[There's something about how adamant she seems to be, in her own space, the one he doesn't tread further past the borders. Something that continually shifts and blocks. A separation.

All he could ever do was embrace the pain and make it a part of him, and learn to live with it. What good would it do him to deny that anything ever happened, when it was in his face over and over again, every day of his life?]

Looks like we come from the same place.

[And yet, not quite. He and what was left of his family didn't simply leave, out of some necessity. It was life or death. They could stay and die now, or hope to die later and survive.

Help mother!

The voice shoots through his mind, as it does, except these days, the world outside can hear it too. He only inhales sharply and says nothing. He won't deflect the question, but he's not entirely willing to dive headfirst into his loss.]

We were whole in our own way. We had everything we needed with each other.

[And how could he have known anyway they were broken or missing something? It had always been that way. Nyx couldn't really remember asking about a father. He was raising so much hell it never occurred to him to stop and wonder if there was something missing in his life.]

Now, it'll just be my mother, if she made it out.

[When he drinks from his tea, he realizes something that hits deep and hard, makes his eyes visibly flicker and the link of his mind skip a heart beat, the mental forests shudder and rustle as if each leaf could fall in fell, heavy swoop.

He was dead. His mother, without children, without their bodies, would be mourning, if she survived the attacks.

The Ulric children were gone without graves and the bodies that went with them.]