Sleeping girls are easy tagets...

Lilith staggered down the dimly lit corridor, heading towards her room. Training had *really* worn her out today! But it was also fun, soooo much fun…

In order to teach her how to fight, daddy had fashioned a few wooden training weapons for her, with which she could train against both dummies and real opponents. As a massive minotaur, he didn’t know very well how a human would fight, and therefore couldn’t teach her a lot (or so he said, she wasn’t so sure about that). But either way, the lessons were just getting started and Lilith was sure her daddy would figure something out. He always did.

Sadly, he had a lot of other things to take care of as well, so he couldn’t spend all his time with her. She knew that he would prefer to walk her back, it was a big dungeon after all, but she much preferred to spend every possible second training. And she could walk back alone, no problem. She was a big girl, after all!

The dim light was no problem for her. Larell often the thing she missed the most were the sun, and the sky. But Lilith had no such desire. After living down here for quite some time, she had grown accustomed to it and could see just fine. And even in total darkness, her other senses like smell, hearing, and touch made more than up for her weak human eyes. Sometimes, she couldn’t even imagine how it was back then, living on the surface, being afraid of the night…

A much greater bother were her sore legs! And not only that, her entire body was strained from training and barely functioned properly, making the walk back to her room a real chore!

Finally, she turned around the last corner. Her room was to her left, with Larell’s room directly opposite, to the right. On both sides of the corridor, there were a lot more empty rooms, which nobody used as of now. She should really ask daddy sometime what was his plan for them…

Sleepily, the little girl pushed open the door to her room, the one with ‘LILITH’ in big, golden, unorderly letters written onto it. She had done it herself, using some finger-paint Larell had made for her, and she was quite proud of it. Daddy had shown her to write her name, so in a sense, this door had been the start of her education.

Just as she was about to enter her room, Lilith stopped dead in her tracks. There was a big, fluffy thing sitting, directly at the foot of her bead!

Now, it wasn’t unusual for a new plushie to ‘appear’ in her room, Larell made quite a few for her after all, and often liked to just put them there for Lilith to find and surprise her, but this one… It was soooo big! Almost the same size as she was! And its details! It looked almost exactly like daddy, with fluffy fur, sharp horns, and even tentacles on its back! The only minor deviation was that it had two eyes instead of six…

“Plushieeeee…” squealed Lilith in sleepy delight as she staggered towards it.

With a ‘thump’, she let herself fall into its soft embrace, drifting off into a deep sleep almost immediately. She was much too tired to notice that its fur was weirdly warm, or that its arms closed around her as soon as she had closed her eyes…

Something gently poked Lilith’s side.

“Gooooood morning!” yawned the little girl, opening her eyes and stretching herself.

For a moment she wondered why her blanket was much more fuzzy and warm than it used to be… did she wet her bed again? She sometimes did that still when she had her nightmares, which she found incredibly embarrassing. But she didn’t remember any nightmares…

“Good morning to you too” snarled the plushie on which her body rested.

It took a moment for her to remember, but as she looked into its glowing red eyes, it slowly dawned on her that she didn’t sleep in her bed tonight.

“Wait… how come you can talk?” wondered Lilith.

“Why shouldn’t I talk?” asked the plushie, showing off the rows of razor-sharp teeth lining its maw.

“Cause most plushies can’t talk!” Insisted the little girl.

A short pause followed as if it was confused and had to think. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if she just dreamt that her plushie just talked…

But then, it asked: “What makes you think I am a plushie?”

Now it was her turn to be confused and needing to think.

“You are soft and fluffy” she stated with conviction.

“Father is also soft, and fluffy as well. Does that make him a plushie?” the (maybe not) plushie asked.

“But... he's just fluffy because he is a minotaur…” Lilith tried to defend her reasoning.

“Maybe I am a minotaur too, then?” was the counter.

“But minotaurs are soooo big! And you are soooo small!” answered the little girl.

“Humans are also quite big. Yet you are small.” replied the undersized minotaur.

“That's just because I am a child...” she tried to explain herself, but drifted off, the gears of her mind spinning.

“Are you a also child? Who are your parents?...” inquired Lilith. Then, finally, it dawned on her.

“Wait, did you just call daddy 'father'?”

The sound of Lilith’s bare feet on the cold stone floor was barely noticeable, something she greatly enjoyed, as it benefitted her pranks immensely. Cold feet were a small price to pay for her victims to be caught entirely unaware, after all!

Right now, however, this advantage was utterly negated by the loud clacking of Dareio’s hooves on the floor. The young minotaur (or True Son, to be precise) had told her his name after confirming that the two of them were indeed siblings. Well, adopted half-siblings, or something of that sort, technically speaking, but Lilith couldn’t care less about such technicalities, and Dareios didn’t seem to care either. But the little girl had to admit, she found it difficult to read him… not because he was a monster, she was used to deciphering the facial expressions of a minotaur. He just seemed to be a rather… stoic person, to put it mildly. The type of person who rarely changes their tone of voice at all, let alone their expression.

What bothered her much more was that stupid name of his! He should have a cute nickname, not one that sounded like it belonged to an ancient king!

“So… what should I call you? How about little bro?” Lilith asked to giggle.

The minotaur turned his head so he could look down into her innocent, big blue eyes with his burning red ones. Even though they were roughly the same size, he was already about a head taller than her, if he stood upright (which he mostly didn’t).

“Don’t you find it a bit presumptuous to call me little? I am already taller than you and will grow to exceed your height several times eventually.” Dareios replied.

“Being a little brother is not a matter of height, dummy! It’s a question of who’s older!” the little girl exclaimed.

“So you think I am younger than you, then?” The young minotaur wanted to know.

“Yesss! ‘Cause I have never met you before!” Lilith explained.

“It is a very big dungeon, the size of a city already. It could have been a mere coincidence.” pondered Dareios. “There is, however, an easy method to ascertain who is the firstborn between us.”

“Huuuh? Which one?” wondered the girl.

“This.” said the monster simply, tapping a symbol carved in his furred upper arm. It was a square, with a single line in its center, signifying ‘one’. “You should have a symbol yourself, though it may look different. The number in it will tell us who is older.”

Lilith looked from one of her shoulders to the other, before finally focusing and uncovering the one where the venus symbol was carved into her skin. Blushing, she showed it to her brother.

“I… I don’t think I have a number…” she said quietly.

There was quiet for a moment while Dareios studied her arm, as if he had overlooked something.

“This is… unexpected…” mumbled the minotaur.

“Oh! I know! I have no idea what season it is, so I don’t know exactly how old I am, but I am older than eight, since that was my last birthday before daddy adopted me. So, if you aren’t older than that, you are the little brother after all!” explained Lilith happily.

“I am nine months old.” proclaimed Dareios, a hint of pride in his otherwise so monotone voice.

“Huh…” Said the little girl with a hint of sadness. “Nine. So you are older than me after all… And I thought I’d e the older one for once… Wait, did you say months?!”

“Yes?” replied the minotaur.

“I am more than eight *years* old! That would make me about…” Lilith paused to count on her fingers “Ten times as old as you! That can’t be right!”

He didn’t say anything, he merely blinked his eyes once.

“Let’s ask daddy about it about it.” said the little girl with a sigh.

“Agreed.” Assented Dareios.

Without needing to talk about it, the two changed their course and took a turn to the right at the next intersection between the tunnels. They were siblings growing up in the same home after all. They knew their way around here like the back of their hand.