The morning came to greet his fellow heirs as they entered the dining hall in the minutes following. Vyarin watched them, warily, having realized with his father's most recent letter an unfortunate truth. No matter how amiable their spirits, these other princes were to a certain understanding his enemies. They shared a goal with himself, no doubt at the behest of their own fathers. His visit here has become a game he was in no position to win, where the winner was the most articulate, the most charming, the most able to mask their anger and animosity under a veil of smiles and dancing steps. Vyarin was hardly a shaman; he would no nothing about divination of the future via those esoteric methods, of scattering dust in the air or cutting the guts from livestock. Yet, in his future he could see a very real possibility of returning home in disappointment, of suffering a judgement from his father as cruel as those the elder prince-of-princes was known to inflict upon those who failed him sorely. Vyarin was not ready to lose his other eye.

A sigh, his own, broke him out of his thoughts. How irrational he was sometimes. His own father carving out his eye? It boggles the mind. He is scaring himself with mere stories. Relieved, he broke open the bread laid before him and shoved a sizeable portion of it in his mouth. There seemed to be a lack of meats on the table today. Perhaps the people of this land didn't take meat in the mornings. His eyes met those of the man he suddenly realized was sitting before him. Vyarin gave him a nod in kind, but then felt it was insufficient. He should at least speak a little; if nothing else, than for practice.

"Was much joyous, in the night," he said, low and quiet so as not to disturb the rest of the table. "You was great champion, I think. Many cups to drink." He gave the other prince a nervous smile, perhaps a few molars too wide. "A hunter also? I cannot to drink the . . . the grape-water. Err- the 'wine'. Animal I can defeat many. Animal you have in your homeland? Penguin, bear, coatl also?" Alas, Vyarin only knew the Prozdy names for the creatures of the earth.