your steps towards their gates

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the morning following his ...awakening ...asriel finds that he has gotten acclimated to this vale that his mother claimed for her and those who would follow her lead. it was easier to get used to everything here, though he gives @Riannon most of the credit for that. part of it might've been because of his youthfulness, still coltish and not even yet a year old. despite that he's only nearing his six month mark of life, he takes to the borders to patrol. the morning has thrown an overcast blanket over cloudrest — residue from the storm that had been his harbingering into this world.

past the shroud of the vale asriel pushes himself, to climb up onto an outcropping of rock shelf from the mountains that cradle his vale home; taking in the breathtaking view of the valley below it offers and beyond that the glittering waves of the sea.

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Prehaps those eyes of Veneto Passito Rosso saw something other than judgment when they rested upon the lesser age; pictures that sedated rash thoughts spun of the mistreatment in his youth. Where others view his current actions in an envious nature his being remained dull and amused by the sights he was witnessing. He would merely watch and wonder, brought to grinning by the innocence he imagined once belonged to him. Though, more importantly, the maker of such thing.

This was a child of the little dragoness, wasn't it? His optics of her own, his lush willow growing as fine as she would bore. He couldn't help but think who she'd... mingled with... to produce a son with the build of a small bull. Who'd roped her in for a single night... Or maybe more.

“So, she is capable of affections,” Musing, speaking softly to himself. “Colour me a speechless fool.” He found this to be alluring, even if he had already known the bird that fluttered around in her cage was still uneasy. She wasn't taken, spoken for. She'd arrived without a man at her side and yet her plants grew wild. What a delicate bit of information. Was any being surely incapable of love? Even if slight?

He sighed, a thick, frothing steam dripping in segments from his open maw, “Good morning, young sir. What might we be looking for at the borders?”

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asriel does not expect company, despite that he has not forgotten just the day before his aïtï mentioning that she had amassed a gathering; a budding kingdom in it's fledgling stages but a kingdom beneath her rule all the same. that she strives to be like the queens of legend comes as no real surprise to the fjordic boy ...that he would sing praises of her in his future travels, spinning her saga as if it belonged in the poetic edda with bias as her flesh and blood would be his greatest honor.

when the voice drifts towards him from his perch; asriel turns his glacial gaze away from the yawning hollow below misted over the a soft veil of fog and to the stranger. “hei,” he greets in the conlang ( or shared tongue, at the very least ) of his several languages, knowing that it was close enough to the common 'hey' that he needn't bother offering a translation.

there was something ingrained deep in asriel's being that stubbornly refused to let go of the fjordic tongue ...of its ways. the parts of his soul that remembered his past life; of which it might be startling to realize he's had many. a mighty tree, whose branches reached wide into the yawning vastness of space. of suspending from it's branches for nine days and nine nights in the ceaseless pursuit of all-knowing —

the brief spell is broken; there and gone in the space between the small pause between the older male's greeting and the following question. a glimpse is cast outwards in contemplation before his gaze settles back upon the stranger. “i am asriel,” he introduces, not finding 'young sir' to his liking. in all likelihood, it had not been meant to be patronizing but that was how asriel took it ( for better or worse ). “to strengthen them... or perhaps to find strangers looking for a home.” he was not quite yet 6 months of age ...but his ...soul... was so much older than his tender age. as the man is a stranger he smells of frostchant and does not raise suspicion within asriel.

for a moment silence lingers and then a small awkward smile. “you can join me on a patrol, if you wish.” with that invitation, the young fjordborn begins to start his 'patrol' whether or not the older male accepts the invitation or not.

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