She said his name through a pretty voice, one that made Amaris’ blood instantly hot and that lazy smile continue to spread across his face. His tail waved a second longer as her gaze would shift toward the world beyond - the pain in his head and muscles no more than a distrant thrum in the background of his thoughts.

He listened to her words with intention, drawing his ears forward with every detail she opted to deliver. And though the moment she remembered from then until now was certainly not the reality in which they stood within any longer, Amaris nodded optimistically - supportively, as if his calm and understanding demeanor would hold up the loss of a life she could have lived.

One that no longer existed.

He shook his head, a sheepish expression growing anxiously across his lips as he subtly shrugged. I’m afraid not, he responded as delicately as he could. Just a lot of rocks and sharper cliffs. He added as his gaze turned toward the growing mountain beyond.

Houtu must’ve saved you, he commented quietly, thinking briefly on what his mother would say to bring comfort to someone so new and potentially confused. Amaris had never understood why some entered through the sky or the ground or fell haphazardly atop their once beautiful lake in Elysium.

They just did.

And that was that.

Many just spontaneously appear here, he explained with a shrug of his shoulders, Not me though, I was born from a bush - well a tree - but others, he emphaszied, are often ripped from a previous life, whether through death or sleep, and end up…here.

Amaris did not know why he said so much, why on earth he would talk so much, but he found himself unable to stop. Like this woman, Lyra, deserved all the information he could spare.

I assume the same has happened to you. He finished after a beat, before his thoughts drifted to Solvi - who had also appeared in this world after running off a cliff, her body unburied, and perhaps then, resurrected.

Do you think you died? He abruptly asked, the words falling from his lips far too quickly for him to reel his thoughts back in.