Do you have to dig up those bones of that particular dead person to talk with him or her? IS that's, why you have a graveyard inside your pack?" Dwin asked. "I don't think mom would look favourably, if I dug up aunt Wraen. Though I am sure she would not have minded - my aunt, I think, I heard she liked a good joke," but there was a little uncertainty in her voice, when she said this. 

"Do you need all of the bones or just one piece would do?" she continued that train of thought. "Because realistically, I could steal a piece of bone and no one would have a clue," or they would. A disturbed grave place. She sighed - why were all the exciting things in life so damn complicated. "Do you think there is a rule against digging up your relatives? I mean, technically, they are not there anyway?" though she had a feeling that even proper argumentation would not convince either Maia or Eljay that grave-robbing for the sake of conversing with the dead was a necessary and noble deed.

"What kind of gods and goddesses you serve?" she moved on to the next topic.

"Well, the real question is, where he got his bones to begin with," Dwin loved a good mystery, but she was sure that this Dreadfather guy probably kept a graveyard for just this reason. What if he had created a graveyard before he had created the pack? There was a potential for a huge story here. 

"Yeah, I guess she would. Grown up people simply do not understand fun things in life," she sighed - using a phrase that almost every one of us have said about our parents at a certain point in our lives. "But if unearthing Wraen's bones meant that my mom was able to talk to her - I think she might reconsider. A small possiblity, but still..." she shrugged. 

"And, what do you do in winter, when bears go to sleep?" she asked. "What happens to the world, when that balance is asleep?"

"Well, in that case he is a god of incomplete death - not everything dies in winter," Dwin countered the argument. "I am alive, you are alive, deer are alive, there are birds and my mom told that other birds go somewhere else during winter. And there are a lot of sleeping beasts - like those bears - so winter is not the season of dying, but the season of... sleeping? Do you think Sos cooperates with Sandman? You know that guy has a lot of work on individual things and Sos may be the manager of grander stuff?" now that was something and not impossible too. All stories about gods were connected to one another. 

"And how do you know for sure that only those creatures that are predestined to keep the balance die. What if the wrong one dies and the wrong person lives? If there is wrong in dying and living," more food for thought. "Do you think that the end of things end in chaos or nothing? Or are these the very same things?"

Dwin sensed she had stepped on Ash Paw's toes with her musings and inquiries, but she thought that if you were to convince someone to follow you - whether it was a person or a god - you were entitled to ask as many questions as possible. Otherwise - how did you know that it they were real and truthful? Were she ever interested to become entangled in religion of any sorts, instead of blindly believing in something, she would sit down that god/goddess or whoever celestial being it was for a thorough interview. Nothing less. 

"Balance is simple - if I stand on all my four feet firmly on the ground - I am in balance. If I fall - I am not. Though... we can elaborate on that fact too - falling itself might be an act of creating balance by lessening the distance between your body and the ground," she explained without hesitation. "But I can argue that balance is an imaginary concept - it is that we want to believe there is an order in a world that might be entirely chaotic and unreliable," Dwin went on. "Or it may be so that by having balance in one place - we create a chaos somewhere else. Say - I am standing in an anthill - I am in balance, because I am not falling. But for ants my balance means chaos, because their home is destroyed." 

"You say that I do not understand things I am talking about, but do you understand everything about your gods, if they are not completely open and honest with you? If they choose, which facts to share and which you should ask no questions about, it does shed doubt about them being entirely competent," Dwin thought loudly. "And IF they do not answer all of your questions and act as if they know better than you, that they are bigger and better than you just because, does it not speak about them lacking self-confidence?" she said. "Because if you are comfortable in your knowledge about all things and also comfortable in not knowing everything - why should you request people to follow you blindly instead of keeping eyes wide open?"

"Here lies the difference - believing that all things happening have a reason means excluding the possibility that there is no point or reason at all," Dwin continued to argue, but it did not necessarily mean that she did not agree with Ash Paw. Sometimes it felt good to think that there was some greater plan in life. "It is like you close your eyes and declare yourself blind, deciding against opening your eyes. Your sight is not gone - you choose not to see. Isn't it so?" she wondered. 

"Ain't gods a bit like parents? I also firmly believed that they know and see everything, but I have learned that they have been wrong and that they do not know every single thing that is out there," she said. "How do you know that your gods are always right or that they know better? Can you prove it?" Dwin asked. "Just because you believe things does not make them true."

"If gods are manifestations of us - wolves - then they must possess our qualities too. Both good and bad," Dwin was not willing to let the topic go, though her manner of asking questions was not to prove Ash Paw wrong, but just to hear her perspective on this. It was fascinating to study people, especially, when they themselves were eager to discuss. "So, they must be capable of making mistakes. OR... deliberately lying," she went on. 

"What if the god asks you to do something that goes against your nature?" she asked. "Or you feel it is wrong. Do you still do it, because you are told to do it and believe that they are always right. Or do you stop, think and refuse. Where does your belief in the greatness of gods end and where does your autonomy begin?" she finished.