Silvertip Mountain the moon

apophis has grown faster than he could even keep track of. one day he'd been tiny, the next he'd stared silently as his dark reflection in puddles and found his blue eyes shifting to something warmer, and his ears and snout gathering length. he was still chilidishly built and light minded, but more capable in action each day, often running as if at play, but only when by himself. 

in appearance, he thought himself like @Merrick . there was a resemblance between them. and often when apophis gazed at his own reflection, he got intimdated by his own stare that was beginning to look like his father's, and would turn gently away. 

it was dusk when he was laying in some low grasses in a clearing near the base of the mountain. the heat had his tongue hanging out with mouth slightly agape, eyes half-lidded in a thoughtless stare.

where asperas was spitfire darkness, apophis seemed to be something lighter. he was an amalgamation of his witchward parents, and merrick knew that this was the time for dreaming.
he found his young son's trail and followed it until he came across the little crow. nothing was said. he settled close at hand and turned his head toward the oppressive bite of sunlight.
"do you hear the bear?"

merrick came. 
the bear. the cornerstone of ursus. apophis nodded a little shyly, though he wasn't even sure he knew what it meant to hear the bear yet. never did he hear the gruff roar of the creature, and yet he felt his father must've heard the bear somehow, and so he wondered this a feeling. 

in words apophis mostly took after his mother, close-lipped whenever possible. and so when his curious gaze looked to his father he only tilted his head in a slight question. the question could be one imagined by merrick; apophis would not ask- perhaps the meaning of all of it, perhaps whether father heard it, what it meant to him. the details of his wondering could not be betrayed by apophis' quiet stare. 

in the end perhaps he might gain nothing at all, it was an unpredictable risk when he chose to stay quiet, but the boy could accept it either way. 
like a fish moving down a river, pushed in his distinct path only by the determined flow of the water that guided him.

his son did not speak.
merrick was unphased by this. aventus only spoken when he had chosen his words, and avicus barely had spoken more than a handful in her life.
avicus.
he hurt to think of her now.
"the bears are part of us," he explained to his quiet son, sensing that apophis was soaking into himself knowledge.
"they speak not with their voices, but with their minds. to our hearts."