it's late when they finally make it past the mountains. okeanos is slowly realizing his imagined scale of the teekons was much, much too small. the journey from bracken sanctuary to elysium as a child had seemed impossibly long, but even that was nothing, because the mountains hid a whole new world away from them, one that seems to go on forever. for the first time since leaving, okeanos feels a little overwhelmed by his quest. he has no idea what direction mali's gone in, no way of tracking that.. well, beyond finding other wolves and asking about it, he supposes.

and there are other wolves. he can smell them, their paths, old and new, though he hasn't seen any yet (besides tristan, and he doesnt wanna think about that). well... no use getting discouraged. "we should rest," he tells @Ibis, coming to stop beside the creek and drink. there's a lot of fish here, which is good for food -- and overhead, the stars are beginning to twinkle. he feels a twinge of regret for not asking his dad about the stars while he visited, but there's nothing he can do about it now. instead he wanders a little bit until he can find a good vantage point and settles, trying to remember what his mom and dad have told him about the little pinpricks of light above.

ibis looks tired -- okeanos feels a little bad for pushing them both so hard. he hadn't meant to, but it makes sense that his littler sister can't match his pace so equally. making a mental note to set a gentler pace in the morning, he reaches over and lays his head across her shoulders as she drinks, watching their reflects as well. side by side, broken by the ripples, they do look an awful lot like their parents. it fills him with a funny sort of warmth and unease.

looking up at the sky instead, he says, "d'you remember what dad used to tell us about the stars?"

he can't help the laugh that escapes him at gelman, rumbling gently against her shoulders. he'd almost forgotten about his beloved gelman. it'd gotten lost in the move to elysium, hadn't it? pulling off of her, he smiles, and points up above them. "we used to sit outside the den and he'd tell me stories," okeanos explains, "but i don't remember what they were, really. i've gotten olive to tell me some more, though." curiously he looks at her, trying to gauge her interest. he doesn't think of himself normally as very sentimental, but something about being on the road with her, looking for mali, makes him want to revisit their shared childhood. does she feel the same as him?

maybe it's too late tonight for that sort of talk. instead he says, "i could tell you some, if you'd like. unless you just want to go to sleep?"

he smiles at her gently, unaware of the brief bitterness in her thoughts. she looks tired; he thinks maybe he shouldn't have offered to keep her up still, but she encourages him. "i think you were asleep then," okeanos says softly, trying to remember if ibis were there at all with them, or in the den with their mother. shyly, he adds, "i don't remember what dad told me, but i've asked mama olive for some stories." those he can share freely.

he takes a second to look up to the sky, orienting himself to the twinkling stars above. right. "um, so, oh -- you can see gemini," he says, gesturing with his snout to where the constellation glitters. "gemini is the twins constellation - they were both born to a wolf named leda, but had different fathers - one god, one mortal. they grew up inseperable and did everything together, but when they grew up, they got into a fight and the mortal one died. his brother was so distraught he asked his father if they could be immortal together as stars..." he trails off. okeanos doesn't think he's a gifted storyteller, but still, the gemini twins fill him with a sort of sentimental longing. he understands, he thinks, what it's like, to love someone so much you'd rather live forever in the stars than be stuck here, alone without them.

he smiles at her as she yawns, shifting closer to offer himself as an oversized pillow. it's nice, being like this -- it's home to him, and he missed it. he follows her gesture toward the unruly sky and tries to pick out something he recognizes, but, well: there's a good many stars and not all of them, as far as he knows, mean things. or maybe they do and that's part of the fun, trying to learn all the stories.

running his tongue against his teeth thoughtfully, he says, "not sure, but i can make it something. that's all it is, i think, stories that someone made up once and they stuck." he'd not inherited olive's (or seabreeze, to a lesser extent) stedfast trust in myth and spirituality, but he likes the stories well enough, he can invent something. after a moment he selects one particular star, bright and glittering, and says, "see that one there? that looks like its winking? if you squint, it looks like it's an eye -- a wolf's eye. cerulean's eye," he tries, hoping using part of ibis' name will make her smile, "and cerulean is a big, beautiful wolf, i bet, keeping watch over us. maybe she's looking for someone, so she has to keep watch all night, a long lost lover..." he trails off, leaving space for ibis to add if she wants, or point him somewhere else.

brilliant ibis of course understands, identifying the closest cluster of stars as her drake, which brings a giddy smile to his face. where she trails off sleepily he leans over to groom her cheek briefly, nosing against her. his heart is so full it could burst.

"the lover lives on the ground still," he murmurs, filling in the rest, "he didn't win immortality like she did -- but in every reincarnation, he comes looking for her, until he'll finally be worthy to get past the drake." pause. "then they can be reunited in the stars," he adds, wanting the story to have a happy ending, or happier, anyway (still feeling a sting of embarrassment over his behavior toward tristan, after all.) laying his head across ibis's shoulders, finally, he mumbles, "g'night, ibby," and lets his own eyes shut, surrending to his own fatigue.