Blackfeather Woods Curiosity killed the cat

The boy grew confused by what she was attempting to do, her phrasing making little sense. She wanted to see where the soil went, but didn't want to reach the end... it didn't make any sense, no matter how he tried to approach the idea. If there was a way to reach an end of the earth, then wouldn't following it until that end was met be the same as seeing where it went? To stop and turn back before reaching the end would mean leaving the task incomplete, thereby causing her question to remain unanswered. It was in that moment that he could feel every ounce of his mind and body regretting having gotten up in order to seek out the disturbance. All she'd managed to do thus far was annoy him, souring his mood even more than it'd previously been. To think that he was once her age was almost appalling at that point, even though he knew he'd been much brighter—he had to have been. After all, he was the Great Alexander, and there was no way he would have ever been lacking in the intelligence department.

When she asked a question, his jaw set, eyes narrowing into a glare. Though he understood her thought process on that particular subject, he was disappointed to have not received the reaction he'd been hoping for. "You're supposed to want others to like you," he stated, words sounding hollow. "I don't know why, but it often seems others just want to be liked by those around them. Why don't you want that?" While he thought the same way, not caring whether or not he was liked even within his own pack, he couldn't think of a logical reason for why the girl would think the same way. She was the leader's daughter, so didn't that mean she was supposed to crave attention? Bask in the affections of her "adoring" pack mates? It seemed as if something was off with the girl, simply because she did not live up to what he'd envisioned "princesses" to be like—then again, Potema had been the same way, except abrasive instead of apathetic. The fact that not everyone lived up to what he thought them to be was becoming apparent to him, but he did not hold any desire to admit that to himself or anyone, for that matter.

Eventually, Alexander allowed his hind quarters to lower so he was sitting, but it was not done out of the need to act polite. He'd done so only because he'd wished to rest his legs, considering the abrupt movements after having been laying down previously left him in need of a good stretch. That, however, was an action he would not perform around the younger child, for that would give his body the impression that sleep would soon be coming their way when it most definitely was not. He knew that to be the case the moment he'd laid eyes on the dark girl, and his hypothesis was further confirmed by her "sharing: the knowledge of the tunnels winding beneath the woods. "I already know about the tunnels," he stated, though he wasn't entirely sure if one was positioned directly under them. His father had informed him of the tunnels when telling a tale of how the elder Inuit had jumped from the top of an underground waterfall, but hadn't given the specific location of any entrances. All the boy had to go by was the description of the entrance his father had often used, but whether that would prove to be helpful or not had yet to be discovered. Xan had yet to seek entrance into the tunnels, after all, not yet interested in seeing what was in them.