"Prince" Jake. I think Elfangor would have allowed him to be Ax's prince- and I think Ax knew that. Very touching- good job! :)

This is so cute and yet so sad. Aximili can't quite wrap his little head around what Elfangor must feel, but through his eyes, we the readers can understand. He's lost so much, yet he must carry on. It was a good move to portray this complex moment from little Ax's POV.

I love it. I would feel the same if one of my family or me go to war and thought that whoever wouldn't been able to go back home.

I found it a little odd that you chose to have Andalites cry the same way as humans do. Headcanon about Andalite culture is always awesome, so the inherited guide trees were food for my poor deprived fangirl (Applegrant, where is that Andalite encyclopaedia?). I liked the way Hala-Fala was kept as Elfangor's, almost like a possession of someone who's passed away is preserved, and it's very clear that Elfangor's physical absence has intensified his presence in his parents' mind. I personally believe that Ax's parents wouldn't be quite so cold or unfeeling to him as you have them here prior to Elfangor's arrival - they have a younger son, after all, and are hopefully responsible parents - but Your Headcanon Is Not My Headcanon, and we have all of four sentences about Noorlin and Forlay to go on. In any case, Ax's feelings of displacement and of discovering a whole new side to his parents were well written.

I'm also loving the little details about stalk-eye-waving instead of shaking your head, and the midday exercise period, and Ax not paying attention in class. And the scene with Elfangor crying was really very emotional and conveyed very well - in fact, I love the way you've written him. He's appropriately bitter, but still hopeful.

Aw! Cute!
-Smiley

nice :)

I think the best thing about this fic is how you tell it in Aximili's young voice. The way he describes what he encounters is perfect. He has a hesitancy, almost an insecure quality, that I think a lot of kids have when viewing adults together. The fight his parents had was a perfect example of this.

"Charged with energy, they flung their tails at each other, sometimes hitting. My mother gashed my father across the chest, and I scrambled deeply inside of the scoop, terrified of what they were doing, and that they might lash out at me. She ran over immediately and pressed her hands against the wound, and he wrapped her in his arms."

You can tell that Aximili is confused, but as a reader, you can appreciate his parent's reactions. Something about his mother striking his father and him scooping her in his arms seems so honest to me.

I also loved all the little mentions of Elfangor's sadness. Again, Aximili doesn't really understand why Elfangor is sad, but he accepts it because it's an unbiased observation (really the only kind of observations kids have). Even though it's a fic told by Ax, I'm still left contemplating Elfangor and all his biter-sweet emotions.

I liked this moment:

"(Don't let Father make choices for you. Don't let him deify me. He has a misguided sense of pride. Follow your hearts, Aximili, not his.)

I felt hurt. I didn't know why he was telling me this. Father wasn't wrong about anything."

It's just so telling of what Elfangor has been through. He understands the complexities of character and morality, and I think it's kind of nice to think that Elfangor was the one to introduce this idea to Ax. When Ax is on Earth he must deal with many gray areas, and it seems fitting that Elfangor is the one who shows Ax that not everything is simple.

And the last lines were perfect. Ax being funny unintentionally is just so... AX. I love that Elfangor has a sort of human sense of humor now.

Overall, I think this is really a lovely and emotional look into this reality. So bravo.

oh wow.

Just wow.

I never thought about the emotions, the conflicts that would have happened in the family when Elfangor came home. This is just mind blowing.

Also, Andalites don't cry tears or "sit". And Ax does have green eyes (though maybe when they're really young they don't)

I'm going to be honnest here. Only because it is such a good story.

1. Andalites don't hug

2. How would Ax know what vultures were?

3. Andalites don't kiss like that, they rub their poms together

4. Andalites don't have mouths, thus they don't have jaws

I could be wrong about some of these things, but everybody makes mastakes. Overall, nice work

What would happen if Ax found out what really happened?

Aw!

Nice story...kind of sad, though. But if there was ever to be a realistic homehoming for a warrior, this is basically exactly how it should be. :D

aw! there are entirely few Ax/Elfangor brotherly fics, and this one was awesome. i loved it.

Dear AniJen21,

I adore your Elfangor-related one-shots. I spend an embarrassing amount of time trolling the intertubes for exactly this sort of thing. So thank you.

One nitpick: Andalites don't cry tears. Admitedly TAC has an ambiguous scene where Elfangor "cries" to Hala-Fala, but I think crying means something different in this context. Or it's a KASU. Elfangor later says, "It was strange; I felt like crying, but I no longer had human eyes. So I cried the way an Andalite does. Inside. In my hearts".

An even nitpickier nitpick: "a medium between Elfangor and I" should be "a medium between Elfangor and me". Okay, I'm done now.

This was my favorite parts:

(Really?) I gasped. (I get to have a hero for a Prince?)

(No. No hero,) he said as he turned around and began to head home. (Just Elfangor.)

Thanks for this.