His touch seems to ground her, bringing a familiar stillness over her that Castiel finds immediate comfort within. This is the all-mother, the powerhouse that had brought him into the world. Whatever had overcome her, sent her thrashing against herself, seemed to evaporate from their presence. Castiel looked down at this mother, pale eyes narrowing but refusing to question what had caused the episode. Their eyes lock and the boy passively stares into Stella's eyes, no challenge or question of her superiority even entering the atmosphere. She knew how highly he placed his parents in the spectrum of the world, for they were all, they were everything. There never need be a question of his allegiance to them. And so he waits for his request to be answered, for him to instruct him on a deeper level than she had before.

She stands, moving away from him, and Castiel only pivots his position to face her as she tends to the squalling child. Once Dirge was quieted, though, Stella did not return to the elder son in the den. Instead, she turned towards the den's exit and Castiel's brows furrowed slightly, not in frustration but simply a show of his attention - prepared to follow her without if that was her choice in movement. But she stood silent just within the dimness of the den, not letting the light so much as touch her toes. And as she spoke Castiel's features became placid once more, for these were things he knew already. The all-parents had brought him into existence. He would live to be whatever they needed him to be, and he was above all others because he was of their blood. Her immortality, to him, had long since been solidified, for she was all things great and even when she died her name would live on in eternity. He, Zagan, Kairos, Dirge, even Ilias would carry on when she was gone. But this did not satisfy his need for a true purpose, a directive to be given by her before she vanished from this plain.

His mother turns, ever so slightly, then to glance back at him and impart more words to him. Words that he already knows to be true, and a slight frustration rises within him, despite his unfeeling facade. Was that not why he had come? To learn of his purpose, beyond the grandeur of carrying on such a legacy as hers? "Teach me," he replies, simply and unfeeling, wishing to suckle at the teat of knowledge that he knew Stella harbored, not so unlike how he had pilfered strength from her in his earliest of days.