Phoenix Maplewood b is for basil assaulted by bears

The stranger's eye lifted off to a distant horizon. Gideon couldn't help but to turn his gaze in the same direction, revealing his childish inexperience by taking his eyes off his opponent. So easy it was to disarm him with the curving of dark lips in the suggestion of a smile. Gideon unwittingly revealed what sort of life he had led up until this moment.

A happy one. A trusting one. One in which he had had no reason to be guarded around those who smiled with him.

The man spoke in a heavy, broken accent that brought Anselm surging to the forefront of Gideon's mind. Not only because of the question. Theirs were not similar in the slightest, yet he found comfortable familiarity in hearing an accented voice.

Gideon himself held a touch of his father's accent. Ezra spoke with much more of it; his was but a whisper below his boyish trill. Mom's... Gone, he said, for although Yikaas had effectively disarmed him with a faint smile and an accent, he knew he could not go back to Rivenwood until the threat of Isra was gone, and so he could not let this stranger return him there.

I'm sorry, mama, he wept inside. God, please please tell mama I'm sorry and I love her and I wanna come home soon.

Dad, he... Amadeo was... Well, he stammered, frustrated by his inability to piece his thoughts into something coherent. It did not occur to him Yikaas would have no clue who he was talking about. They fought, I think. He's gone too.