The Sentinels come to my arms, my beamish boy!

caligula is never comfortable. but he does feel less tense, now, if no less nervous. it is not a struggle to sit and listen to someone’s words when he is not desperately searching for an avenue out of the situation – when he is not waiting for some axe to come down upon his head, or at least not expecting its imminent arrival.

firebirds, frosthawks, triquetra, yuelong, rusalka, moonspear…it is fortunate that for all he has left behind, he has retained his excellent memory. …though fortunate is, perhaps, a bad choice of words.

it does not only call back what he needs, after all. it calls back things he would rather not remember –

– no. he flinches away from that line of thought as though drawing away from fire before it can burn, settling instead on the first harmless memory he can pull forth – the legionnaire in the woods, the first person he had spoken to in…quite a while.

“she called him merrick,” caligula says, desperate enough to avoid any of that recollection that it does not register to him how out of the blue the words are. “of ursus.”

it does then. caligula’s mouth snaps shut with a faint click of teeth, and he regards sugar uncomfortably. still, awkward as the introduction is, it feels, perhaps, only right to offer some of his own information in exchange for hers, sparse and unhelpful though it might be.

“the conflict – ah, the pack in the south. if…if that is of any help.” there is something sheepish in the lift of his shoulders. “thank you.”