Sunbeam Lair seorsum

germanicus wanted to say that they were not meant to compare memories.

he tried to imagine what she described: a starveling child taken in by men who did not speak a common tongue. how odd she must have felt around them and they for her. maybe it was their brotherly love which saw a sister in the girl meadow had been.

"it sounds as though you were alone before that," he observed, meeting her gaze more easily this time. "the strength of being alone as a grown creature is one thing. to be alone when you do not even have that status is moreso."

men of the north tended to be aloof and insular. he saw none of that in her. "when i could barely stand i was taken from my mother's side and given to the captain of my father's guard, at his order. i was weaned in the barracks and it was all i knew. that was my first home."

his voice was even. but here she might see another similarity: that both their earliest worlds had been one of men.