To the boy, Rapture, today was just a day like any other as he prowled the woodland that surrounded his lake-bound home. Within his right hand shone the frame of his mother's pitch black trident.

The boy's steps were steady. He gazed up at the trees which stood tall as buildings all around him. The sun's light pierced through the gaps in their leaves to rain down a beautiful ray of golden lights. The sound of the rustling as the wind brushed past reached his ears, they were familiar noises he had long become accustomed to.

The boy resumed his steps, avoiding roots and rocks as he picked up on every new sound, smell and sight. After a while he beheld the frame of a particularly large wild beast. The creature held its head facing down towards the ground, its tusks were combing at the soil in search of food buried beneath. The body it possessed was large, furry and plump, in so many ways it resembled a wild boar, yet it was clearly much larger and had a more sinister shape overall.

The four limbs which it bore were alike to the arms and legs of a bear. Rapture could tell with one glance that this creature had the power to rip him to shreds with those limbs, but he was long accustomed to such dangers. He glanced at his mother's trident and then raised it readily. He had no powers, he was only a normal human being and not even a fully grown one at that. His only weapons were his mother's trident and the lifetime of lessons she had taught him, both of which were tools that were likely serve him well in the days to come.

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The soil creaked and warped in shape as Rapture's boots sank into the wet mud. The boar faced beast lay dead far behind his back, its blood drenched the ground alongside trees that had been unearthed in their brutal battle. Though the sounds of the beast's shrieks had scared off all the rest of the forests dangers for the moment, in due time the stench of its blood upon the ground would be sure to lure in predators great in number.

Rapture had brought it down, though the effort brought him to sweat. He had done this in no small part to prove to himself that he could, he had never intended to drag that heavy creature's body back home to eat. His dinner was to be a more reasonable and modest prize. The boy raised the black trident over his shoulder and then held by the ears the body of a common-looking rabbit.

The woodland thinned with a dozen more steps and was placed at his back with yet a dozen more. Finally the lake came glistening into view before the eyes of the young boy. His footsteps paused then for a time, he followed the path to his left and advanced forward in that direction.

Rapture trod the lakeside until he came upon an area that was paved with stones and boulders. His mother was there, laying down a scented liquid from an aged bag of leather. Any animals weaker than the beast that scent came from would not venture close, and none in this woodland could fit that bill.

The boy approached, he caught his mother's gaze and then showed her the slain rabbit in silence. She nodded, he then smiled as he passed her by and approached the area of ash and woodcrips that lay at the heart of these old grey stones. He sat his body down and then raised a knife to skin the rabbit's carcass. His mother finished her task not too long after and then she took her seat across from him. Beatrix then reached into her pack and pulled out a metal plate and then a stand to cook the carcass on. She placed these things down before starting a fire between them. Piles and piles of ashes lay on this spot with stones set to outline them, none could say for how many years the mother and son had been eating here together.

"There was a loud uproar in the forest a few hours ago," Said Beatrix, who watched her son strip the organs from the rabbit, "Did you kill something else? Something bigger, perchance?" Rapture stopped in his task and then raised his head slowly. He smiled proudly and then reached to open the bag he carried on his back. He raised from within that bag a white object: the sheared off tip of the boar-like beast's tusk. Beatrix watched as her son allowed the tusk to roll off his fingers and drop onto the ash coated soil at his feet. She was naturally able to recognise what kind of creature it came from, she just never dared to imagine that her completely mortal son could bring such a thing down.

She returned her gaze to her child and then stared at him in silence as he continued his work. She took a few moments to come to terms with what she'd seen and then she placed some more wood down upon the fire to feed its flames. "So you're at the level where you can bring even something like that down? Well done."

"Thanks to your lessons," Rapture replied. Again he paused in his work, his mother's honest praise was rarely given but when it was it was deserved, this fact brought a smile to his face. Beatrix could not ignore the sight of that smile, nor the stinging feeling it birthed within her chest. Before this day was done that smile might be the last she ever got to see from him.

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Time passed, the rabbit was skinned, deboned, be-organed, washed, cooked, cut up and shared between the two of them. The hour was late by the time they finished, the light of sun still bore down upon them even now but the moon had already started to move in to eclipse it. Then, when the boy began to put away their tools and equipment, Beatrix turned to face the heavens. She sat back to watch the eclipse today as she had many days before and found herself thinking back to the time when she used to lay in Avance's arms and they beheld these same heavens together every night. She then faced her son's back as he washed the blood from his knife in the waters of the lake. She called out to him.

"Your father and I always loved to gaze upon these heavens." The boy's hands paused then. His mother never spoke of his father to him, often he asked only to have the subject changed with what could be barely deemed a reply. For her to speak of the man to him now, of her own volition, was an abnormality to say the least. He stared at her in silence, he was even slightly alarmed. His mother paid no mind to this, however, for all she could see were those two objects in the heavens.

Beatrix spied the giant but dim red sun, a star that was of value only because it was not too far away from the world it warmed. "I would regile your father with stories back then. Oft times I suspect he thought my imagination to be both vivid and strange, I talked of there being many stars out there, each one a sun, like our own, that we are blind to. I told him that he just could not see them because even when the moon eclipses the sun the heavens are no more clear for it. I told him of these countless suns...and about how around each sun there lay a world, or many, much like our own, our Ymir." The boy could hardly imagine what she was speaking of, no matter how he looked at the heavens he could see none of this. The sad truth was that even at night, when the moon blocked the sun's light, the heavens still remained concealed by the sheer size of those two celestial bodies.

"The sun's name is Skoll, the moon's name is Hati, can you recognise the tongue in which these names are spoken?" She asked him. The boy fell silent. He had, in fact, learned of this tongue before. Other than the more common language spoken by Amelia and others like her, his mother had taught him this one long ago. "This tongue is ancient, remembered by few...and passed down to us by the Gods, the only beings old enough to recall it."

"Gods?" He asked her. This word was one he had never heard. He was curious, perhaps even greatly so, but only for a moment. Naturally his mind kept drawing back to his father, whom his mother never saw fit to speak of until now. He summoned all his nerve, every ounce of strength in his entire being went towards asking her about that man. "Mom," He said, "What kind of person...was my father?" He stared at her back anxiously as he waited for the answers only she could give. Within an instant, however, Beatrix' look of whimsy faded to a frown. Heavy thoughts plagued her endlessly, the boy could not read her thoughts but he was savvy enough to notice this in her.

"When you come home tonight, we'll be having an important chat...be ready." Beatrix said these words, her back still turned, she uttered nothing more. She simply rose from her seat, turned on her heels and walked away. The boy was stunned, he turned to face her in silence. The sense of urgency in her tone was not lost to him, it caused a feeling of unease to boil up within his chest.

The boy dropped the now clean knife back into his bag and then faced the shifting waters of the lake. He watched as his mother walked into the floating house illuminated by naught but torchlight. Similar torches crackled with fire along the shoreline to mark out for him a path in the perpetual dark.

Rapture stepped forward, he crossed over the lowered drawbridge and passed onto the decking of his floating home. He arrived there and then reached out for a single rope. The drawbridge rose up with a single tug of that rope, a loud snap could be heard as it locked into place. He turned to face the door, and then several moments passed with him being unable to find the will to open it.