His question had been too sharp, however, for the Hoxian couldn't help but see the hurt it had caused crease its way into the raen's middle-aged galdor features. His insatiable curiosity had been unfiltered by his usual careful thought, too complacent in exhaustion and guard down with the hot caress of chan in his bloodstream. He frowned, delicate features half-hidden behind warm wool, and Ezre's blush deepened into shame,
"I cannot imagine what choices I would make in your position, trapped between the relationship expectations of a life you did not build and the emotional memories etched into your soul by a heart you left behind." He murmured quietly, hushed by the realization that such depth of feelings were still so far out of his personal reach, so outside of his own life story thus far, short as it was, that he had little right to pry at the door with greedy, inked fingers. He blinked, dark eyelashes heavier under the consciousness-slowing influence of the bitter, purple liquid hot against his palms,
"It is different now, for my umah, but not always. The passing of Lreya Vks' soul from one body to the next has been a ritualized event involving personal sacrifice and traditional understanding since she found her way to Kzecka. Perhaps her first few experiences were different, were like yours, given her original existence was not Hoxian, but the choices that have been made in her Hexxos membership for the past century or so have not been made with the same emotional freewill as the kind of love I can see you experienced before your passing, that haunts you in the present if you can forgive the pun in Estuan. That is not to say her love for her family is not genuine, but I believe time has tempered her perspective while yours is still very new in comparison."
It was strange to detail the most secret and sacred of Hexxos practices in such simple terms, to summarize centuries of tradition with such a sense of distance, but as Ezre did so, he felt a keen awareness of his lack of understanding—
Oh.
The dark-haired boy blinked when Tom shifted the subject back, away from his own past and toward the young student's present, toward what the young student had spoken of as a desirable outcome for the future. That comfortable chan-induced haze, that blurring of hard boundaries between his exterior and interior self, made everything carry a heavier emotional weight, made everything the older man said have a much more tangible touch,
"I—well."
The Hoxian hesitated, unable to necessarily find anything worth a rebuttal in the older man's words, spoken as they were from the lips of a being who could now see behind them with a perspective Ezre knew he would not be chosen in this life to share in as anyone other than an observer. He seemed to sink a little deeper, to huddle a little more behind the soft physical barrier of the blanket as if the lowering of his more personal, emotional walls had truly left him feeling cold, exposed,
"I do not, uh, disagree with that sentiment. Perhaps superfluous was not the correct word. I am just—it is—there are things I have never—"
The further hesitation in his voice wasn't shame: the northernmost galdori of the Six Kingdoms did not share their Anaxi counterpart's dour view on premarital sexual curiosity, if only because the rather egalitarian and pragmatic Hoxian people made very little of marriage and ceremony anyway, preferring to favor compatibility and companionship over arrangements and perceived purity. It might have been the waver of inexperience, the realization that just because he was free to do as he pleased within the boundaries of consent with someone else, that hardly meant he had any idea of what that freedom was supposed to look like. Well, perhaps he had enough of an idea.
"—I suppose I am more afraid of complicating something that is pleasantly uncomplicated than I am about exploring what one body is capable of with another. Although, if I am already concerned, then I clearly have complicated things already. What I hear you saying—even in your hurt—is that such a risk is worth the reward?"
Ezre laughed, so very self-aware in the moment, and then immediately stared into his half-empty mug, warmth dancing along the back of his neck and traveling down the inked skin stretched over his spine, honest feelings far more intoxicated than any mixture of herbs, "There are so many layers. To a person. Hoxians confine them so purposefully. I doubt the sharing of oneself ever actually gets easier."
He looked up, not forming those words into a question and not particularly searching for an answer from Tom. Perhaps he figured he would be able to read the raen's face instead, but the now-shy still very much a boy smiled wistfully nonetheless.