His fear stems from only the unknowing. He has never really been away from his mother before, her large form always towering over him just a few feet away. She has always kept his close, kept him from experiencing the world. She says it has always been to protect him, to keep him from what happened to his father. He wants so badly to know and understand, but she has never explained just how he died or when. In fact, she doesn’t talk about him much. She says it’s because it is too painful. He doesn’t yet understand the painful emotions that death can bring. After all, nothing in his short life has died, other than an animal here or there. His mother had taught him about the circle of life, but nothing has ever affected him in the way his mother says it will. And so he doesn’t dare ask questions, hoping that she might explain it when he is but a few months older.
So naturally, this fear that he feels is more of an uneasiness. It’s that feeling where you know someone is watching you, following your every move but never stepping into the light. It is this uneasiness that makes his fur stand on edge. It’s what makes Saki hold onto him a little tighter. She can feel his uneasiness and it projects onto her. She tries to comfort him, but honestly, she is unsure how.
But when there is a voice that speaks just outside of the scope of his light, Kibou immediately turns his attention to where the voice had been coming from. It sounds young and immature, much like his own. And yet, he still cannot make out the individual who owns the voice. He can’t see her, but he knows she’s there. "Does only me have a name?" He supposed knowing her name would make her less scary. With a name he could associate something to her, something that did not make his blood pump faster or his hair stand on end.
She asks him which way he was trying to go and slowly, confidently, he takes a step towards the voice. First one step, and then another, and then another. He does this until she is bathed in the soft light emitted from his glowing orb. She is pale white, with gold accentuated all around her. Her antlers are quick to draw his gaze and he wonders how she grew them. He wonders why she is so beautifully colored and he is so plain. One look at his own skin and he is embarrassed around her. Why was he so plain and she so beautiful?
But he did not come forward to only wish that he could be something more. He stepped forward so he might know who he was talking to. It always makes meeting new people a little less terrifying when he can match a face to the voice. "I’m really just wandering…but I suppose I’m trying to find the end. Isn’t everyone?" He remembers that she has asked him which direction he was trying to go and he found his answer fitting. Everyone who entered the maze was eventually looking for the exit. Some would undoubtedly exit through the entrance, but at the core of things, he wanted to make it through to the end.
@Aster
