Shadewood you are at war, even in your dreams

Still, she does not speak and it begins to take shape in Nero’s thoughts that perhaps it is not a willingness to remain silent but that she is truly mute, or if not entirely then mostly. He is reminded of the story of the nymph that told Hera that Zeus had lain with a mortal woman and thus was left punished by the removing of her tongue and became the silent goddess as she was sent to Hades to become an infernal nymph. Imperial jade gaze slides over her lightly, like a lover’s caress as the DiSarinno wonders if she, too, has been cursed. “Tacita,” The nymph’s name falls from his lips in native tongue as revelation. Not that curiosity or deduction much matters: it’s not as if she can tell him how she has come to master the language of silence. “She was a nymph punished with silence for telling Zeus’ wife he had lain with another.” It makes for a good story, a warning to consequences that could befall those that knew too much and prattled about it with loosened lips.

An untempered tongue was just as dangerous as a tongue that could not speak, he thinks; but recalls that his own grandfather: Crete suffered from muteness though he had perished in a forest fire before Nero was even born. He lifts his chin only minutely, drinking in the scents of the Shadewood despite those of him and her that mingled in their proximity to one another. There are faded scents of others, coming and going, faded and his gaze lowers to her once more, though he is absent words once more. He was not used to holding conversations that were primarily one sided, after all.