They were two sides of the same coin, at least in name. She was the heads; born of royal blood, destined to be royal with a mind for it. He was tails; born of a bastard to a bastard, heir in theory but never name, no promise or lack of. Aster had lost her fire in blood and Elohim had been born in it. Two sides of the same coin with an inherent misalignment of worth. Elohim had hoped they could meet somewhere in the middle - or the edge of her side had she allowed it.
Why? He hadn't entirely worked that out. It never occurred to him that he would have to fashion an entirely complete idea to answer the inevitable question. He had simply been following...instinct, he supposed, one might call it. It was the same thing that drew him to the moors or the forest, or towards prey or a crevice in which to sleep. A hunch, a feeling, a simple nod and a shrug. Things were just natural to do and that included this.
The world had filled him with many things and he waded in it all, like a child with too many toys. It had been just as much an impulse to show his face on the borders of Asteraia, where he stood then with a quizzical look. Such an expression only seemed to break when she blinked away whatever thought had incited it, replaced on Elohim's face with an unshakable neutrality that seemed to turn the darkness of his fur to charcoal stone. He seemed unmovable and yet he swayed with the breeze, mulling but not sure what thought to chew on.
She is carefree. As she flopped, his head followed suit, tilted now to its opposite axis as he followed her lead, seated but poised. Where she seemed to ooze a natural carelessness, he was precise and practiced in the way he moved and positioned himself. "All that you know..." he mulled the words over, testing and tasting them with a hm almost akin to disapproval. "There is...always more to know." More to see, to watch, to understand. Her lack of vision in such a regard made him... strange. It made him feel unusual, his gut having knotted momentarily with her words. She did not know half as much as she ought to have.
Yet he could not help himself. Whereas she might have been content with what she knew, he had never felt such a thing. His question came and her response came with furrowed brows, an expression that made him shrink back but rise simultaneously, almost with a desire to challenge her answer. She had misunderstood. It made Elohim's ear flicker.
"He asked..." he repeated. He paused, his own brows furrowed momentarily before they relaxed. "Ah, then I could ask too." It was not a question but rather, a statement, as if he had come to a realization just as simple as one might decide I will have fowl tonight.
"Some say...you cannot go back." And perhaps, for a moment, she might think he would grow to encourage her reluctance and yet his head turned then to the south, towards Iromar with just as much of a 'duh' expression as she had. "You can only go forward. Forward to where you belong." And she belonged there, right? She belonged in Iromar as an Empress with he as her Chancellor and with the lessons of all the other packs. Did she not wish to belong? Maybe he ought to ask her. All it took was asking, it seemed, and she might go. Halcyon had done it. He had asked. So why not Elohim? Perhaps he could not word the question. Perhaps he did not know what the question had been - after all, he did not know that Halcyon had asked for more than for her to simply go to Asteraia. Elohim did not know anything.