Fairspell Meadow swarm the belly, swelling to a blaze

maegi, to scarab, seems baffled by his question — which, he supposes is understandable. how often does one expect a kid to ask if he could stay even if ( and that's a pretty big if to him at the moment ) his family was alive? probably not many. as hedonistic as scarab is it is strange for him to have a selfless desire to stay. after all, she's allowing him the chance to walk away ...but scarab doesn't want to go. in part because he owes her far too much to leave her and blackfeather as a distant memory as he happily frolics away with his family — if they were alive — and it hardly seems fair, he thinks as his gaze briefly flickers to her frozen son's body once more. it does not linger long before it drifts back to maegi. she lost two children ( as far as scarab was aware ) and though he knows he can never replace the sons she has lost it doesn't feel right to leave her all the same. but also, he likes it here. no one disturbs his menagerie — or what's left of it, rather — and there was just something about maegi and blackfeather that resonate with him.

yeah, scarab responds. as ...as long as you're okay with it. he adds because it occurs to him amidst the sorrow he feels for her suffering that he might only add as an unwanted reminder of what she's lost. whiskers twitch, following a slight shuffle of his paws against the frost hardening earthen floor of the meadow as he awaits her response.

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