The Heartwood a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime

Cypress didn’t really like the turn the conversation had taken. It was no fault of Lagan’s — the raven simply felt like he’d made a grave misstep. He’d assumed erroneously that Lagan would be happy to have someone he looked just like and would want attention to be called to it. After all, Alya, Lyra, and Hydra looked so alike that sometimes they were one and the same, switching places with uncanny ease. They worked at being identical, dissecting their personalities to achieve a certain mastery in being who they wished when they wished. It was confusing for Cypress, who looked nothing like his littermate or either of his parents. (It was also confusing because…did his fondness for Alya mean he was also fond of Hydra and Lyra by extension? He didn’t know.) Maybe if Scimitar and Eshe had lived longer, they might have told him stories of his great-grandparents, particularly his great-grandfather — but they hadn’t, and they didn’t.

“Well,” he said a bit hesitantly, his quiet baritenor slow and easy as he felt his way along, “I see you — Lagan — and it’s you I’m talking to.” Did that sound weird? Cypress thought it probably did, and ticked his tongue against the backs of his canines, an inaudible habit akin to chewing on one’s lower lip. A nervous habit. “I mean,” he hedged, one ear fanning out and to the side, “well, I — ” Oh, no. Don’t do this. The raven didn’t like stammering or being caught off guard, but here he was, stuck for words. “I would’ve wanted to share my food and talk to you no matter who you were related to,” he decided on. It felt true. He didn’t know if he’d have warmed up quite so quickly without the Liffey Connection but Lagan was so easygoing it was hard to imagine not wanting to befriend the apple-eyed wolf.