The monarch sat down at his side and Skoll had no choice but to also have a seat. This, he almost dreaded, was going to be a long night. She relayed to him what he had never forgotten from his little history lessons from years ago. He wasn't even sure why he had to know about this particular tidbit before, but he supposed that, now, he knew. He peered down at his sister's crown as she glanced downward. Consciously, he inched his paws beside hers so that they touched. Against the unblemished snow it was easy to see the subtle difference in size, but they were both dark and each digit still remained tipped with dull nails. To Skoll, not much had changed.

An ear angled toward her as he finally realized what she had meant. The bitterness called out to him loud and clear. He gently leaned against her, pressing his jaw to her temple. Her laugh did little to enliven this tangent for him; meanwhile, his heart suddenly felt an ache for his sister to experience parenthood in the way he had - to discover that joy in having a family of her own.

"Maybe one day," he lent, a rare inflection of hope lacing his words. "Until then, you're always welcome to mine. I know Sven loves you so. We both do." His nose wiggled at the end of his muzzle and he stared through the veil of fog as his tail came to drape over hers behind them. "You know I'd give you cubs if I could," this was a poor attempt to bring his own lightheartedness into it all. "Maybe, if only, you were some other princess from far, far away."

The fact that she seemed intrigued - recovered from the idea that she couldn't match his and Piety's fortune of having Sven - at least made him smile. "Well away from here," he answered with a gentle lift of his tail. "Beyond the mountains and away from Torbine... Perhaps along the edges of the Great Sea." This concept of having pack lands near water that lapped at the land in waves and changed colors at all hours of sunrise and sunset was all new to Skoll; frankly, he had never even thought about it until now when he had recalled that their mother's birthplace was cradled between the ocean and an expanse of towering mountains.

"Samuel, maybe," came his reply when she had asked what she ought to call him. Between the names "Skoll" and "Asriel," it seemed a likely "in-between" namesake that made him sound as noble and and daring as his older brother, yet still the same with keeping that serpentine "Sss" sound at the front of it.

He had started to watch her move about in the dark, a silhouette against the other shadowy things in the night. A large black paw rose up to take a step as he unfolded his hind limbs beneath him and stood up tall, his neck stretched forward to sniff out for himself what his sister was sensing. Skoll came up to stand at her shoulder again and he, too, had turned his nose to the wind as it nipped at his nostrils. "Terrible, I would think," he assumed, giving her a half-grin. This was how he subtly tried to dissuade her from doing anything precarious or risky on her own. "Obviously smells dirtier than deer. Perhaps we should go?" He gestured with a dip of muzzle towards a direction opposite of where the wind was blowing from. "We can walk beside the Heights like we used to before, go where no one can find us for just a little while."