Their encounters with one another were infrequent at best, though Elohim had grown to be unsure if that was by choice or not, and if it were, whose choice it had become. He, for one, always felt as if he had stepped into a cold shadow when his father's eyes fell upon him. It had not always been as such, but it had never been an idyllic, comfortable relationship either. The two challenged one another in deeply personal ways. Sometimes, it was even difficult to remember that they were indeed a father-son duo, for both felt as if they had been looking into their own shadow rather than at their own kin.

Nonetheless, their encounters still took place. The waters over Glorall had begun to settle, their flow having become less turbulent with time, and even calm enough in some areas to allow for new saplings and reeds to begin growing along the new waterlines. Elohim had found his father investigating the pooled water, watched as the old man seemed to bristle all over, his fur in a breeze that barely existed. Beneath the water, Elohim knew, lay the den in which he and his siblings had been born. Had his father, he wondered, become so sentimental? If he had wanted to ask, he hadn't the opportunity, for Eden had found him there in the shadows of the tall trees before Elohim even had a chance to feel smug. The instincts of an alpha, of a fighter, never seemed to dull, even as the faintest sheen of silver had come to call Eden's face home. His eyes though...They still burned like copper fire. Elohim felt exposed, and he knew that he had been.

But Elohim had not simply tracked his father out of an interest of his sentimentality, no. In fact, Elohim would have planned to venture to the Grotto or Crags - where Eden often seemed to be - had he not found him that day. See, he had questions, and though he did not expect the answers he wanted, he knew he could at least expect some kind of answer. With Eden, one often had to read the empty spaces - the omissions, the colour of his words, the movement of his eyes. It was in those empty spaces that one found the answers, seldom in the words themselves.

For once, Eden had found himself feeling surprisingly receptive to questions. Perhaps it was because Elohim had been frank about his encounter with the older wolf, Lillyheart? Elohim had been frank because he knew if he captured his father's curiosity, then he'd more time to play about with his own. So, he'd told him what he could about Lillyheart, and when his voice crossed paths with the word Castor, he saw his father's eyes harden, both curious and suspicious. Eden could not deny himself the pleasure of knowing just what Elohim wanted to know, to be sure of, and he revelled in it. Elohim, for his part, had taken his time to truly stare into his father's face, and he could see it again. Just like he had seen parts of Eden in Lillyheart, he could see Lillyheart in Eden. "...the Angel name was not hers to take," his father had said with the whisper of a laugh beneath his voice. "At least, it was no birth-right, if one could call it that." The laugh was less a laugh then, and more a hiss.

The two had taken to the ritual of patrolling the borders, an instinctive kind of thing. It allowed them to busy their legs and bodies so that their minds could roam elsewhere, prepared for the jagged words each had for the other.

Castor, Elohim learned from several other answers, had indeed been a blood-relative of theirs. Of course, Eden reaffirmed that the dead stranger had little use for the name, and that he'd not been a wolf of any interest to anybody. He'd been nothing, and so nothing he should have remained. Elohim could sense something more than just frustration from his father though, and he wondered if it might have been prudent to introduce him to Lillyheart...for Lillyheart seemed to be, after all, a lost relative or some kind. Then again, did Eden truly want that? Even Eden did not know, though he lusted for whatever knowledge the stranger - his aunt - might have possessed. As Elohim questioned himself over it, Eden had already begun to make plans to sniff her out, with or without his son's blessing.

"Ask yourself what use is there in knowing pasts from so long ago, Elohim." His father's voice had been sharp, so much so that the two took pause, their eyes having met over the words. "Even pasts, histories, as young as your own do so little good. Is it not the history hiding in your children's blood that makes you so guarded?" Elohim raised a lip in silent protest - a warning, perhaps - but even he could not deny it. Would there, in the future, be any true benefit to them rediscovering aunts, uncles, grandparents and blood even further abroad than that? Would the knowing do anything for them - well, anything more than drive some kind of folly? Elohim had never been sure if his father felt affinity for family or blood. He had the distinct impression that it had taken even Eden so many years to work it out himself.

"Yet you will, undoubtedly, leave this place with a hunger to know such histories yourself." Elohim said it practically with a sigh, yet he could not conceal the smirk that crept into his features. They both knew it to be true, and perhaps that had been the first time both had grinned in the presence of the other - without malice or smugness - in some years.