Nigredo laughed before he could stop himself, a dry wisp against the morning air. Lack of knowledge or no, the boy had his want, and it made him rather shamelessly happy. "Alright," he murmured, before taking to reading the transcripts from the first recorded night.

Forming words with a clear voice came easy for a child whose strength lay in speech. The theatrics laced within, as sincere as they might have been, proved far more difficult to a being uncomfortable with emotion. Nigredo paused at intervals, his expression twitching between disbelief and amusement, before ending his reading with a strange face. "'Years of research', huh?" he said blandly. "Is it just me, or am I right to cast doubt on that claim?"