Naturellement. [Orlesian— what scant little of it he'd learned for the odd mission here or there— sliding through his overlong teeth before he even has a chance to think about it, inadvertently making tonight the unexpected den of honesty itself: what started off as teasing over cantrips ends (or is it starts) with the weight of them set side by side, gaunt chin already needling its way in against the curve of Leto's shoulder while they both stare at bright contours.

He's not ashamed to say it.

Any of it.

What he felt before. What he feels— or thinks— now. And over the scuffling of little pup claws on wood and the agitated growling of the wolf already ambling away from her successors at an irritable rate, he oddly finds he's not really afraid of anything. Not numb, exactly, but....maybe free is the better word. Free of all that static dread. The pettiness of opinion or secondhand discovery all wrapped up in what he lost. Kept. Fights to have a hold on still. The little gaps in all his broken thoughts that usually remind him he's not whole.

But honestly, being whole is overrated.

What he lacks in himself, he gets to find in Leto.]

You made the most stunning nightlight, you know.

[A little pause, index claw picking at his thumb in thought, before:]

Took me a long time to get used to just how dark the backs of my eyelids felt without it around to sleep to.