Shadowwyn Moor addir melek

Family. Yes. She answered, cutting through his question unnecessarily. But he spoke onward, and even her little blunder did not stop him.

She opened her mouth to say more—but he said a word she did not know, and so she faltered, and was curious, and could not stop herself. Domina? And in the way that dogs sometimes tilt their head to cup a sound with their ears, she goes one way and then another. The word rolls back and forth within her brain.

A sigh. It plumes from the corners of her mouth and wraps as mist around her shoulders.

Uncle's ways are father's ways. I learn the Saatsine way to know my father. In this manner she divulged something fundamental about herself and didn't even realize it: that she was in fact bereft of connections. That she did not know this father figure who had helped in her creation. That the Sun Eater was the closest she had come to the same.

It is better here than the everdark, she concludes—and her stare becomes something uncanny as she looks upon her companion, partly transported back to the ice fields in her mind. There is life here.

Oh, gosh. Thank you! :> Trying to keep up with your tasty, tasty writing!