#herodiusregulus

    Hearing the other, the Heron gave a glance over, before a soft, but amused noise left him. “I would say ‘so do I’, but that would be a lie. Still, I rather prefer it this way, don’t you?” Maybe not when he was getting ahead of himself, but in any case him not being afraid to break something here or there had to come in handy at some point.

“Sure do. It’s nice to know what a Heron’s thinking every now and then, and you don’t always get that from your siblings,” he replied, an image of Rafiel and Leanne coming to mind as he spoke. “I remember when we first took you in,” he boasts fondly, “Barely dared to touch you, with how fragile as you looked.” 

Link had seen many things in Tellius that had stunned him, but nothing like this. The boy was almost rooted to the spot, staring with large eyes at the creature before him. This was a heron, wasn’t it? He’d heard Ike talk about them. But this... he hadn’t been prepared. 

How do you react to seeing a heron? 

“I advise against trying to punch me. I am notoriously hard headed, and your hands are too delicate.”

The ghastly flames carried the scent of the reaper. Countless herons had perished in the name of beorc politics. His hawk’s eye caught the tragedy in its entirely, and Tibarn was certain the memory of it would not easily fade. Even a cursory examination of the fire yielded that survivors would be slim. At the very least, he had saved a single one. Prince Reyson, who currently held his head in his hands, was understandably still distraught, He had insisted that Tibarn would stay with him, in the sweet hum of the ancient tongue. Tibarn had been the only one who understood. His attendants, baffled by how the Hawk King seamlessly translated the ancient tongue, simply left him and the prince to their privacy. 

“Are you hungry, Prince Reyson?”

The question, while abrupt, was warranted. The other was sporting a deadly pale.