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[Itt]

When Caspian pulled out the handkerchief and placed it in his hand, Itt blinked at it for a moment. Why did Caspian just have a piece of cloth in his pocket? Did everyone just have cloths in their pocket? Maybe he should get one then. It did come in handy in this situation, he supposed. Wait, did he just pull out a second one? Itt watched Caspian clean up the floor with the second handkerchief. Even when he cast it aside, it falling out of sight behind the furniture, the sloth looked in its direction. If he had known it was so important to have a bunch of cloth in your pocket then he would have gotten some sooner. He began to wipe his hands, pressing the delicate pice into his palm and around his fingers until they were reasonably unstickified. Then, much like Caspian did, he threw it over his shoulder, it hitting the window and falling down to the sill.

Itt sighed, folding his hands together, looking up to the room owner and his toothy grin. Why was he smiling that way? He didn't usually smile like that. Well, unless he was laughing, but still. It reminded him too much of the smirks of those... things. Their Chesire grins, beckoning, gangly hands, and their glazed eyes upon that crystal. Itt knew Caspian wasn't one of them, he proved it by bringing him here and helping him, but he knew that in his head. His head told him that Caspian was a friend, but his body looked at that smile and internally shuddered. They were conflicting, having different thoughts. He hated it when his head conflicted his body. It made his stomach roll.

Rib? What did rib mean? And meant? Only?

Normally when Itt didn't understand words, he tried to figure it out like a detective. If he couldn't figure it out based on the context of what they were doing, he'd look back and see where he had heard that word before and try to infer what it could mean based on both the instances it was used. It wasn't a hugely successful strategy, he only has figured out a small handful of words this way, but it was the only way he knew besides asking. While he had heard those words before at some point in time, Itt simply couldn't go back into his memory scape.

Maybe it was because of his sprint on his nearly perpetually empty stomach or the sheer amount of tears he's cried, but he felt exhaustion seep into him and haze his mind like a store clerk flipping the OPEN sign. His memories were a gated city underground and he didn't have the energy to try and get inside. So instead of trying to follow these words and decipher what they meant, he let them walk by and drift away into the city. They disappeared into the plane of existence between his ears that laid somewhere between comprehension and acknowledgment.

Schools, differ, Goddess, crystal, vanishes— the words just washed over him, running by like blurry faces in the sea of a crowd. Circumvent, becoming, Rhysol-

Itt looked back to Caspian, the Kelvic not having realized his gaze had wandered. Okay, if he had known he was talking about Rhysol then he would have paid more attention, or at least tried to. He wanted to know as much as he could about that crystal and this disease so he could avoid it as much as possible.

Becoming slightly more attentive, Itt listened to the words. There's a love? Love? Where has he heard that word before? He vaguely remembered hearing that word, perhaps even often at some point. Not in Ravok. Before Ravok, back home. But he couldn't think of where or why. Okay, doesn't matter. He's asking him a question now, let's figure this out. Frost. Frost? What's a frost? Is that what Rhysol was? Let's see: Every structure, different, there's that word again. Uuh, one falling beside? Augh! Why wasn't any of this making sense? What did any of this have to do with Rhsyol?

That exhaustion started to creep on him again. Morwen is chaos. Rhysol is ice. Okay that made a tiny bit more sense. Rhysol is ice. But what was ice? What was Morwen? Was Morwen another Rhysol? What's chaos?

Caspian started to laugh, bringing the sloth out of his puzzled state. That was a much more natural smile. At least Itt thought so. While he didn't know what was funny, the mere sound of his laughter and the brightening of his smile made Itt's inside start to bubble, lifting the corners of his lips with its lightness.

Religion... He opened his mouth,"What-"

The tap on the window behind him made Itt turn around, nearly falling out of his seat. Caspian opened the window and then in comes a bird! A real bird! Itt's brown eyes grew three sizes, his mouth hanging open slightly agape. "Bird!!" He grinned. No, wait, a," Kelvic!" Someone other than Itt may question why they were able to just know when something was a Kelvic or not, but Itt wasn't one to question his intuition.

Itt slowly kept leaning forward until he was forced to stand up, his hand raising and reaching gradually towards it. No, them. "Ta-Taalviel?" He echoed, his heart racing. He had never been this close to a bird before, let alone a bird that knew he was there.

[Caspian]

The prompt identification as to the nature of his sister has Caspian glancing back swiftly. “Kelvic? Yes,” he says. To anyone else, he might have denied it; were it anyone else, he would have used it as an excuse to bar Taalviel from entering.

At his confirmation of a secret they very much do their utmost to restrict to themselves, the raven caws sharply and flaps its wings in agitation. She must have decided Itt’s no threat, though, because she despite all her greater claims to cautious designs hops from her perch and soars towards his closet. At its advent, the zephyrs that had followed her swell and sweep - until in a blink, in the place of the raven is a slim, dark woman just taller than Caspian, with glossy black hair that curls and tumbles freely over her bare shoulders. Without missing a beat, no longer bearing talons but hands to clasp and grab, she opens the closet door and retrieves a flowing linen robe, casting it over her bare form. On light, lithe feet, she twirls to face Caspian and Itt, tying the robe closed at her waist with a punctuative cinch.

Far from the first time he’s seen his sister in such a light - scandalous, one can safely assume, for sibling relations of the more normative strain - and at this point the best he can do is silently throw his gaze askance and remain thankful that she’s at least assumed a form through which they might more effectively communicate.

If she complies, that is - and in this form, unfortunately, she’s also in possession of the means to not only insult, but injure and retaliate.

“What’s wrong with him?” she asks Caspian flatly, nodding towards Itt.

What’s wrong with you is the easy retort that Caspian doesn’t make because they’re supposed to be older now, and better and more mature and past that, and beyond that he’s definitely already used that line before, and probably not that long ago.

“Leave off,” Caspian replies.

As might have been predicted - she doesn’t, really, and instead slides onto the recently vacated seat opposite Itt. From the folds of her robes, she draws out her dagger and a bit of cloth soaked in a light oil, and watching Itt with gaze unbroken, she steadily polishes the length of the blade.

All hell above and stars below. The frustrating thing - one of the many - is that she may not even be going through the motions with the intent of intimidation or aimless provocation. It’s far more likely that it had occurred to her at any point today, even as she flew through the window, that she hadn’t cleaned her dagger in a while and that she really ought to. An empty chair and a spare moment having both presented themselves, now, naturally - natural as deemed by the decision and its timing deriving from her and her alone - is the ideal time for such a task.

Whether there are consequences to her irreverence, however -

Caspian would deem it equally likely that Itt, fledging to much and many, may not even be perturbed by the display, perhaps maybe never having had occasion to associate it with acts or actors undesirable.

What would it be like, he wonders, if he were a touch more like Taalviel, operating under the presumptions that everything might be solved with a knife, or started with one and then ended, that there has to be a knife in the equation in the first place? Never mind, of course, that he sleeps with the helical one, Obfuscate, tucked under one of the slats beneath his bed, well within arm’s reach and positioned directly beneath where he lies his head. Further to that, never mind his second dagger, the standard and slimmer one functionally planted behind his wash basin, because he spends a lot of time in that corner of his room since that’s where the mirror is and it gives him anxiety lingering so long with his back to the room and the door and the staircase and streets beyond -

“Sorry, Itt,” Caspian says, shutting the window, apologizing for all past, present, and future offenses he and his family may commit. “This is my sister. Taalviel.”

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