XIVWrite 4: Reticent
“‘Ow come you never talk ‘bout your family?”
The question stopped Q’ndai in his tracks, if only for a moment. He affected a casual shrug, and kept walking along the edge of the roof, hands tucked in pockets.
“Don’t have one.”
Rohesia scowled, flicking a moldy scrap of bread crust towards him. “Yes y’ do,” she retorted. “That’s how seekers get names, aye? Otherwise you’d just be Ndai.”
“Maybe they’re all dead,” Q’ndai said. He wasn’t looking at her, but she could see his tail twitching back and forth in arcs, even though he hadn’t pulled his hands out to steady his balance.
“Used t’ have isn’t the same as not havin’ at all.”
Rohesia continued to cut little spots of mold off of the loaf while Q’ndai made his circuit of the low wall.
“Maybe I made it up,” he said, as he finally rounded a corner and she could see his face in profile. He didn’t look lighthearted about it - There was a fangy grin on his face, sure, but that was closer to bared teeth than a smile. There was a line, and something was pushing it.
Roh figured she had a bit further to push before he decided to make a point by decking her, though, so she scoffed. “Aye, sure. You’d love goin’ by no name but your own, t’ put a twist in th’ tail of any who heard it. Don’ tell me you wouldn’t.”
Q’ndai took a few more moments to answer that, his expression twitching through a few minute variations. Finally he pulled his hands out of his pockets, and gave a shrug. “Maybe,” he said, as he jumped down from the wall and onto the flat of the roof, “I’m the nunh’s exiled favorite son, and I’m waiting to grow strong and challenge a villain to take my rightful place.”
Roh threw another bit of mold at him. “I’m not callin’ you your highness, y’ daft miqo.”
Q’ndai caught it and threw it right back, forcing Roh to duck away. “You’ll regret it when I’m king o’ all Ala Mhigo, Thorneyes,” he said with a smirk. “Bow down, peasant!”
Predictably the conversation devolved from there - but Rohesia remembered, that he’d never really answered the question.