When Namid had settled down to sleep, Rook had laid down no more than a yard away from her. He was anticipating the calming sounds of nightfall coupled with both Namid and Bishop's tranquil breathing when he felt a cold nose against his paw. He lifted his head to watch his sister wander through the trees and out beneath the open sky where Whisper Marsh stretched out to reflect the very few stars that twinkled between the dark-lined clouds. As quietly as he could, he stood up and followed, only certain about a fraction of the topics that could possibly come up. Since both Klio and Namid had left an impression on their lives, the younger Lyall had been contending with the guilt that came with the several attempts he had made to separate himself from his age mate. He probably shouldn't have tested such a thing - the close-knit bond that they had - taking for granted the idea that Bishop would always be there for him. No matter what.

Already their relationship was showing some strain. Even if Rook talked to her in passing, saw her for several hours of the day, slept beside her during the night, it was clear that even by just not communicating as they once had within their home at Renegades Reach was taking its toll. Out in the open the frogs that were making a ruckus sounded clearer and more interesting on the ears instead of being just a drone of tuneless serenades in the background. It did very little to drown out the sound of his sister's words, however, and as soon as those two simple words were said, his rounded ears fell.

"Oh, Rook."

He sidled up to her, sitting close enough to her so that he could feel her body heat radiating from her pelt. He bowed his head, focusing his eyes on the dark surface of the marsh as though the words he needed to saw would be reflected within it for him to comprehend. In-between the croaking and chirping, he sighed, knowing better than to ask what was wrong. Having known her since birth, it obvious for him to realize that she wasn't okay, that something was bothering her, that she was in distress. It pained him so...

Ever so gently, he reached up to nibble at the base of her ear, the one singular gesture he commonly used to let her know that he was there for her... and only her.

"How are you, brother?" He should have seen that coming. It crackled like static between them - the distance and disconnection. He had embarked on this mission, alone, or so he had thought. Now that Bishop was here, unable to go back for now, all that needed to be done was for him to open up the channels, to connect with her and touch base with her. To ensure that they were still in-sync, grounded, and one with one another. Contra mundum, no matter what. As it always had been and always will be, so long as the other was still living.

It had taken him a long stretch of silence to process it all and take into account all he had bottled up over the past few weeks. "I don't know," he breathed out the words as though he were expelling a plain sigh. "There's just so much. I feel like my eyes have been opened, Bishop." The enthusiasm crept up in his voice as though it had been waiting there in his very core, waiting for the right moment to make its appearance. "There's so much out there than there ever was at home. I feel like I've been asleep all this time." His words had not meant to sound wounding, if Bishop had had the mind to hear it as such, but he quietly made an attempt at a buffer, "I feel alive."

A partial and airy chuckle left his throat, but it was staved away with a shake of his head and a smile as he looked to his look-alike sister, "Alive, Bishop. Don't you feel the same way?" Hope, had it been a physical thing like a mask or a covering of some sort, could have engulfed him like a veil of willow branches. It was there, lining his muzzle in a small smile, in his mismatched eyes, hovering like a halo around the crown of his head. "I have never felt anything like this before," he cast his gaze out to the Marsh again, blinking once as he sniffed. "It's overwhelming. I don't know if I'll ever get my fill of it."

Bishop confessed that she was confused. Rook's brow wrinkled and for the first time in what seemed like a long time, he turned to fully take in his sibling's face. She did not feel as welcome as he had been within the Lore; she felt out of place. He let out a soft whine. How could she have felt that way? Had they not entered the same place together? One side of his muzzle scrunched up in deep thought as she let him know that she also felt lost - this, too, sent him reeling.

"You are not lost," he tried to smile at her, briefly nudging his twin's shoulder with his nose. "You have me. You'll have me for always, regardless of whatever it is that you're thinking." His tail came up in a wag, thumping twice against the cool, pebbled bank. He leaned into her, letting the tips of their similarly colored fur touch at long last. "You have me," repeated quietly, still staring out into the evening-cloaked landscape. "Saying that you're not you with me, without us, without our family, is like... it's like saying you're impossible."

He took in a deep breath, holding it captive as he ordered and reordered his sentence in his head, wanting to make sure that what he was saying made sense. "You're not impossible, you are possible... and you're possible with me." As much as he wanted to rest his head to her temple, to close the distance between them, he didn't. Instead he slowly pulled back just enough to look at Bishop, genuine concern and worry making itself apparent in his eyes, "Do you understand?"

Bishop's words stung and jabbed at him as though he had walked head first into a thicket of thorns. She even rejected his touch by leaning away, "I don't have you. She has you. You haven't been mine since I got here. It's like you left home and you left me." Rook's first instinct was to recoil, to also withdraw from her just as she had done to him. He managed to sit still though, the deepness and emotional turmoil in her words giving him a shock that he also should have foreseen. She continued to squall, calling him out on the momentary neglect he had unintentionally bestowed upon her.

As quickly as his ears had come up, they fell back down as she told him that she was who she was because of him. Rook's lower jaw lowered so that his lips slightly parted, taken aback by the next wave of emotional outburst, "You're my twin, Rook, my twin." She was afraid, that much was obvious and, all the while, her brother was starting to become afraid of what he had done, what he might have started just by asking if he could embark on this journey to Relic Lore.

"I scare myself, she then said, "I just... I scare myself." If he could have hugged her, held her close, he would have. In a heartbeat. With her being as she was, he was somewhat uncertain how to approach her. This wasn't the first time she had done such a thing as become so emotional that it rendered him speechless but, for the first time, it seemed, he was able to counter it. They were older now and as his logic-driven self saw it, he should have been able to meet her halfway just as he always had been able to in the past.

At first he wanted nothing more than to yell back at her, to make her see sense, to envelope her with the words and tone he usually used to entice her back to him, calm and collected. His twin sister. Bishop. On a second impression, the words she had first spoken had slashed into him, bruised and lacerated him completely from within. "That's the way it is supposed to be," he flatly stated. Hadn't their parents almost always physically retrieved them from the borders or reminded them to never stray too far? Hadn't their family constantly kept them within their sight? "Life is supposed be scary," he reworded himself. "It's supposed to have trials and tribulations and temptation."

He moved his tail so that it was kept close against him. "Bishop," he said her name in such a way that suggested that he might have been speaking to a bird with a broken wing. "I wish I could make you see," he murmured, his saddened eyes truly focusing on her, seeing her pain and her anguish as clear as day. "I really wish you could see yourself just as I see you now. You are my twin, and nothing and no one in the world could ever replace you." His lips sealed tight for a while as he tried to catch her gaze and full on attention, "If you can't hear me out, then tell me what you want to hear. What is it that you're crying out for me to do... for you? I promised Mom that I would do this... for Dad, for her, for our family... I trusted Namid to help us, and she has done nothing but that." His stare locked on her then, his eyes slightly narrowing in a dangerous fashion, "- if we're going to make this work, we have to let others in, to trust them, work with them. Prudence -" He dared to use her special, secret moniker, if only to try and fully establish and ground their connection to one another, "We can't do this all by ourselves if we're going to help Dad get better."

There was a wince there, a grimace there, but Rook weathered the words that was his sister's tempest. She whined and grit her teeth but he held firm, merely listening to her as he allowed her to speak when he was through. If nothing else, this certain skill, this being able to withstand her outbursts was quite possibly the singular thing that might have set him apart from anyone else when it came to truly understanding Bishop. The mask on his face seemed to darken as he momentarily scowled when she had straightforwardly called him out for pretending, for unintentionally casting her out. Had it not been for his mismatched eyes, the one physical attribute he had acquired from their mother, he might have easily been mistaken for Borden, his father. He directed his gaze out to the water, to avoid briefly glaring at her.

Then, after all was said and done, there it was, the eye of the storm: the "I know that...." and an admission when Bishop's guards and barricades had come down. He let the calm seep in, to cover them and grant both Lyalls some mental space between words. That was one thing Rook always appreciated when he was with his sister; sometimes there didn't need to be so many... words... Sometimes just being together, side-by-side as they were now was simply enough. In this particular moment though, he had an obligation to her, not particularly to soothe her but to include her in his course of action. Just like old times.

"Then you don't have to," he whispered, finally looking back to her with a slight shake of his head from side to side. "All I ask is that you trust me. You don't need to trust anyone but me. You have to know that if I thought any of them - Namid, Lady Narimé, Titan - had meant me, you, us any harm, I wouldn't have thought to speak to them at all. I walked away from Klio before, shouldn't that have been enough to prove to you that I'm still capable of making sound judgements?" Again, he diverted his eyes from her face, taking in the dark outline of her shoulder and neck where he knew the richest hues of brown and ivory could rival those of aged bole and the spots on a newborn fawn. "I would not dare to put you in danger, or subject you to such loss..." It wasn't very often Rook brought up the topic of being truly separated from Bishop, but when he did, he broached the topic very carefully, almost like how one would suspend their forepaw just above the surface of a river or pond just until they could feel the temperature of the water against their paw pads.

He gently nudged her shoulder then with his nose, smiling as he sought her eyes at last, "You should know that. I love you; and, I don't think I'd ever forgive myself if something happened to you and I could have prevented it." He cautiously nestled the side of his muzzle into the nape of her neck, his ears swiveling back for the time being, "I will help you find and figure what you want, Bishop. You look for that and let me deal with them - the botanists, the nomads, the princes, the healers, the monarchs - and we can continue on our journey. Together."

His gaze crept up to the side of her brow, the tip of her muzzle, and the few black and white whiskers that she had on her maw, before drawing back so that he could face her fully again. His rounded ears slowly came up again, "How does that sound?"