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Nothing was generally surprisingly enthusiastic about his duties in the classroom, he found most things somewhat tedious but when it came to partaking in other people's curiosity he took a bit of a guilty pleasure in it. Showing his work to his peers was prone to intense scrutiny but to students he was often met with nothing but enthusiasm. He liked that if he was honest, it made up for what he struggled to find elsewhere.

So he arrived to the class with his arms full of glass jars full of different varieties of squirming things which he placed down on the table before looking around, spotting his student and exhaling in what he tried to make sound like exhaustion but really was intense disappointment.

He didn't see the noble liking his research very much at all.

"Well." he said, setting his hand and disarticulated wrist on his hips. "Looks like we will have fun here today."

Noth hesitated for a second. To bet fair most of the things he taught were that parasites were extremely superior and fascinating. He wasn't sure if he was even capable of teaching much else. However a challenge was a challenge and he intended to allow himself to be baited this once.

"Well." he said, looking at the jars. "What sort of things do you like? I mean, I certainly consider parasites fascinating, they can be tailored to all sorts of ends, they are not the end result but they are the means. For any eventual goal they can provide some benefit."

He moved to pick up a smaller jar of still snails. "This is a parasite present in the human world, it uses snails as a host but essentially changes the physiology of the snail itself, making its eye stalks different, more like small worms and forcing it to climb to high obvious places where a bird, one of the following hosts will snap it up. It controls the mind of the creature. This is the human world, outside of the reach of fear so you can imagine what our creatures can do."

He shrugged. "For every aim there are things that the creatures we have can do, and if there is nothing else about parasites they are persistent and enduring and can never truly be eradicated."

Setting the jar down he gave her a critical look. "What do you hope to achieve when you come into your own?"

Noth listened with a somewhat critical air to the young horsewoman’s aspirations. Many of the younger members of the clans had a lot of grand goals but none of the determination or substance to ever stand so much as a chance of achieving those goals. Youth brought impetuosity and a sense of urgent invincibility but it did not frequently pan out to anything at all. Still, you never knew when you were dealing with a new potential leader so it paid in some ways to at the very least humour them.

“Those are good starting aims.” He said. “But have you ever considered how you intend to realise those goals? We have a long history and yet as of right now our control has – despite war’s best efforts – been a quiet infiltration, a gradual creep into the lives of our prey.” He nodded. “It would stand to reason that this has been deemed the best method, a means reminiscent of a parasite, feeding off of them without their notice.”

He gave her a smile. “Perhaps that itself is a good starting place for what you desire, for instance a horseman of my talents would find it fairly simple to lay the foundations of mistrust, separation and dissent, turning individuals against one another. You seem more adept at being the kindling which might ignite the very flames of change of which you speak. It may well behove you to be less dismissive of my aims, even if in comparison to rivers of blood and revolution they may well seem trite.”

"You are certainly not stupid." he said flatly. "Impetuous and pushy but not stupid, you could be pleasant if you wanted to, you just decisively choose not to be." It was honesty of a sort, one that he found strangely searing. His wings were moth-like as was his very fear and he couldn't help but be drawn to things which seemed incandescent. He found her interesting and that was enough for him to endure insults long past the point where he'd walk away with someone else.

"That is in many ways what I imagined." he admitted grudgingly, a bit huffy about his imagination coming up short against whatever grand aims she had.

"Cheap is less dangerous." he said, "I know I will never understand them, perhaps you might, you think in another way, a different way than most. But for me they are incomprehensible, much in the same way man in the clans are. I learn the patterns, I learn the responses to stimuli and how to use those to set up a scenario I want. I don't understand what goes on inside their minds but whatever it is can be eroded. Parasites sap and drain, they take and take and take until their host has no will to fight them any longer, they don't have the strength for their own ideas any longer, all that is left at the end is me and I am very patient."

He adjusted his cloak, scuffling his long silvery moth wings in a huffy puff of glittering dust and reached for another jar, opening it and removing a long twisting worm which twisted and latched onto his wrist, he impassively ignored this, stroking it with his thumb.

"I am aware of my limitations." he said, "I do not hear the hive, nor do I understand the humans. I make do with what I have and what I do understand and I offer those things to those with interest."

Noth was momentarily derailed by America’s response to his comments, not expecting gratitude at all for anything, no matter how small. It was an appreciated gesture, whether she meant it that way or not. “I don’t know what exactly Famine stands for in a general sense, simply what it means to me personally. I see it as control, restraint, it is withholding of food, of care and of mercy. It is enforcing a divine will, forcing fear through helplessness and the impending footsteps of death. It is a desert without reprieve, hunger without food, it is both hunger and starvation. It is /wanting/. Wanting and wanting for ever." And for the first time in their conversation there was a fervent passion in his tone. But it faded and he seemed to relax with a sigh. "It is why it irks me so much to see the current leadership’s approach, it is something alien to me, some other reason and drive I can neither support nor so much as comprehend.” He shook his head “Honestly though I say this but in the end, I cannot care a great deal about it, I do my own thing, the world turns, things change and I do not understand.”

He thoughtfully eyed the pale creature attempting desperately to siphon off some of his thin and sickly blood. “I don’t think so.” He said. “Names are not very important to the low crawling slithering things in the world." And he avoided going into his own distaste for them. "It cares only about blood, about gorging itself fat upon it and spreading the pathogens within to any humans unfortunate enough to cross it. You can name it, if you wish though. It is the end of a very long line of selective breeding on my part.”

Deciding that he liked her strength of self and her opinions he asked. “What do you think famine is?”

Noth had to concede America’s point with an exasperated sigh. Rou and him had a relationship which was primarily that of a ruler and their chief adviser, Nothing was good for advice, for researching and for executing orders but when it came to making decisions and pleasant or charismatic leadership he was completely abrasive and useless. Rou was also one of the only horsemen who knew his real name was Worm and used it with impunity typical of conquest. For a long time he had been sure he was the only one who would ever see that side of him, and yet standing here in front of this young horsewoman he felt like something in her knew what and who he really was.

He didn’t like it, it was an oddly unsettling feeling and made him cross his arms across his chest. “That may well be so.” He said grudgingly. “I won’t deny that in the greater hive there is a desire to be used, to be part of a larger whole. But I am not one of /them/.” And yet he knew that somewhere in the emptiness in him there was still that desire to be a tool, to be useful and to have a direction. He felt defensive about it suddenly, as if he’d shown too much of his hand while knowing that there was probably nothing he could do to hide it if he’d wanted to. “I am on my own. My purpose is myself. To exist, to learn and to continue to be. I am not a tool. They are. I am not.”