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He sat in silence as she elaborated, although he already knew what she was going to say. He knew, but that didn't mean he wouldn't ask her. Sure, there were details that he did not know, but he wasn't going to deny that he had understood her the first time around. Perhaps if he asked again, at some point there would be another answer, a different answer? There wouldn't be one. He stared at his own hands for a moment before he simply reached over and laid his one arm over the shoulders of his baby sister, still with disbelief clearly painted on his face. Softly, he simply mumbled something in response to her comment about their mother, a deep, soft murmur from his throat dying not long after its creation.
It was strange how he was not angry. Not yet, at least. It was unfair, but his immediate thoughts were selfish and self-pitying. One of these days, he had been telling himself, he would return and show them what had become of their youngest son, the one which had strayed from their patterns and been slow with everything. And of course he wanted to show his mother, still, but there was something missing from the equation now that he could never see his father again, or make him as proud as he had hoped to make him. It was difficult to make a dead person feel something, and it was no easier to know that Dawali had left and never returned, and that his father's spirit would even be far away. He was here, and safe, while his elderly father had succumbed to something which Dawali had fled here to avoid, in a sense. He knew it wasn't like that, but it did feel that way regardless. At least there was Chitsa and Songan.
Brushing wetness from the fine hairs on his face, he sighed. The little moment which had passed had felt like it lasted for a long time, but likely it hadn't. Awkward with his grief, Dawali was not prepared to handle anything like this. Certainly, there had been grief in his life; he had lost siblings, he had lost Noir, he had lost himself at times. But parents lasted forever, did they not? "Were there others? I mean.. are there more bad news?" He didn't know if he could handle any more, and perhaps there was pleading in his eyes. The news had simply crippled his mind, and it could not think straight.