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"What is a soulmate?"

The inquiry was both simple and provocative, but not even the simpleton of men could be able to subdue a full-fledged rebuttal to what drove the same men crazy.

It was extremely difficult to category a soul mate into a placid word even as the vows of Love, or even its companion, Hatred, made teasing devotions of one coming together easily.

With means of convincing a shield over the boy's shoulders, pants of wool to clothe his legs, the eager juvenile kept a steady foot quickened pace advance, towards his mother who tightened a cordial scarf around her neck. It matched her lips, red in hue, while she smoothens her amber tresses to press thinly against her chin. Not until her son made his way, standing firm in front of her did she finally smile, upon taking his gentleness underneath her wing.

A young, implausible male teased at his hair top, as his nose crinkled out of configuration. A question lingered on his tongue like the shyness that painted his cheeks, Rosemary.

With the same painted cheeks which departed the lips for a laugh to flee, the mother's pores spewed admiration. "What is a soulmate?" She repeated the question while she licked over her bottom lip out of anticipation. A soulmate was defiantly vague, compassionate yet miraculous all at the same time. The boy's eyes lingered on her expression for a while before he sweetly nodded, he looked over yonder at the fields in front of the manor, the packhouse, and all the people who performed labor just adjacent to them.

The mother tightened the scarf even more around her neck before within swift action she had snatched the boy by his shoulder, sharply.

"You listen," She began. "A soulmate is the one thing you need most, if not the only." A young Alexander couldn't do a thing but squint his eyes at her frail state. How quickly emotions ran deeply and changed in the blink of an eye, at a chance of a flicker in a light? That was his mother. She never had known what to do with herself.

She tugged Alexander in even closer, looked around for the last time at all the citizens of the pack before cooing him inside without another proclaiming word leaving her mouth, not until she draped a blanket over his shoulders and ushered him onto the balcony. Then there they were once again, gauging the scenery of their poised reality. Time moved perhaps more slower when it was spent with his mother, Alexander would never fully register this until she was no longer there to provide her infamous scolding.

Reassuringly, "A soulmate is an ambiguous thing as it is appointing and fragile. The bond, of course, compared to your endlessly rough, boisterous, opposed lover." Alexander's mother continued sheepishly tucking him into her side. 

Alexander glittered his eyebrows together as he gazed confusedly. Although her words seemed vaguely right, his mind couldn't help but configure they were terribly wrong. They crawled underneath his skin and sizzled feverishly like hot coal had leaped onto his bones.  He'd known better to question his mother, solely because she'd always been the embodiment of love, herself.

Although she rocked side to side as she continuously tried to explain herself, stumbling on every syllable she'd mumbled, the words she'd mustered so quickly came out incoherent. Alexander didn't care, or else he didn't mind it.

"Why would you ask me something like that, Alexander? Out of all the things we've talked about, you've suddenly decided to ask me that of all things-" Mother went on, becoming more flustered as loose strands of hair began flying all over the place. It only made a boyish grin spread across his lips out of contentment. "A soulmate, well, everyone has one. Do you know? Even you somewhere, you will someday meet. They're predetermined, that's what they are."

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