Mother how art thou

His mother assured him she was fine, earning a side-eye from him in suspicion. He supposed even if she wasn’t okay, she wouldn’t tell him quite yet. Maybe she was still processing, or maybe he thought he was too young. The boy couldn’t even speak to offer words of comfort, but where he lacked in words he excelled in physical comfort and a shoulder to lean on. It was often that his sisters would curl against him and tell him stories of their day before slithering off to their own caves to sleep and he always listened with rapt attention, laughing in his odd, huffy breathing sort of way or frowning when something was wrong. When his family was hurt or happy, he was hurt or happy. It was as simple as that.

She refocused him on the task at hand, which had become tying the rope into a slipknot so that when the prey animal stepped inside or stuck their head in, it would snap up and capture them. He created a loop by twisting the middle of the rope across itself, then he laid it across the end of a strand. Leaning down, he grasped the strand in the middle of the loop and pulled it through then held it down with his paw. His teeth grasped the end of the other strand and pulled, tightening the loop until it formed a slip knot. He slid it up and down the rope to make sure it acted properly before tossing it over the pile his mother had already started.

The Empress pulled at his heart strings when she told him to just grow up sweet and strong. He swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded, pulling the paper and quill to him. “I promise I will, Mother. I’ll grow up and get strong enough to protect everyone. I’ll make you and Father proud,” he promised, his expression solemn.