Aiden quickly put his paw down as the girl voiced her concern with a tone heavy with guilt, his large, white ears flicking back momentarily as he felt a guilty twinge of his own. He hadn’t meant for her to feel bad! Or worse, as the case may be. He had only meant to make a joke—to lighten the mood a little—and it had really backfired. Now she thought she’d hurt him, or something.

“No, no!” Aiden quickly tried to assure the girl otherwise, giving his paw another stretch and refusing to flinch despite the nagging bit of pain. “See? It’s okay. I’m fine.” Boy was it going to suck, walking on that paw and trying not to favor it, but…he just couldn’t let this girl think she’d hurt him. First of all, it was absurd, because it was all his fault to begin with, and then there was just that natural part of him that didn’t want to see her upset. He’d already given her quite a scare, and that was enough to weigh on his conscious without her misplaced guilt as a consequence.

Soon, though, there was talk of families and homes and a sudden encounter, and Aiden was quickly distracted from his own worries.

So, the new girl was Masque! One mystery was solved, but Aiden still didn’t know the first girl’s name. Then again, he felt like it might be awkward to ask just then, what with the way the two girls were in mid-conversation about their mother. He supposed he could wait until later, or maybe he’d find out along the way without having to ask. That seemed like—wait, what?

The boy’s ears flicked toward the unnamed girl, his attention grabbed by that one word: friend. Aiden assumed she was talking about him—or was she? For all he knew, she could have met someone else before he crashed into her. But…he supposed she also could be talking about him. If that was the case, was it okay to call her a friend even if he didn’t know her name? Thinking about it, a name was really just a word, just an association; maybe names really weren’t that important. Convenient, sure, but not something that was make or break to a friendship.

Aiden might have kept down that path of revelation, but his attention was called back to the girls as the named Masque began to prance around him, and he followed her progress with a turn of his head. “Uh…” Aiden managed the sound as he turned his head to the other side to follow the girl’s movements, words escaping him as he tried to think of how to answer the girl’s question. Or was it a question? He glanced to Soma with uncertainty, hoping to gleam some sort of understanding from her, but Masque continued on without any prompt, adding “Tree Knight” and “Spirit of the Stars” to her first claim of him as a hero. He honestly couldn’t tell if she was being serious or just playing a game, and that was making it kind of hard to gauge his own reactions. What was he supposed to say? If he was honest and said “no”, it might ruin the girl’s fun, but if he played along, she might think he was being serious. Aiden didn’t want to crush her spirit, but he also didn’t want to be misleading. With another glance between the girls, his eyes settled on the one yet unnamed, a silent plea for help written in his expression.

Masque, however, had come to a different conclusion altogether, calling the boy, first, a creature of the snow, which didn’t sound all that appealing, then settling to “Snow Spirit”, which Aiden thought at least sounded a bit nicer than “creature”. Still, he didn’t know whether to play along or confess otherwise, and the fact that he was now going to be presented to their mother as a snow spirit… What if he was a disappointment? He didn’t want their mother to think he had lied to her daughters just so they’d bring him to meet her. Oh, boy, had this whole thing gotten way too complex, and he was entirely conflicted about what to do—other than take them home, which he thought was best done sooner rather than later.

“Haha, we should probably get going,” Aiden suggested with a forced, but pleasant, smile and a few uncertain waves with his tail, anxiously trying to avoid the conundrum altogether by neither denying or confirming all of Masque’s fantasies. He thought that might be best, for now, until he had further context on which to make his decisions. "So…which way is home?”