Oh Christmas Tree

Aquila glanced away from the tree a moment in surprise when someone spoke, before his gaze was drawn back to the unusual way the water's bio-luminescence played with the tree. Immediately though he twisted back again to look more closely at the wolf who'd come up, a sight every bit as unusual as the tree. The cyan markings in the wolf's fur might almost have been a trick of the bio-luminescent glow around them, but a closer look showed Aquila that no, the wolf's fur was as unusual as his own, and a primate of some sort clung to his neck like a growth. "I..." Aquila stammered to a halt, wide-eyed, then tried again. Like the older boy, his own voice remained quiet, dampened by the seeming magic of the tree. "I've never seen anything like it either." He fell silent a moment, letting himself become mesmerized by the dance of tree and water, but the other boy occupied as much of his curiosity now as the glow did. In his travels, he'd spent a lot of it alone, but the few loners he did meet outside his family had always had such drab earthen coats. What had once seemed unusual and exotic he'd learned was actually the normal way of things, and that he himself was the oddity. So to meet a complete stranger with a coat like one of his siblings... He cleared his throat. "My name is Aquila Aeris," he said softly, not taking his eyes off the tree.